Economic transformation necessary to change the lives of black Americans

The U.S. Department of Labor released employment statistics for April earlier this month, an editor at our New York office asked what impressed me.

Like many working journalists in the United States, I was impressed by the amount of work created last month and the extent to which the report enhanced the employee’s claims. missing. I just stared at the number of people hired for fun and hospitality so I didn’t answer the editor.

But along with all the others I ignored the picture that was about – unemployment among black Americans soared. 9.7 percent, even the amount of work was non-existent 6.1 percent. For whites, the figure was 5.3%.

Since the year George Floyd was assassinated, the United States has also focused on discrimination in the workplace by police, housing and health care, as well as on infrastructure reform. But I wonder if these changes – while necessary – could change the lives of black people if economic change is not put forward.

Unemployment among black Americans is almost constant twice about white people, a phenomenon that is said to have occurred because of differences in educational opportunities and social networking sites, as well as discrimination in the workplace. In the past, these two figures only went side by side.

After Covid’s crisis hit more than a year ago, black Americans had just begun to benefit from a ten-year male market. The problem appeared to be affecting their territories, closing down areas where their jobs were being settled, including restaurants and sales, as well as killing them at very high prices.

It remains to be seen if the United States will recover from the American blackout, depending on their economic needs. they tend to be neglected.

White America began to emerge from the economic crisis in 2008 and 2012, but black Americans met double-digit unemployment for years afterward. Some economists have criticized the Treasury department for the two groups’ recovery, saying it allowed Wall Street to fear inflation would force a rise in prices before the return of the poor.

Some say that lazy recovery is another American symbol that has overlooked for many years the economic needs of black people.

Shortly after the United States liberated black slaves in 1865, it he promised giving everyone “40 acres and a donkey” to reaffirm their financial rights (mules would be in debt). This did not happen. Instead, a divisional approach was adopted, which made it easier for newly freed people to rely on their former employers.

“I don’t think black people have ever been out of slavery again,” says Trahern Crews, who organizes Black Lives Matter Minnesota.

Crews claims the government owes US hundreds of years of black compensation for injuries as a way to pay child slaves and money in schools and black medical institutions, similar to the $ 1.6bn the United States paid to Japanese Americans who were detained. during World War II.

Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. Such programs are highly controversial but have been supported by the public in recent years. The order to establish a legal review committee was approved by the Housing Monitoring Committee in April.

Finally, employment opportunities are a major issue for black Americans, according to Rashad Robinson, President of the Colorado Change Commission. “When we ask people what is really important they talk about work, and they talk about pay and they also talk about living a better life,” he says.

Biden officials say they will not allow their Covid recovery plan to act as a final one, and he promised setting its economic goals at the level of black unemployment instead of overpopulation.

Janelle Jones, an economist at the Department of Labor, said: “Economic change would not be complete if other regions remained.”

taylor.rogers@ft.com