Posted on 12/30/2008 3:48:47 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
President-elect Barack Obama has been formulating plans for the stimulus package likely to be enacted shortly after he takes office. It is reputed to be in the area of $800 billion to $1.2 trillion, and he originally proposed to create 2.5 million jobs.
More recently, however, he has adjusted his goal to be 3 to 3.5 million jobs because of analyses that show the probability the economy will lose 3.5 million jobs in all of 2009.
Yet this goal should be juxtaposed against the size of the growing Black unemployment rate, estimated to be 12 percent at present, which would be viewed as a crisis if it were a national figure.
It has always mystified me why government officials and economists consider this as “normal” with respect to Blacks. The truth is that it has always been a crisis, but neither Democratic nor Republican officials have cared enough to enact special measures targeted to this population of 40 million to help it achieve employment parity.
So my question is, who will get those jobs? More directly, since the Black unemployment rate could reach 20 percent by the end of next year, and they have had difficulty accessing jobs in “normal” times, I ask whether this fact will be taken into consideration in the Obama administration.
Every one talks about education as the remedy, but education is a very long-range strategy and is not guaranteed to bring about employment parity when racism still influences who gets a job; when employers can detect that an African American is at the other end of the application process.
Studies still show that whites with prison records and high school educations are able to secure employment in a greater measure than Blacks with college degrees or those with Black-sounding names. For Blacks to get those jobs, the Obama administration will need to vigorously enforce the laws against employment discrimination.
Second, the announced targets for job creation by Obama in areas such as infrastructure, health care, environment and others create some doubt that the available jobs will be distributed equitably. For example, infrastructure jobs – Hispanics are poised to consume them, having “crowded out” African-Americans and others, to use a concept of some economists, in trades such as construction, landscaping and other pertinent employment categories. Then, African Americans are no better poised in the health-care industry to obtain jobs that have quickly been appropriated by immigrants from many countries, from the Caribbean and Latin America to the Middle East.
Finally, in the environmental industry, the increase of jobs from 1990 to 2006 was just over 440,000, so with this sector of the economy targeted for growth, Blacks could obtain a significant number of jobs with adequate training.
All of this means that since states can deploy workers in “shovel-ready” jobs in the low-wage category rather quickly, there should be an acute sensitivity to the fierce racial/ethnic competition that exists.
Otherwise, since increased employment in other sectors will require training, what could enable Blacks to become more competitive is the creation of a more powerful job-training model that encompasses features of the old CETA (Comprehensive Education and Training Act) and the currently ineffective JPTA (Job Partnership Training Act).
It should enable states to provide the funding to a variety of service providers (high schools, community colleges, churches, small businesses, social service organizations etc.) to re-establish a priority on training the most disadvantaged low-income American citizens for higher-paying jobs.
Many people have asked “What’s next?” now that we have a Black president, and many of the answers have been abstract. However, coming down the pike is the largest amount of social and economic funding to be invested in moving the economy and the country forward we have seen in a long time.
If Blacks are not poised to take advantage of it, they will not only lose one of the most important economic opportunities in history, but also fail to provide our own answer to the question of what it means to have Barack Obama in the White House. His job is to open the doors, ours is to fight to open them wide enough so we can obtain the equal benefits of American citizenship. – (NNPA)
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Ron Walters is the director of the African American Leadership Center and Professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland College Park. His latest book is: “The Price of Racial Reconciliation” (University of Michigan Press).
I heard ‘the one’ talk about this the other day on the radio.
From what I recall, he said he will create or retain 3 million jobs.
I had to do a double take, but that is what he said. The radio news caster didn’t even mention he said retain. So if he doesn’t lose another 3 million jobs, he has been successful.
For a Trillion Dollars, you could pay each of those 2.5M job recipients $40,000 per year for 10 years just to stay home!
And, you don’t have to create a government make work program, either!
Because they live in a "great society" and vote for Democrats?
Not the way the government works. The money has to filter through thousands of government workers.... who will get their cut. Of course it has to go through hundreds of politicians on all levels whose agencies get their gut.
Left over in enough to give each “worker” about $1K a year for two years. This program is another make work/rewards program for government pols, administrators, and agencies.
Nothing more. It is a reward program for the government connected.
That post made my head hurt...
When Mr. A moves into town, he looks for a quickie mart where he can get a job with the hope of owning it eventually.
When Mr. B moves into town, the first thing he looks for is the welfare office.
That is why Mr. A will be a success and Mr. B will never be much better than a slave.
Who will get the jobs? Unions, that’s who.
My bet is that it won’t be most of the people receiving benefits now that will be digging holes. They haven’t had to work to get “their fair share” up till now and I don’t suppose they would ever consider actually having to work for anything. Then , look at the UAW—they truly think they are owed 75 and hour even if it means the taxpayers are paying for them—just an even more expensive form of welfare.
Apparently, being black did not hurt Mr. Walters.
A: Seven
One to drop the light bulb.
One to clean up the broken bulb.
One to go and get a new bulb.
One to twist the bulb into the socket.
One to fill in the environmental impact statement.
One to collect the union dues.
One to collect the donations for the DNC.
Point is,I know plenty of whites who voted for Barky,and according to them,they were not holding their noses when they did it.Most here held there noses (myself included) when we voted for McLaim,Sara being the ONLY REASON I did it!Lets not forget,times have changed and "minorities" are not the only ones clamoring for a piece of that "wealth redistribution" pie.
If anecdotal evidence is to be accepted then there are PLENTY of white people who are clamoring for an injection of liberalism,the true opiate of the masses.
aren’t Blacks also about 12% of the population?
seems like unemployment and crime rates in any racial group ought to be at or very near equal to racial demographics.....
You need to read the word problem more carefully. "The black rate of unemployment is 12%" is not the same as "12% of unemployed people are black." I'm thinking the data show that black unemployment is twice the overall rate which is 6%.
My fear is that the jobs creation program will be designed with the outcome of equalizing the rate of unemployment across ethnic groups. So we're back to quotas and preferential hiring practices to "achieve social justice."
You have hit the nail on the head, and I doubt they grew up with Welfare in Mexico.
I don’t get it. America is a service-centric nation. Many of the jobs lost were from the services industries, such as finance, IT, banking. How is building roads, school, etc going to solve the problem?
This author just went through a whole article saying that blacks don’t want to work but then wants to know why black unemploymenty is at 12%. He answered his own questions.
All of these infrastructure jobs that Barry wants to create are union jobs. They all involve heavy machinery, specialized skills and lots of capital investment. Some minimum wage guy with a shovel will not be getting these jobs.
...all at Davis-Bacon wages.
The Mexicans don’t work any harder than black men, although they know how to play the game (working hard at first, then pacing themselves, hiding, and so on). I’ve worked with each, doing labor that they do, for quite a few years. But fewer of the Mexicans ask to go to the bathroom, and fewer of them smoke. They’ll take more insults and more often put up with sexual perversions from bosses (homosexuality, prostitution, pedophilia, etc.). Some of them will even do some extra illegal jobs for loserdopian bosses (smuggling).
It’s mostly about vanities.
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