The Black Unemployment Epidemic

When white America catches a cold, the saying goes, black America gets pneumonia. Or in this case, when white America has a recession, black America gets a depression. It was true in the Great Depression, and it's no less true in the "Great Recession." It seems counterintuitive that, with the first black president in office, African Americans would be worse off economically. But, as has been made clear over and over again, the election of Barack Obama was not a curative for the nation's racial ills, or for the economic pre-existing conditions that have turned white America's recession into black America's depression.

Lost in the media tsunami after U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden is news that may prove as economically devastating the terrorism bin Laden masterminded. For a lot of Americans, "returning to the private sector" means practicing saying "You want fries with that?", with a smile. And they're the lucky ones.

For African Americans, in the midst of an underreported epidemic of unemployment, the prognosis is grim.

Almost a year ago, I wrote that African Americans and Latinos are the "canaries in our economic coal mine." In early mines, ventilation was poor at best, non-existent at worst. So, miners would take a caged canary into the mine with them. Canaries, being sensitive to methane and carbon monoxide gases, were the miners' early warning system. Toxic gases would kill the birds before killing the miners. If the canary stopped singing and keeled over, it was time to get out of the mine.

A year ago, the black and brown "canaries in our too-long-deregulated economic mineshaft" were gasping for air. A year later, the canaries are still gasping for air, and too few seem to notice, or ask why.

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