One of the most important findings is that—the idea that the African American community never emerged out of the 2001 recession. As the country was talking about things were going well in 2005, 2006, we saw that African Americans were actually having a decline in the employment rate, a decline in per capita income.
African Americans—and actually, you’re going to see more and more working-class Americans were going through, actually, a recession for years, and now we’re really at a state where things are getting so bad that I would call it a depression. I mean, we’re looking at African American, as you said, unemployment rate of about 13 percent. This foreclosure crisis is disproportionately going to affect African American and Latino community, who were specifically targeted with predatory lending. So we’re really dealing with a national crisis, but a crisis that’s going to hurt working-class communities, which are disproportionately people of color.
The overwhelming majority of African Americans and Latinos do not even have a savings enough that would keep them going for three months. And as you see growing unemployment and, what’s not talked enough about, underemployment, there is not that safety cushion to help you get through hard times. African Americans only have about 15 percent of the wealth of white Americans. And so, again, African American community, Latino communities, and also just working-class communities as a whole, are in a much more dire situation than I think is truly recognized. And we need some political courage to deal with these issues adequately.
the most recent data I’ve seen is that African American unemployment rate is around 13 percent, and there are estimates now, which I think are correct, that African American unemployment can reach up to 20 percent and higher. When you look back a year ago, every estimate of how bad things are going to be underestimated how bad things currently are. And I think that’s still going to be true. So—and if you look—I mean, the current unemployment rate of about 13 percent is a higher unemployment rate that—white Americans haven’t had such a high unemployment rate since about the time of the Depression. So we’re truly in a crisis.
And I’m hoping that there will be more bold statements by people like Eric Holder, by political officials, about how are we going to address this racial wealth divide, because I think the fact that America has been a nation of cowards in dealing with this issue, people are scared to deal with the issue, which they consider divisive. But what’s truly divisive is the fact that a third of black children are living in poverty, that indigenous people are living in a state that most Americans don’t realize and that we haven’t gotten past the long legacy of disenfranchisement of people of color in this country.
if the idea is just to stimulate the economy, just get the economy going again like it was in the ’90s, African Americans were still—still had a third of black children living in poverty at that time period. It’s not good enough for me to go back to the ’90s, where we have a growing economy but maintaining great racial inequality. We have to do something much different. It has to have much more bolder proposals. I’m glad to see that the government realizes that they have to play a role in stimulating the economy. I hope they see that their role is also to stimulate greater racial equality in this country.
through 2001 through about 2007, African American unemployment—African American employment rate was actually declining. Their per capita income was also declining. And, you know, you can even go back a little further than that and look at—I mean, even for white working men, they, for over the last twenty years, have been having had their income declining. The middle class, the working class in this country have been in economic—have been suffering economically and have been using debt to maintain a middle-class lifestyle. These chickens have come home to roost. We can no longer use this debt. And now I think we’re realizing that for many Americans, the middle-class lifestyle is unsustainable. And the large question has to be, what are we going to do about this?
Dedrick Muhammad talking.
Dedrick Muhammad, Senior organizer and research associate at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is co-author of the new report “State of the Dream 2009: The Silent Depression.”
– from democracynow