Dr Boyce Watkins, founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the initiator of the National Conversation on Race, writing for MSNBC:
Obama’s race problem just got a little deeper. As the rest of the country is starting to see light at the end of the economic tunnel, the African American community just walked into a deeper, darker crawl space than the one it was in before. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released unemployment data for the month of March, finding that unemployment for whites remained steady, while the jobs numbers for African Americans tanked, going from 15.8 percent unemployment to an astonishing 16.5 percent.
The labor reports don’t look good for President Obama, who has been met with considerable pressure from members of the black community to improve the jobs situation for people of color. There are some who argue, with good reason, that the president is simply not working as hard for black folks as he is for everyone else. it can also be said that Obama’s massive effort to fight the job shortage throughout the United States seems to have been working to a certain degree. The month of March was good for most Americans, who were spared further increases in the rate of unemployment. The bad news for the president and his economic advisors is that the rising tide is not raising all ships.
Here’s the breakdown of what President Obama may or may not be looking at this morning (depending on whether or not his advisors even ask him to consider the data): African-Americans continue to have an unemployment rate that is 88 percent higher than that of whites (8.8 percent vs. 16.5 percent). Black women have a rate that is 70 percent greater than white women (7.3 percent vs. 12.4 percent) and black men endure an unemployment rate that is 113 percent higher than that of white men (8.6 percent vs. 19 percent). I ask this question of the president: If white Americans have the right to be angry and complain about 8.8 percent unemployment, then does that mean African-Americans have a right to be twice as angry?
[…]
Here is what the president needs to do and this needs to happen right now: There must be a clear targeted program aimed squarely in the face of urban America that is designed to create jobs for people in the inner city. The program should aim at cities with the highest rates of unemployment. There should also be programs to support and sustain small business in these communities, as well as the smallest businesses throughout the United States. These businesses need access to critical capital necessary to create job opportunities for residents of these communities.
[…]
I stand by my original assertion that President Obama should reconsider his decision to take advice from Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers, two men who do little to impress me as financial experts with the necessary background to understand the plight of urban communities. As a Finance Professor myself, I can tell you that if you don’t care about solving a problem, you are not going to be able to solve it. Obama needs a task force on urban unemployment with the power to make meaningful recommendations, and within the context of this task force, he must pursue effective change. If black unemployment is 88 percent higher than that of whites, then one can easily argue that government officials should put forth 88 percent more in per capita resources to deal with our unique economic hurdles. Racial equality in America is not achieved by having a black president; it is achieved by having a vested interest in achieving equality for all black Americans. Anything short of this is entirely unacceptable.
Translation: you may be black, Mr. President, but we aren’t getting our 97% voter support’s worth.
Precious. I especially like the bit about how the leveling of unemployment rates among whites at near 9% is to be considered “light at the end of the economic tunnel.”
But tell me: does criticizing a post-racial President for not being sufficiently concerned with the plight of a particular race make the President racist, or the complainants racist?
I can never keep that straight.
(h/t MC)
I don’t get the complaint. John Conyers hasn’t done shit for his constituency yet I don’t hear them grumbling.
People change only when they become exhausted with their suffering.
But, if you’re a Democratic politician, you don’t WANT black people to change. So, rather than make it easier for blacks to overcome their suffering, he makes their suffering slightly less intolerable.
Reading that drivel made my eyes bleed.
Anyone criticizing a post-racial President for any reason whatsoever makes YOU a racist. When will you ever learn?
Obama’s momma’s side just don’t like black people, I guess. It’s obvious in the way that Obama’s momma’s side is purposely causing urban America (all you ghetto white trash don’t count) more pain than Obama’s momma’s side of America. Errr, AmeriKKKa. Show them the money, Obama’s momma’s side. It’s all good, if you would just show them the money.
Obviously the thing to do is to flood rural areas with low-wage, unskilled labor classified as non-white. That should even out the discrepancy.
I think what Ken was looking for is: if the person complaining about a post-racial President is white, then s/he is racist. If not, not.
It’s the rules. That the rules are by definition racist in form doesn’t trip any irony meters in the rules-making committee.
It makes the President half-racist, with the other half and the complainants being one and one half whiners.
