Reply #9: Kicking this

[nightperson]

with the Bob Herbert article mentioned in it. I don't have any quick answers off the top of my head, but I thought people should be reminded that the numbers are wild:

A new study of black male employment trends has come up with the following extremely depressing finding: "By 2002, one of every four black men in the U.S. was idle all year long. This idleness rate was twice as high as that of white and Hispanic males."

It's possible the rate of idleness is even higher, said the lead author of the study, Andrew Sum, who is director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

"That was a conservative count," he said. The study did not consider homeless men or those in jail or prison. It is believed that up to 10 percent of the black male population under age 40 is incarcerated...

Things fall apart when 25 percent of the male population is jobless. (This does not even begin to address the very serious problems of underemployment, such as part-time or temporary jobs, and extremely low-wage work.) Men in a permanent state of joblessness are in no position to take on the roles of husband and father. Marriage? Forget about it. Child support? Ditto.

Another reason we might want to concentrate less on the affairs of so many other countries. How hurtin' can this one get? A crude example that comes to my mind is: remember how quickly Wolfowitz fled Iraq, not to mention how unsafe Bush felt? Well, how safe do you think they'd feel if you plopped them down in the "wrong" American inner city neighborhood, especially at the "wrong" hour?

We're a huge country. Holland is about the size of Maine, Israel is smaller than Jersey. We have plenty on our plate right here, and are we so sure we have much to export in the way of "values" these days? We have enough "weapons searches" to take care of at American schools!

On edit: I think this ties in to one of the original schisms between the paleocons and the neocons, i.e. immigration. The neocons accuse the paleos of being rustic racists, but the neos are awfully comfortable with looking the other way regarding "low wage, eager beaver" (my interpretation of the neocon view, sorry if it's crude) illegal immigration while basically accepting that a large percentage of actual U.S. citizens (i.e. lots of African-Americans) are unemployed and "unemployable, you can't get good help anymore, etc...". :shrug: Just throwing out thoughts, I don't have any quick answers, but shouldn't this take the place of reportage on some celeb's personal problems?