The Stealth Depression in Black America
Miner, Barbara
The Stealth Depression inBlack America By Barbara Miner Illustration by Owen Smith Tower Automotive in Milwaukee's central city once bustled with almost 10,000 workers churning out truck and auto...
...On the federal level, the minimum wage has not been raised in almost eight years...
...Milwaukee hangs on to its image as an all-American city, home to bratwurst and beer...
...We put America back to work...
...Across America, our urban areas are dying from within, and black workers suffer the most...
...All I want is a chance," Crawford adds, wistfully repeating the phrase as if it were a mantra that might change his luck...
...But beneath that Laverne and Shirley facade is the reality that Milwaukee has, on any number of indicators, the worst racial disparities of any metropolitan area in the country...
...Interestingly, the jobless rate for black men coincides almost exactly with the unemployment rate for the formerly incarcerated, whichis60percent," notes Kit Murphy McNally, executive directorofthe Benedict Center, an interfaith advocacy and service agency workingoncriminal justice reform...
...But I can tell you about fast food joints...
...There's a sense that you can put a wall around that pain...
...Our tolerance of black pain is a legacy of racism," he says...
...He opts to tell the truth and hope for the best...
...Last September, Republican legislators blocked Democratic Governor Jim Doyle's plan to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.50 over the next year...
...For many, there is a strong and undeniable link...
...AllIwantisachanceatajob," says Albert Crawford, afifty-one-year-'''old jobless black man who helps outat the Tabernacle Community Baptist ChurchinMilwaukee's central city...
...You reinvest in America...
...Milwaukee's black joblessness is the worstinthe country, but the city is by no means unique...
...But the black community, in particular, has suffered a stealth depression during the Bush years...
...Johnell Sharp is principal at Lee Elementary School in Milwaukee's central city...
...But of all the problems, the worst is psychological, how unemployment eats at the soul of an entire family...
...Pastor Robert Harris and Associate Minister Dwain Berry at Tabernacle Community Baptist Church are sitting in on the interview with Crawford, and asherelates his problems with the police, they jump into the conversation...
...Do you know how difficult it is for a black man in America to get a fresh start...
...Crawford, for instance, has a record from his youth for car theft and shoplifting and, from several years ago, for disorderly conduct...
...After all, if97percent of our kids have free and reduced lunch, that means there'snoway their parents are making decent money...
...They open a garage, beauty parlor, or day care center, but without a license...
...I can see it written on folks' faces that they won't go because they figure, why waste the time...
...It is worth only 33 percent of the average U.S...
...In the last five years, the Milwaukee area has lost 33,000 factory jobs...
...Today, you don't have that opportunity...
...Sharp, too, brings up the problem of African Americans caught up in the criminal justice system...
...Harris, who has been pastor at Tabernacle for twenty-seven years, says church members routinely tell of their reluctance to take jobs in adjoining counties: "They say that as soon as they cross that county line, the police pull them over...
...Nowhere is the devastation more severe than in Milwaukee's African American community...
...Low income housing is scarce in the suburbs, public transportation is minimal to nonexistent, and racial profiling is so strong that many Milwaukee blacks are fearful of traveling too far beyond the city's borders...
...Wisconsin's white graduation rate was more than twice as high, creating the biggest gap in the country...
...People are giving up," says the Reverend Joseph Jackson Jr., pastor at Evergreen Missionary Baptist Church and president of the advocacy group Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope...
...It's not like they're bad kids," he says...
...Most of the people, they come from a family network that's real close," says Pastor Jackson...
...When asked what percentageofhis students havea parent with what he would consideradecent-paying job, Sharp laughs...
...he asks...
...Tower's sprawling 148-acre site has become a symbol of lost jobs-and lost hope-in Milwaukee...
...The working class in general has fared poorly under Bush, whose notoriety includes being the first President since Herbert Hoover to have faced reelection with fewer people working than when he started...
...Proposals range from public investment in job creation to increasing low income housing in the suburbs...
...While being questionedatthe DA's office, he asked what time the burglary took place...
...The power of racial discrimination in Milwaukee is such that a white high school graduate with a felony drug conviction is more likely to get an entry-level job than a black man with similar education and work history and no criminal record, according to a study published in 2003 in the American Journal of Sociology...
...Sharp sees the effects of unemployment on his students...
...The employment disparity between white and black males is the widest of any major city...
...The good jobs are not in the neighborhood," he explains...
...And that the job is not worth the constant hassle...
...And they support one another...
...There is an atmosphere of hopelessness...
...Among working-age African American men, Milwaukee's jobless rate now stands at 59 percent...
...So, too, is a higher minimum wage...
...And not just for Crawford but for thousands of other black men looking for work in a city where job growth remains centered in overwhelmingly white suburban areas...
...I was always raisedonthe premiseofanhonest day's work for an honest day's pay...
...He shakes his head with concern...