Private business needing to turn to government to save them generally is a sign of a poorly run business, or an ill-conveived business plan. More money! She never really addresses what might be behind the numbers, the actual causes of said numbers. She, in short, is a race-baiting twit.
Upper Middle Class Liberals Sock Business for Sake of Poor, Poor Hardest Hit
Upper middle class could not be reached for comment due to their Caribbean vacations occurring at this time.
[takes a drink] Now go home and get your fuckin’ shinebox.
Being a NAVY guy, my limited experience with Task Forces is that they are used to destroy things. I fail to see how a judicial application of ship-borne artillery fire and fighter-delivered munitions would appreciably help those poor urban populations, other than to provide them with a first-class display of American Military Firepower.
Oh, wait, not an actual task force with ships n’ stuff? A task force run by politicians? Oh, well, in my not-so-limited experiences as a taxpayer, those task forces are significantly more destructive than anything the NAVY could do. Those poor urban people don’t stand a chance! The sad part is, they don’t get the neat fireworks display as their community is destroyed.
Why all the hate on poor brown people? Where did all the hope and change go?
gimmie. gimmie, gimmie … gee, maybe if those african american “yuts” spent more time getting an education or skills instead of impregnating teenage girls they could find some jobs ? Maybe standing outside inner city bodega’s glaring at everyone who walks by, might, just might be bad for the businesses that maybe could actually hire them …
or maybe when they do apply for a job, the pants around their a**, gold toothed, twisted ball cap wearing image might, just might give a prospective employer some pause …
My translator must be a different model from Jeff’s, because mine translated Dr. Watkins’ message as:
“My people are incapable of getting jobs, incapable of keeping jobs, and incapable of creating jobs. Give us some bullshit jobs right now, and maybe we won’t get 88% medieval on your cities.”
I’m sure it goes without saying that my translator device is totally RAAAAACIST!
Hell, most times you can’t even keep your screen identity straight.
RD, you’re off topic. And not in the amusing way.
What IS amusing is that the “solution” to high urban unemployment rates is to get a “task force” underway.
Months and months to discover … that there are no jobs! Viola. I just saved the government a ton of money.
You know why there are no jobs in Detroit?
1) High taxation
2) High rates of theft
3) low skilled workers who are unreliable
BAM.
His Mom did like black people — in a way that Obama said is racist, and he may have been right. I’ll take his word for it. I mean, he met her like twice.
His Dad must have been a racist, too. Uppity black Americans are illegitimate competitors for Ivy AA slots that are really meant for ruling-class Africans, so, Marxis mutandis: bitter, cling, etc.
But I’m sure Obama has overcome his racist heritage, and the disparate impact of his economic policies is unintended. So he’ll change them. As soon as he finds out.
No, Boyce, those ain’t Dem “inner city ghettos” you suddenly noticed. They be “critical habitat” for Dem
oppressedprotected species, you know, The Brown People.I guess I couldn’t call him “Boy” for short.
Obama’s daddy must have hated his mommy. He punished her with a baby.
What makes me even angrier is, essentially, this guy is telling Obama that he needs to pay off the African American communities. Screw the rest of the country and its unemployment rate, the only people who are struggling are African Americans…
Is it raciss to ask whether 97% support for Leftists – and more fully the assumptions requisite to Leftist political beliefs – not only correlates to the kind of social pathology Dr. Watkins describes, but is a major cause of the social pathology?
What makes me even angrier is, essentially, this guy is telling Obama that he needs to pay off the African American communities.
What pisses me off even more is that nobody recognizes that it’s the benevolent hand of government that created this mess in the first place. He’s asking for a counterproductive “solution” that would only make the situation worse, and neither he nor any of his audience realize it.
And at the risk of repeating myself: even if they realized it, they couldn’t admit it, because the cognitive dissonance would cause cerebral hemorrhaging.
Ungrateful Negroes were too busy listening to rap-induced rape fantasies…
It’s always so easy to spot the Leftists around here.
He’s trying to get you to self-police what you write with his racism cudgel.
Thing is – even if most people don’t feel able to speak freely about the causes of these social pathologies, they know what they are because they’ve seen them, which explains why a lot of the more meddlesome projects advanced by Leftists purportedly to mitigate racism fall flat with the American public.
