Somebody’s lying, and given that this is Black History Month, I can readily assume who, and why.
If you believe the political hype, the nation’s unemployment rate has continuously hovered around its lowest rate in history for the last six months.
And in case you don’t understand political double talk, a rate of less than 4% is considered “full employment,” which means everybody in this country is meaningfully employed, living in a nice three bedroom house with a white picket fence and sending their children to the best private schools their middle-class income allows.
(Oops, sorry about that last definition. Full employment and the American Dream generally don’t include Black Americans, who prefer wood grain to white picket fences, and as part of their blind allegiance to the Democratic Party are not allowed to send their children to private schools because it undermines teacher union control over government schools.)
Many of those trapped in failing government schools—remember that Carter G. Woodson declared they miseducate and brainwash our children—are earmarked for the prison industrial complex, where guards and social workers are gainfully employed. Ironically, few of them look like us either.
But I regress.
If we are to believe the political hype from both sides of the new political Mason-Dixon Line, when the tide comes in, all ships—including Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Lines—rise. So, by accident or design, that means there should likewise be full Black employment in America as well; even if that means $7 per hour service jobs.
Nope, nope, and nope! Black History has taught us not to believe the promises of grinning bureaucrats, or the false promises of politicians, on the right or left.
Thus, the lie doesn’t actually include Hue-mens, although we are told it does mean the Black unemployment rate supposedly has been cut in half. And depending on whose disingenuous data you want to believe that cut represents 8%, 10% or 26%.
Apparently, we’re talking about a bi-partisan lie, since both parties proclaim that African American unemployment in the free territory south of Canada (where Latinos and Hispanics are willing to risk life and limb to migrate to), has been officially reduced to levels unseen since the heyday of slavery.
(Most of you probably missed the announcement of this historic achievement because it was revealed at a press conference of print journalists and published in newspapers across the country. But since our form of media has become increasingly for the middle class and elite, you probably missed it. Normally, news of this type—full employment—is good for one political party and a curse to the other. But since both sides are trying to take credit for this monumental achievement (even though it’s a lie), they find themselves caught between the proverbial rock and hard place–which in laymen’s terms translates to that political void between public gullibility and political rhetoric.
Republicans are now advancing the lie because it’s the only “accomplishment” Emperor Donnie “45IQ” Trump can claim as a political victory during his seemingly, gut-wrenchingly endless tenure.
And Democrats have to perpetuate the “white lie” (if anyone else used this analogy it would be considered racist, but since it’s coming from my typewriter keys…) while trying to convince the public Trump is, in truth, drinking at the oasis waterhole created by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
But hey, don’t take my word for this deceptive and corrupt strategy, I’ve heard it come out of the lips of partisans ranging from 45IQ to Nancy Pelosi and Al Sharpton (wouldn’t that be a hell-of-a presidential ticket, although we would never know who was wearing the political pants or whose agenda was really being advanced).
Pelosi links the record unemployment rate to Obama policies and dismisses Trump’s declaration that his administration achieved the historic accomplishments. Instead, the fiery speaker of the house, charges the narcissistic emperor with the white and sometimes yellow hair, is in truth trying to do to Obama’s legacy what Napoleon did to the Sphinxes in Egypt (the little French emperor ordered the noses on the colossal half man-half lion (?) be blown off because they were wide, like the noses of most native African people).
And Sharpton, aside from cementing Obama’s legacy (which he takes partial credit for), apparently got caught up in the hoopla and continues to proclaim Obama took us all to the promised land.
Caught up in the lie, Sharpton has to ignore the brothers standing on the street corners, or the hustlers and gang members who have created their own economy. He is also apparently blind to the Black poverty rate, and the thousands—maybe millions— who survive because of government programs.
If only the rhetoric were true: Full employment would mean Black men could afford to wake up in households they were mandated by Nyame (God) to head, and the poverty rate would be cut in half, since it is currently based on the income of single parents.
If it were true, church tithing would increase four-fold, the Black marriage rate would soar to 35%, and every household could afford books to motivate the young children to look beyond summer jobs cleaning up county parks and envision themselves studying X-rays and writing prescriptions for their patients, instead of their clients.
If it were true, the poverty pimps would have to get legitimate jobs, sales of Remy Martin would outpace Hennessey, and no one would have to worry about the lie of school privatization and instead begin researching how to create new industries for their children, knowing that robotics and high-tech digital creations will eliminate 40% of manual labor jobs in the next 30 years.
Yeah, if only it was true… And who knows, maybe it is for White America. But it surely isn’t for people of color.
Somehow, they ran out of jobs before they could offer them to Black, Colored, Negro, Afro and African Americans. Which means the suggestion that Black unemployment has been cut in half is also a lie.
The reality is the record unemployment lie is a lie that just keeps fueling the political and civic debate, both because we’re the most gullible people living in a democratic society, and because far too many of us have fallen prey to this new distraction called political polarization. Under that scenario, the two sides (I assume it’s two) are so adamant in their opposition to their enemy they can’t see beyond the smoke from political gun fire.
There was a time when the political sides debated policies and philosophies. Today, they hate each other so much some fear a civil war is on the horizon, with socialism or a theocracy being the outcome.
As the African saying goes, when two elephants fight, only the grass gets hurt. And in case you haven’t figured it out, we’re the grass.
Truth of the matter is, the data from which the politicians are using to perpetuate the lie of full employment is faulty at best, ascertained from sample surveys in communities that are not reflective of America at large, much less its urban communities. The Labor Department’s “Current Population Survey” only offers a direct “yes” or “no” to the question of whether a person worked in any capacity in the last month. It does not factor in whether they worked a day or an hour, or whether they worked for a dollar or a dime.
Seasonal work is included in the survey as are various other categories you would not consider employed under other circumstances. The rate also doesn’t include people no longer looking for work, but does include folks working for temp firms, even though they might work for one week a month.
And then there is what I call the exclusionary factor. I have not in my entire life crossed paths with any Hue-man, anywhere at any time who has been asked to participate in a government survey other than the census.
In other words, finding an African American who has participated in the labor department monthly “unemployment” survey is about as reliable as finding a 20-year-old virgin.
Conversely, the number of un-and-underemployed Milwaukee brothers continue to rank among the highest in the country.
The fact that the unemployment lines continue to run around the corner, state funded employment agencies are back-logged and poverty pimps continue to get rich off us, reveals a depressing reality.
And if those factors don’t move you, try this one: the African American poverty rate actually increased under Obama.
Translated into Ebonics, that means that unless 40,000 brothers left town, were incarcerated or killed since UW-Milwaukee’s researcher Marc Levine’s ground-breaking research revealed Milwaukee’s Black male unemployment rate was over 54% for men 18-60, that rate continues to define Milwaukee.
So, show me, Ms. Pelosi and Rev. Sharpton, where all these newfound jobs and opportunities are? Convince me that the political pronouncements are true.
Obviously, this will become a moot issue in 2040 when experts predict technology will replace 30-40% of current manual labor jobs with robots and illegal immigrants willing to work for slave wages.
And whoever the president will be when that day arrives, will look back at the lie perpetrated in 2016-19 and blame the future decline on 45IQ, or whoever won’t be around to defend themselves.
And even if they are still alive, I expect them to respond with a half-truth, which according to grandma is a full lie that is allowed to linger around for too long. In other words, a lie is a lie, is a lie. Unless it is uttered by a politician to a gullible citizen.
Hotep.