Income disparities between whites and people of color—black folks are at the bottom
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Why am I not surprised?
The National Urban League has released its 38th edition of the "State of Black America® – One Nation Underemployed: Jobs Rebuild America" report. (read full press release here) You can read the book online.
From AP:
The underemployment rate for African-American workers was 20.5 percent, the report said, compared to 18.4 percent for Hispanic workers and 11.8 percent for white workers. Underemployment is defined as those who are jobless or working part-time jobs but desiring full-time work.
Marc H. Morial, President & CEO, of the National Urban League
has said:
“While ‘too big to fail’ corporations went into the bail-out emergency room and recovered to break earnings and stock market records, most Americans have been left in ICU with multiple diagnoses of unemployment, underemployment, home losses and foreclosures, low or no savings and retirement accounts, credit denials, cuts in education and school funding—and the list of maladies continues.”
Black communities in the U.S. are engaged in struggles on multiple fronts—the economy, the criminal justice and penal system, voter suppression and repression, the environment—especially as it relates to urban areas, education, housing...wrap it up in a package and stamp a label of systemic racism on it.
What's important from my perspective, is to focus on groups and organizations that are carrying the fight forward on different fronts, so today I'd like to highlight the work being done by the National Urban League.
First a little history:
The Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes was founded in New York City on September 29, 1910 by Ruth Standish Baldwin and Dr. George Edmund Haynes, among others. It merged with the Committee for the Improvement of Industrial Conditions Among Negroes in New York (founded in New York in 1906) and the National League for the Protection of Colored Women (founded in 1905), and was renamed the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes.
In 1918, Eugene K. Jones took the leadership of the organization. Under his direction, the League significantly expanded its multifaceted campaign to crack the barriers to black employment, spurred first by the boom years of the 1920s, and then by the desperate years of the Great Depression. In 1920, the organization took the present name, the National Urban League. The mission of the Urban League movement is "to enable African Americans to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights."
In 1949, Lester Granger was appointed Executive Secretary and led the NUL's effort to support the March on Washington proposed by A. Phillip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and A. J. Muste to protest racial discrimination in defense work and the military. During the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968), Granger prevailed in his insistence that the NUL continue its strategy of "education and persuasion".
In 1961, Whitney Young became executive director amidst the expansion of activism in the civil rights movement, which provoked a change for the League. Young substantially expanded the League's fund-raising ability- and made the League a full partner in the civil rights movement. In 1963, the NUL hosted the planning meetings of A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders for the March on Washington. During Young's ten-year tenure at the League, he initiated programs such as "Street Academy," an alternative education system to prepare high school dropouts for college; and "New Thrust," an effort to help local black leaders identify and solve community problems. Young also pushed for federal aid to cities.
The big push this year for the Urban League is addressing jobs and
raising the minimum wage.
Imagine working 40 hours a week, but still worrying about putting food on the table - or having to choose between paying your housing bill or your heating bill. Imagine working 40 hours a week and barely making enough to live, let alone save or plan for the future. Imagine working full-time and still being poor with no way out or up. Sadly, millions of Americans don’t have to IMAGINE – this is the reality they face every day.
The road from poor to plenty is long, but raising the minimum wage is an important first step in lifting millions of families out of poverty and giving them a chance at a better life. The last time the minimum wage was enough to support a family was in 1968. Lyndon Johnson was president, and a gallon of gas was 34 cents. Times have changed – and so should wages.
Marc H. Morial talks about the need for a jobs bill, infrastructure bill, and raising the minimum wage
How can you help? First step, sign the petition
Second step, you can join or support them with a donation.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Internet party crashers show up at the celebration over the accomplishments of two young African-American men who are heading to Ivy League universities. The Root: Black Boys Go Ivy League: Haters Emerge.
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Last week it was reported that Avery Coffey, age 17, had received offers to five ivy League schools. And just this week, 17-year-old Kwasi Enin bested that effort by getting accepted at all eight of them.
These were moments of celebration for two black teens who had worked tirelessly to achieve the elusive goal of Ivy acceptance, and the mainstream media recognized that this accomplishment was rare, especially for African Americans. When The Root posted both stories, they were the highest-trafficked and most shared stories of the day.
And then Internet users took to the social networking sites, armed with bitterness and virtual picket signs to hate on the teens' success. One wrote:
Seriously? My application was almost identical except that I was first in my class out of a top ranked tech academy focusing on a biotechnology program. I listed "white" for my ethnicity because they didn't have an option for Armenian. F**k affirmative action.
The posts were repetitive and equally offensive and hurtful.
Didn't help that Washington Post education reporter Valerie Strauss came out with a blog post about Ivy League adoration, cut with her own haterade.
"Have you heard yet about 17-year-old Kwasi Enin of Shirley, N.Y., who applied to all of the eight schools in the Ivy League and got into every single one?” she wrote. "If not, you are, by now, the only one. Congratulations to Kwasi Enin. Now can we stop talking about him?"
Kwasi Enin, FACEBOOK
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Damon Young comes to terms with his mixed feelings about the change in his Pittsburgh hometown. Ebony: ‘Did Gentrification Make My Neighborhood Better?’
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’m writing this from Panera. It’s a Friday. Which means cream of chicken and wild rice, my favorite cheap soup, is on the menu. This Panera sits in Bakery Square, a multi-million dollar redevelopment project that transformed what used to be a Nabisco plant into a sprawling campus of businesses and condominiums. It's also a mile from the street I grew up on. Two blocks from where Aaron Ray almost shot me when I was 15 because I had on a red sweatshirt and he thought I might have been a Blood. (His words: “My bad D. Didn’t know that was you. But you can’t be wearing that red shit, man. There’s a war going on out here.”) Across the street from the Reizenstein basketball courts where I caught my first alley-oop.