Really? I honestly haven’t noticed.
Dr. Watkins needs to have a talk with Oprah, Jesse J, and Reverend Al.
‘Cuz all the bruthahz and sistahz know that it’s really the Boule that’s keepin’ ’em down…
Maybe I missed this but what were black folk unemployment rates before the shit hit the fan? As opposed to white folk. Just wondering.
I ask this question of the president: If white Americans have the right to be angry and complain about 8.8 percent unemployment, then does that mean African-Americans have a right to be twice as angry?
Yes, Boyce, but then any “targeted program” such as you propose to deal with this doubled anger should obviously be called only The Violent Extremist Prevention Act so as to not tar all African Americans as enraged maniacs who want to kill Dem inner cities’ imperialist captors.
Might help to keep the RD’s of the country “safer” too, eh?
RD and Ed never fail to disappoint.
RD and Ed
neverfailto disappoint.FTFY
Surprise us, trolls. Say something intelligent.
Bigbooner,
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, not seasonally adjusted, and taking unemployment rate data from 2 separate tables:
Black 2007 8.3%
2008 10.1
2009 13.5
2010 16.6
White 2007 4.1%
2008 5.2
2009 8.5
2010 9.3
2009/10 data from March
According to the stats in #34, black unemployment is proportionally better than it used to be. Interesting. Not that that makes things okay, but it does take some energy out of the complaints, or it would if rational actors were involved.
Of course, that wasn’t the point. The point was we have a president who was elected based on racial politics, and now the bill is coming due. I would laugh if the whole situation didn’t suck so much.
For the love of God! Who does he think is displacing blacks in the work place? Hispanics, that’s who!
And of course, he’ll be 100% for open immigration and amnesty. Moron.
What was that Brit’s line?
“Lies, damned lies and statistics.”
Ha, Cookies!
yes someone please point out to this twit that Obama is really doign his best to level the playing field by raising the white unemployment rate to that of inner-city blacks.
Aren’t RD and Ed the same person?
It is like they are not even trying anymore …
“Ungrateful Negroes”? Naw, can’t rightfully be any such beings – just where would the proud, self-affirming, violent ghetto rap of the Black Community be without the nurturing guidance of the Dem ghetto Lords’ enlightened beneficence of privation, so necessary to bring out the best of what The Brown People are capable? Why they’d still only be singing the Blues!
“Thank you, Dem Ghetto Guy.”
Touché, Jonah.
RetaRDEd. I predict his return as “RE” and “TA” sometime in the future.
Carin, for reasons why Detroit unemployment is so high, you forgot:
(4) Crippling regulations
(5) Corrupt city government
(6) Non-existent city “services”
All brought to you by 40 years of one-party (guess which one) rule.
Who needs mere blog trolls when you’ve got Obama?
[…] a comment » At Protein Wisdom “Kresh” comments on calls for a goverenment “task force” for black […]
Carin, for reasons why Detroit unemployment is so high, you forgot:
That, the dangers of being “too white” certainly being quite evident today, at least for whites, the Motown Sound was stopped dead in its tracks just in time!
Killing the capital markets by taxing the shit out of investment income is the best way to fix this problem. Make sure nobody has a job.
I like rap music. Its the only music genre that celebrates the excesses of capitalism. And in a non-pc way too.
Thats right .. bitches
“…the president is simply not working as hard for black folks as he is for everyone else.”
Most white Americans, I’d venture to guess, would be eternally grateful to Barry if he’d stop working hard for us; we can’t even sleep at night.