...Just as Milwaukee has the highest jobless rate for African American men, Wisconsin jails more black men proportionately than any other state...
...Above all, people fall back on family networks-a mother, a cousin, an uncle who may have a job and who is able to help out...
...Barbara Miner is a Milwaukee-based journalist specializing in social issues...
...Then,hesays, he showed his bus transfer, provinghewasinanother part of the city during the time...
...Truck frames lie haphazardly about...
...That's all I'm asking for.Achance...
...He notices when they can't get the medical care they need, or buy new clothes for the school year, or even afford $2 bus money for a field trip...
...Based on both the officially unemployed and those who have dropped out of the labor force, it is the highest rate among any city surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics...
...What can be done about the stealth depression in the black community...
...During the 1995-2000 economic boom, all the net job growth in the metropolitan area occurred in the overwhelmingly white suburbs, while jobs declined in the city...
...About3percent,Iwould guess,"he says...
...Increasing the minimum wage in order to put a stronger floor into the labor market really makes a difference for central city workers," she notes...
...In 2000, black children in Wisconsin (most of whom live in Milwaukee) were six times more likely than white children to live in poverty-the highest racial child poverty gap in all states, exceeded only by Washington, D.C...
...Southern cities, too, have dismalfigures, with Houston having an unemployment rate for black males at 41 percent and Phoenixat31percent...
...That's how we came out of the depression in the 1930s...
...Congress...
...In 2003, 22 percent of all Milwaukee residents were officially poor, up from 19 percent in 2000...
...That's why I can't name any...
...Litter blows across the weed-infested parking lots...
...Throughout Milwaukee's central city you can find many idle buildings and equally barren swaths of land...
...And yet, as the Reverend Jesse Jackson noted in a phone interview, there is little sense of shame or outrage in the larger community...
...Reducing drug and alcohol addiction and improving public education are also important, says Laura Dresser, an economist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison...
...But people have to survive, Pastor Jackson notes...
...But, Jackson pointedly adds, "the government has to trigger this investment...
...But it's a cause that implies a policy solution...
...Sharp saysheknowsofnomajor employer in his school's immediate area...
...We had widespread unemployment, and we invested in jobs...
...The Stealth Depression inBlack America By Barbara Miner Illustration by Owen Smith Tower Automotive in Milwaukee's central city once bustled with almost 10,000 workers churning out truck and auto frames...
...There's the political rub...
...Jesse Jackson says people complicate the problem unnecessarily, as if there's an elusive formula that we need to find before we can address black joblessness...
...So they turn to the underground economy...
...Crawford tells about the dayhetook the bustohis sister's house todosome landscaping work, and ashewas walking along was arrested for a burglary in the area...
...The school is 98 percent African American, and almost all of the students qualify for the federal free and reduced lunch program...
...Even they will be gone by the end of 2005 when final operations move to Mexico...
...Meanwhile, the crisis in black joblessness continues...
...wage, its lowest level in more than fifty years...
...Off the top of his head, he ticks off a number of initiatives that could make a difference-"skilled trades training, access to unions, building schools, rebuilding the community...
...It's not magic," he says...
...Spend any time in the black community talking about unem-ployment-whether with teachers, ministers, or community advocates-and before long the subject turns to the police and the criminal justice system...
...Once you haveanarrest record, life can spiral downhill...
...It leads to frustration, to anger, and you can see that frustration and anger as it seeps into the family...
...But for now, the chances in Milwaukee are few...
...The fifty-three-year-old Moore, who used to be on welfare, adds: "We ignored this problem for too long, and now look where we are at...
...Today, only a few hundred workers remain...
...A tattered American flag hangs from a rusting pole...
...When the community gets a cold, the black community gets pneumonia," says Gwen Moore, recently elected as the first black to represent Wisconsin in the U.S...
...It's difficult to get up every day and have nothing to do," Sharp says...
...According to2002 figures from the Labor Department, the jobless rate among black men was 52 percent in Detroit, 51 percent in Chicago, 50 percent in Philadelphia, and 42 percent in Los Angeles.Arecent study put black male joblessness in New York City also at almost 50 percent...
...You know they're nice guys, good people in general...
...Sometimes I'll announce at church about a job that might be opening up, but even as I'm speaking I know that the skills and education needed do not mix with the population here...
...Berry recalls that when he worked at a group home in nearby Waukesha, an overwhelmingly white suburb, "every evening, the cops would follow me...
...Or they sell drugs, especially, says Jackson, "the young fellas...
...But at some point, pain spills over...
...He can either cite his record when applying for a job-and risk not getting it-or lie on the application and then be fired if he is found out...
...Crawford was released, but the arrest is still on his rap sheet...
...Wisconsin's high school graduation rate for black students in 2000 was only 41 percent, the worst among the states reporting data...
Vol. 69 • January 2005 • No. 1
