From Politico:

Just hours before President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of Congress on his jobs plan, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is demanding the nation’s first African-American president prove he cares as much about unemployed blacks as he does about Iowa’s swing voters.

“There are roughly 3 million African Americans out of work today, a number nearly equal to the entire population of Iowa. I would suggest that if the entire population of Iowa, a key state on the electoral map and a place that served as a stop on the president’s jobs bus tour were unemployed, they would be mentioned in the president’s speech and be the beneficiary of targeted public policy,” Waters said in a statement to POLITICO on Thursday.

“So, one question to be answered this evening is, are the unemployed in the African-American community, including almost 45 percent of its youth, as important as the people of Iowa?” Waters asked.

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Can anyone tell me why suddenly race is the hot topic of national discourse?

According to Gallup polling of last week, the issues most on the minds of Americans are the economy and jobs followed by dissatisfaction with all aspects of government.

I didn’t notice racism on the list anywhere.

The NAACP says it was “snookered” by Fox News on the Shirley Sherrod story. I say we’ve all been snookered by the NAACP.

The NAACP has shown that those who have written this organization off as irrelevant are wrong.   It demonstrated this past week that if it so chooses it can dominate the national discussion with its racial agenda, regardless of what the real pressing issues of national concern may be.

The accusation about Tea Party racism is ridiculous.  But even if you don’t think it’s ridiculous, is this the discussion we need to be having when national unemployment hovers at ten percent, and when black unemployment is closer to 15%, double that of whites?

Now, of course, we should be talking about racism if this is what is driving black unemployment.  But is it?

I don’t think so.  Nor do most blacks.

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The NAACP has missed the target. Their target should not be the Tea Party, but instead the larger issues facing the Black community: astronomical unemployment rates (15.5%) and the breakdown of the Black family, which result in higher drop-out rates, disproportionate incarceration rates and teen pregnancy rates (12.6%). These issues should be the focus of increased scrutiny by the NAACP.

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The Obama Administration is putting the best face on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) recent March 2010 jobless numbers report, touting the steady nationwide jobless number of 9.7%.  But for minorities, the news is bad and getting worse.

The really bad news is buried in the middle of the 38 page report.  The BLS data reveals an alarming and growing divergence between the number of white and the number of minorities that are unemployed.  Worse yet, it is clear that minorities, especially African Americans, are falling further behind.  If unchecked, the long term implications of that imbalance are nightmarish for the nation.

Larry Summers and others in the Administration have not yet shown much interest in the appalling unemployment rates for minorities and, instead, exude childlike enthusiasm at the nation’s overall jobless rate that held steady for the 2^nd consecutive month.

While the unemployment for white Americans averaged 9.3%, African Americans averaged 16.6%, just a little less than double the rate of white unemployment.   Hispanic Americans reported 13.3% unemployment, while recent, young veterans are averaging 14.7%.  Black men, over 20 years old, are showing 20.2% unemployment and teenaged, African Americans, ages 16-19, of both sexes, show a mind-boggling 39.3% unemployed.  Hispanic teens also report a staggering 30.3% unemployment.  The long-term repercussions of these unemployment numbers are troubling, yet the Administration is curiously silent.

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In August 2003, then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a press statement demanding to know from President Bush, “Where Are the Jobs?” The statement was released in response to the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report, which, at that time showed that over 400,000 Americans had given up looking for work and had left the labor force. It should be noted that today, every job measurement she cited is worse now than it was in 2003. We must have overlooked her similar question for President Obama.

From Pelosi’s statement:

Washington, D.C. — House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ announcement that 470,000 people abandoned their job searches in July and that 3.2 million private sector jobs have been lost since President Bush took office:

Of course, in December 2009, almost twice as many (929,000) had “abandoned their job searches” on Speaker Pelosi’s watch and with a Democrat in the White House.

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