maybe some of the black mens could have worked on the oil drillings the little president man canceled
the little president man’s health care pizzle just raised costs for restaurants way higher cause of the urban people need to know how many calories are in their foozle more than they need jobs…
you’d think a finance professor would have a handle on how this shit worked
actually professor hoochie if you go here and check
Unemployment Rate – White – LNS14000003
and
Unemployment Rate – Black or African American – LNS14000006
and scroll down to the rate tables you’ll see that black unemployment relative to whitey is same as it was before the recession
I like rap music too, bitches, depending. I almost always need a little incorporation of some more melodious sound in it, though, and a lot of rappers do that. Timex Social Club was pretty early overall with quasi-rap, “Rumors”:
Think I’ll write my Congressman
Tell him to pass a bill
So next time they catch somebody starting rumors
Shoot to kill
Shaggy, “Hope”. Phil Collins collaborated with some group on a rap version of “Take Me Home” which I like a lot; Tammy Wynette even joined the KLF/Jams on The White Room alb., going to MuMu Land: “They called me up in Tennessee, They said Tammy stand by the Jams. But if you don’t like what they’re going to do, you better not stop them ’cause they’re coming through…but mostly rap”
2. Comment by L on 4/8 @ 11:34 am #
People change only when they become exhausted with their suffering.
But, if you’re a Democratic politician, you don’t WANT black people to change. So, rather than make it easier for blacks to overcome their suffering, he makes their suffering slightly less intolerable.
I’ll save everyone a trip to the library:
“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do do not want to lose their jobs.
I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.
My experience is that people who call themselves “The Intellectuals” understand theories, but they do not understand things. I have long been convinced that, if these men could have gone into the South and taken up and become interested in some practical work which would have brought them in touch with people and things, the whole world would have looked very different to them. Bad as conditions might have seemed at first, when they saw that actual progress was being made, they would have taken a more hopeful view of the situation.”
-Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education, Being Chapters from My Experience (1911)
Ch. 5: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob
Not unrelated: Shay over at Booker Rising relays the misgivings of some black conservatives and moderates. They want to be down with the Tea Party movement, but…
Booker T. had this figured out 100 years ago, and yet we’re still here. Nothing really changes.
TSI,
I see Shay accepts the debunked bullshit claims of racial slurs shouted at the black congressmen at face value. From that point on, I stopped reading.
This:
Credibility = 0
Sorry.
Y’all may call me racist, but after LBJ’s bullshit, the blacks that are where they are? Are there because the’ve become addicted to entitlements.
Not that I need to tell you folks that, but it’s worth saying.
Ugh. This is Stormfront sick shit. Later.
Yeah, Blitz checked out at Walmart racist central, but the rest of you were standing in line.
Walmart you can get honey roasted peanuts and motor oil and matchbox cars and lawn furniture and bubble bath and car wax and prescription drugs and hot dogs and laxatives and headphones and caramel corn and I just get really excited.
They liked ’em enough to buy some of ’em, back in the day.
Is that supposed to be funny? Because its sputum.
hi cynn how is your evening pleasant I hope
Box wine dulls one’s sense of humor.
Wait, Booker T Washington is Stormfront shit?
Wow. Hard out here for a pimp.
It’s certainly a tribute to the crushing weight of the entitlement subculture that the Great Society has hung on the Great Experiment. Epic. Fail. Dr. Boyce. Epic. Fail.
Oh, and I denounce myself.
Too bad, so sad, cynn. When you apes and pigs redefine “racism” as “principled opposition to Dunham”, you — and far more importantly, people — no longer have a means of distinguishing between Stormfront and the Tea Parties.
If you were competent, you might be dangerous. Fortunately, you pigs are much too stupid to learn that when you rise up on your trotters and squeal, “You must choose now! It’s them or us!”, people always, always choose “them”.
Wait, Booker T Washington is Stormfront shit?
Also Thomas Sowell, apparently.
Something tells me that cynn’s ration stamps for Victory Gin didn’t arrive on time, so she’s back on the windshield deicing fluid.
Don’t blame box wine. There is some fairly decent wine that comes in boxes, or so the box-wine people keep telling me.
Well. ’cause, damnit, as cynn well knows black folk can’t make it on their own. They need the enlightened help of well meaning folks like cynn. And democrats need the votes.
Brake fluid, I think. Maybe a switch to Two Buck Chuck is in order?
Silly Jeff, it makes the Republicans racists. Only members of a Persecuted Minority™ possess the authenticity to criticize a member of that self-same group.
Two Buck Chuck is cheaper than box wine, I think, but better than a lot of wines sold at 6 or 7 times the price.
Wow, way to say “I don’t know shit about racism, but I can repeat memes with the best of them!”
Neither, it just makes both of them pigs feeding at the treasury’s trough.