Why Black Unemployment is a Human Rights Abuse

Filed under: Dr. Boyce Money, News, The Economy

I had a very interesting and fulfilling conversation with Monique Morris, the Vice President for Research and Advocacy for the NAACP. Monique is a brilliant woman with impressive experience to support her outstanding work. I was most impressed by the fact that Monique wrote a very good article in which she gave new perspectives on the black unemployment situation in America.

In an article for TheGrio.com, Ms. Morris asks whether or not black unemployment should be considered a serious human rights issue.. At last count, black unemployment was at 16.5 percent, nearly twice the overall unemployment rate of 9.7 percent for the entire country. Black male unemployment exceeds 19 percent, and black teen unemployment is roughly 41 percent. The magnitude of this problem reminds us that perhaps we should reconsider how we frame the issue so that we can properly understand what it’s going to take to solve this problem.

I like the way Morris couches the unemployment issue in terms of human rights because it reminds us that human rights violations don’t just occur overseas. They also occur in the United States. The United Nations is seriously considering investigating human rights abuses within the US as they pertain to African Americans, primarily because in America, we have a two-tiered society. African Americans are several times more likely to go to prison than whites, we do not get adequate funding for schools in our communities, and we are far more likely to be in the unemployment line. For some reason, we have a multitude of elected officials who simply accept the disparities as they are, rather than making it a priority to correct them.

President Obama, in his persistent commitment to not directly address these problems aggressively, finds himself in a political quandary. If he does what’s right and deals with the human rights problem of black unemployment, his work will be consistent with his core liberal values. At the same time, the systemic structures that created and maintain these abuses are the very same structures that give Obama the power that he has. Therefore, it may take outside intervention to shame the Obama Administration into taking the black unemployment situation seriously