Via P6, this from Lee Daniels:
[W]hen a “problem”—say, mass unemployment—is seen to be largely limited to black Americans ... [it] is racialized as a black problem and a sustained barrage of racially-driven criticism follows. News and opinion columns, the airwaves and the blogosphere rapidly overflow with glib slogans – “no excuses,” “tough love,” “personal responsibility,” and so on – used to disguise callousness masquerading as pragmatism. Such words and phrases were ubiquitous just a few years ago, when many at the top of the society ignored the truism that the financial markets are still ruled by the laws of economic gravity (what goes up must come down). Then, from 2000 to 2008, the white unemployment rate never exceeded 5.2 percent, and often fell below the official definition of full employment.
In sharp contrast, for five of those years the official black unemployment rate ranged from 10 to nearly 11 percent. Indeed, federal labor department statistics show that on an annualized basis the black unemployment rate breached the 10-percent level in 30 of the last 37 years. Throughout that period, the white unemployment rose above 8 percent only twice. In other words, black Americans have been enduring a sustained crisis of mass unemployment crisis since the early 1970s.
Even now, as mass unemployment continues despite an economic recovery appearing to take hold, the black unemployment rate for every category from high school dropouts to college graduates is soaring far above that of whites.
But the racial faux-moralists are silent. Instead, now that masses of whites are suffering, too, one finds an understanding of the harsh toll long-term unemployment can exact on adults and children. That was the point of a November 12 New York Times story which explored in poignant detail the stress on families caused by the long-term or serial joblessness of husbands and/or wives. The predicament, experts said, can have harmful lasting effects on both adults and children.
For me, the story was notable in that it focused on white, middle-class families with a dispassionate sympathy.
As P6 says, "One cannot help but be a little sarcastic."
Comments