Black Caucus Attacks Joblessness

At a hearing in Washington, experts recommend more green jobs, tax credits and networking to increase employment rates – plus less classic job discrimination.

By Melanie Eversley

George Dalton Tolbert IV/City Limits

U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem walks through a hearing room where the Congressional Black Caucus received testimony on black joblessness.

The most recent statistics put the national unemployment rate at 9.7 percent – and 15.8 percent among blacks. The next issue of City Limits magazine – "The Black Depression: Race and the Recession In New York” – arrives in mid-April and examines why this is and what can be done. This article kicks off a series of related web features on the topic.

Leaders of top African-American civic organizations joined the Congressional Black Caucus this week to brainstorm relief measures for the disproportionate unemployment pressures felt by black workers.

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A woman identified only as Christina, one of the growing number of chronically unemployed Americans without work for a year or more, told leaders that she's being pummeled by the recession.

"I'm 45-plus, I'm a black woman and I'm at a critical juncture in my career because retirement is looming in my face," she recently wrote in a letter to the National Urban League. Out of work for more than 15 months, she's also caring for her mother, who's wrestling with stage-three lung cancer on limited health benefits.

"Other than scream, I'm not sure what I will do in the next few months without gainful employment," Christina's letter said.

Stories like hers resonated on Capitol Hill Wednesday during a hearing organized by the the 42-member Congressional Black Caucus to explore the crisis. The hearing was part of a five-week campaign the all-Democratic group initiated to address problems facing the chronically unemployed, said Rep. Barbara Lee, the Caucus chairwoman, from a district in California's East Bay that is more than 25 percent African-American.

If Congress can hastily assemble emergency funds to create a troop surge or bail out the nation's financial institutions, it can act quickly to help out-of-work Americans, said Marc Morial, National Urban League president and former mayor of New Orleans.

"We need a job surge in this country," he said.

The hearing sometimes drew emotional testimony from Morial and 17 other economic policy experts and leaders of black advocacy groups including Rev. Jesse Jackson and NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous.

The magnitude of the problem was reflected in a new report on long-term unemployment from the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, chaired by New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney. While African-Americans make up 11.5 percent of the work force, they make up 17.8 percent of the unemployed and 22.1 percent of those unemployed for at least a year, according to the report, prepared with figures compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

African-Americans with four-year degrees have an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent compared to the 4.5 percent rate of their white counterparts, the report says.

To address the crisis, several at the hearing, including Morial, Jealous and Trenton Mayor Douglas H. Palmer, announced support for a bill recently introduced by California Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor. The measure allocates $75 billion over two years to cities and counties for job development. Among 49 cosponsors or supporters are Reps. Yvette Clarke, Charles Rangel, Gregory Meeks, Paul Tonko and Timothy Bishop, all Democrats from New York.

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