Print This Post By Lee A. Daniels
I can’t believe my ears.
Now that millions of white Americans are out of work, enduring the sense of desperation that poverty and joblessness bring, I can’t believe I’m not hearing the faux-moralists lecture them about taking “personal responsibility” for their own circumstances.
With nearly six million of the 15 million jobless out of work for six months or more, I can’t believe I’m not hearing that old saw – “Anyone who wants a job can find one” – being thrown in high dudgeon in their faces.
After all, that’s the “tough love” pitch the black jobless and the black poor got earfuls of for all this decade (and before), when, with rare exceptions, their unemployment rates were substantially higher than the 9.3 percent white Americans are now enduring. (The current official black unemployment rate is 15.6 percent.)
Of course, I’m not really surprised. I understand the difference perfectly. It’s what happens when the pain goes the other way. It’s what happens when some significant number of whites take out the anger or anxiety they feel in uncivil fashion (consider the right-wing reaction to the Obama Presidency); or, suddenly, the structure of the American system fails to keep them safe from economic harm.
When that happens, no negative ethnic-based generalizations are asserted. Instead, understanding that individuals are not completely masters of their own fate or, sometimes, their own behavior is the rule.
That is not the case, however, when a “problem”—say, mass unemployment—is seen to be largely limited to black Americans.
Then, the problem 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.
My first reaction upon reading the article was a bitter smirk—at seeing another confirmation of my this-is-what-happens-when-the-pain-goes-the-other-way theory.
However, my second, a moment later, was appreciation for the exploration of a critically-important issue, and sympathy for those caught in the maw of forces beyond their control.
But I wonder: When the American economy has recovered sufficiently to return to normal, to once again produce full employment for white American but not black Americans, will there be any compassion for those left on the other side of the color line to still endure mass unemployment?
Lee A. Daniels is Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., and Editor-in-Chief of TheDefendersOnline.
Kevin Eason is a freelance editorial cartoonist and Illustrator from NJ. His brand of satire covers news events in politics, entertainment, sports and much more. Kevin’s work features include: TVOne, NABJ, WBLS_107.5FM, EURweb and various newspapers & magazines throughout the country.
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