In February, the official unemployment rate in the United States hit 8.1 percent for the first time in over a quarter century. Among African Americans, the unemployment rate is 13.4 percent, and the unemployment rate among Latinos jumped 1.2 percentage points to 10.9 percent.
Since 2001, the unemployment rate in African American communities has been above 8.1 percent for all but six months. The current rate is nearly double that among white workers, increasing at a rate double that among white workers from January to February 2009.
Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Race, Ethnicity, and Economy Program, explained, “Since 2000, black employment rates have fallen much faster, and poverty rates have risen faster, than the average.”
The capitalist system benefits from institutionalized racism, and has created the conditions leading to higher unemployment among oppressed communities. In addition to facing racism in the labor market, differences in the quality of available education and length of time on the job, oppressed communities are overrepresented in the sectors of the economy hardest hit by the crisis, construction and manufacturing.
