"Hard Times for Black America". (Teaching Notes).

In Dollars and Sense #115 (April 1986), pp. 75-76.

Students in my Principles of Economics class typically suggest that Blacks suffer higher unemployment rates than Whites because they do not work hard, or have made other poor choices, such as failing to get good educations. I have used this short article for many years to show them that forces beyond the control of African Americans have been at work to bring about this employment outcome.

The article describes the decline in manufacturing that began in the U.S. in the 1970s, due to increased competition from abroad. The steel industry provides a perfect example. Failing to modernize as did our European competitors, U.S. companies found themselves out of the game. U.S. investors began to shift resources toward the service sector.

As the article makes clear, African American males disproportionately filled those disappearing manufacturing jobs. Such jobs had helped Blacks moving up from the South after World War II to gain a foothold in middleclass U.S. life. Manufacturing jobs were decent paying jobs; they were unionized. The new jobs that have replaced these have, on the whole, been lower skill, lower pay. While the service sector has created high paying jobs, it has also been characterized by the proliferation of McDonald's type of employment, and it is this type of work for which the jobless Blacks qualified.

The essay describes changes in policies in the 1980's that reinforced the employment-related problems of African Americans. For example, funding for job training that could have prepared the laid-off men for higher-skill service sector opportunities was cut dramatically during the Reagan years.

This short article also describes conservative positions on the reasons for high unemployment among Blacks, giving students an opportunity to learn alternative views. It also provides evidence to challenge these points of view.

The article was written in 1986. Students now ask me why African Americans have not yet recovered. This opens the way to discussion of other factors that have been critical in the experience of Blacks in this country; such as the inadequate educational opportunities in many low-income urban areas. If one does not want to extend this discussion to the current year, the essay can nonetheless be used as a historical example of the kinds of constraints that can limit people, and thus provide a rebuttal to many students' tendency to believe that the individual alone is responsible for his or her fate.

"Hard Times for Black America" was first printed in 1986, but has been reprinted subsequently in editions of Real World Macro, published by Dollars and Sense. For information on obtaining the article, write to Dollars and Sense, Economic Affairs Bureau, Inc., One Summer Street, Somerville, MA, 02143; call the Dollars and Sense Collective at 617-628-8411; or email them at [e-mail].