Posted Date: June 11, 2008

Black Voters Strain To Hear What Is NOT Being Said

By Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Editor-in-Chief

   WASHINGTON (NNPA)—The day after presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama announced his historic victory, the monthly jobs report showed the African-American jobless rate, once again higher than all other racial groups.
    At 9.7 percent, Black unemployment is almost five points above the White rate of 4.4 percent; three points above the Hispanic-American rate of 6.9 percent, and more than four points above the national average of 5.5 percent.
    From joblessness to the overall economy to dilapidated and failing schools to the criminal justice system to health care, now that the primaries are over and Sen. Hillary Clinton has thrown her support behind Obama, African-Americans across the nation are looking to hear from Obama and Republican presidential nominee John McCain exactly how they will change the disparate social impacts on the Black community.
“They’ve got to talk abut job creation,” says Bill Spriggs, chairman of the Economics Department at Howard University.

   “The big problem is that they’re not hiring…And the first set of folks that they’re not hiring, of course, is us.”
    And once policy is set concerning job creation, then policy must also deal with discrimination that holds African-Americans back, Spriggs says. “America is like a train and we’re the caboose. If you’re in the caboose, it means you’re going forward, but you’re still the last car.”
    Spriggs says it will be difficult for either candidate to speak about the discriminatory aspects of the jobless rate during the campaign except from a policy standpoint. “That’s why it’s important who is around the candidate,” he says, stressing the need for policy-oriented staffers on any campaign.
Obama this week launched a tour to travel the country talking to people about how the economy is affecting their lives. But, Spriggs and activist Al Sharpton agree that both candidates must somehow deal with the race discrimination issues that cause Blacks to lag.
   “As much as we have great pride in Obama being the first Black head of a major ticket, the whole White media rhetoric that we’re beyond race is not true,” says Sharpton. “If you look at the educational disparities, the health disparities, the employment disparities—we’re doubly unemployed—and the incarceration rate, we’re way far from being beyond race in terms of everyday life. And we need to hear more about what they’re going to do to bring equality to the continued racial disparities in life. A life for a person White and a life for a person Black is still measurably different for a person in the United States.”

 

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