Those courts are gone now, luxury condos stand in their place. The project high rise that sat on the corner where Aaron approached me is also long gone, replaced by a two-story Target. My old neighborhood is now the trendiest place in Pittsburgh. And I don’t know how this makes me feel.
I’m not angry about it. The neighborhood is a better and safer place now. Restaurants stay open until one instead of closing at “dark.” There are no more Aaron Rays stalking the streets for red sweatshirts. The shifting cosmetic has even affected its name. What used to just be "East Liberty" is now "Eastside"----a euphemistic hybrid of East Liberty and the neighboring (and more traditionally trendy) Shadyside.
But, I just...I still feel “a certain way” about it all. I feel a certain way that the neighborhood’s demographics had to change before it improved. I feel a certain way that “others” were able to recognize and take financial advantage of the resources sitting right under my nose. I feel a certain way about the irony of me feeling this certain way…but writing this while sitting at Panera.
I guess ambivalent would be the word to describe this feeling. But, as many of those who wrestle with the same thoughts about their “new” old neighborhoods will likely tell you, it feels more awkward and amorphous than that. It’s a state of reactive cognitive dissonance you can’t quite articulate that happens when others use the resources long had---in theory, because could we have done this?----to create something you’d appreciate in any other context.
Pitt before and after
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Two executive orders will prevent retaliation against employees who disclose compensation information and will require businesses to include race and gender information when reporting compensation data. The Grio: With his ‘pen and phone,’ Obama tackles education and equal pay.
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A Presidential Memorandum due to be signed Tuesday will require federal contractors to submit wage data by sex and race, which the Department of Labor will use “to encourage voluntary compliance with equal pay laws and allowing more targeted enforcement by focusing efforts where there are discrepancies, reducing burdens on other employers.”
On Monday, Obama will travel to Bladensburg High School in Maryland to announce the winners of the Youth CareerConnect Competition, created by executive action last year to prepare high school students for the rigors of college and full-time employment, especially in STEM careers. More than$100 million in grants has been made available by the Departments of Labor and Education to provide awardees with educational opportunities, job training, mentorship, field trips and academic counseling.
“I’m announcing a new challenge to redesign America’s high schools so they better equip graduates for the demands of a high-tech economy,” Obama said during his 2013 State of the Union address. “We’ll reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers, and create classes that focus on science, technology, engineering, and math – the skills today’s employers are looking for to fill jobs right now and in the future.” While Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced a $300 million grant pool in June 2013, the funding total was later downgraded.
President Barack Obama hugs Lilly Ledbetter before signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in the East Room of the White House on Jan. 29, 2009.
MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES
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Amazing study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation that looks at people's health by region, community, and other subgroups. Color Lines: The State of Children of Color in the U.S.
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African-American children face “crisis-level” barriers to success. Asian and Pacific Islander children followed by whites are best positioned to meet most of the 12 indicators selected to communicate a child’s likelihood of becoming, “middle class by middle age.” And similar to African-American children, Latino and Native American children also face greater hurdles beginning at birth. That’s according to a new, comprehensive report that, where data was available, went beyond the standard broad racial groupings to look at a child’s lifetime opportunity by region, tribe, or family’s country of descent.
For example, children of Southeast Asian descent (Hmong, Cambodian, Vietnamese) faced greater challenges than those of Indian, Chinese or Filipino descent. Among African-American children, those living in the southeastern U.S. were least likely overall to become middle class because the report says, of a legacy of “institutional discrimination that still plague[s] the region.” Children in Choctaw households fare better economically than those in Apache households. And children of Mexican and Central American descent had to surmount bigger obstacles than those born into Cuban and South American households.
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The State of the Black Family report shows optimism about quality of black life, though many racial concerns remain. The Root: Survey: African Americans Still Optimistic Despite Racism.
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While many African Americans identify long-standing problems which still plague the community – such as unemployment and access to quality education – the black population still remains largely optimistic about the future, satisfied with the direction in which the country is going and their daily lives, a new survey by Ebony Magazine and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has found.
African-Americans are very much satisfied with the overall quality of their lives, with a total of almost 90 percent being either "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied," the State of the Black Family Survey reports.
However, just because African Americans are able to navigate the world they live in more or less happily, it does not mean that they are unwilling to acknowledge the severe problems that adversely affect the community. Many of the 1,005 respondents surveyed pointed to racial disparities in the United States.
For example, 84 percent of the African Americans surveyed still believe that racial discrimination is deeply entrenched in American life, 74 percent think that society is not supportive enough of young men and boys of color, 52 percent think the media portrays African Americans in a negative light.
More significantly, even though about two-thirds of African Americans believe that they are doing better financially than five years ago, over 80 percent still voice concern over being discriminated against because of their race and being paid less than their white counterparts.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Contributor
Of all the poems since the late 70's by Nikki Giovanni, "Nikki-Rosa" is probably the most anthologized, critiqued, essayed and deconstructed in her oeuvre. Not much more can be written than what has already been written about the poem's intense voice in advocacy of personal and cultural identity, its chronicle of familial connection over the generations; and the poem's embrace of essential, common truths. Better to let Nikki Giovanni tell it. Better to let her tell of those days when she was known as...
Nikki-Rosa
childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you're Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother
all to yourself
and how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those
big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understand their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father's pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
and though you're poor it isn't poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn't your father's drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good christmasses
and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me
because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they'll
probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy
-- Nikki Giovanni
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