Black Male Unemployment in America

I saw a tweet by Negrophile that underscored a conversation I was having with my mother two weeks ago. This Christian Science Monitor article Really captures how bad the employment situation is for black men which is something we have discussed previously. The CSMonitor article points out a few things:

At a time when America has elected its first black president, more African-American men are losing jobs than at any time since World War II.

No group has been hit harder by the downturn. Employment among black men has fallen 7.8 percent since November of 2007, according to a report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

The trend is intimately tied to education, the report’s authors say. Black women – who are twice as likely as black men to go to college – have faced no net job losses. By contrast, black men are disproportionately employed in those blue-collar jobs that have been most highly affected – think third shifts at rural manufacturing plants.

And this short paragraph deserves attention:

Unemployed black men like Anthony Gilmore aren’t surprised by the findings. Laid off five months ago from a call center, Mr. Gilmore recently interviewed for a job detailing cars. A Hispanic man got the job.

I have been very direct in my criticism of those who act as if illegal immigration, particularly from or through Mexico has not had an adverse effect on black employment. We have written here of proof of how illegal immigration has directly affected the employment and wages of poor blacks.

The damage to the black family and specifically the potential choices for lifemates is particularly disturbing:

Correspondingly, his data suggest that, as of January, about 120 African-American women were employed for every 100 African-American men. “The current size of the overall gap in employment between black women and black men is historically unprecedented, and black Americans are the only group for whom the gender employment gap is in favor of women,” the report notes.

You know there is a blog called "What about our daughters." Perhaps it's time for black folk to start asking and answering seriously: What about our sons?