The tyranny of the oldwhiteivycans

Posted by justinquincy , Nov, 2009 @ 3:23 pm

If you’re older, whiter, and thus had the money to get more educmacation, you’re doing pretty dang well in this recession. No wonder Goldman Sachs is getting swine flu shots before the average child in America. According to an awesome new graphic developed at The New York Times, minorities and young Americans have been disproprotinately affected by the recession. In fact, white men with college educations do by far the best.

3.9% : White, male, and college educated.

8.3%: Black, male, and college educated.

7.5%: White, male, all education levels.

16.1%: Black, male, all education levels.

Let’s not forget that these number don’t include discouraged workers, those who simply have stopped looking for work after weeks and weeks of not finding any. Unlike many of his followers believe, Obama isn’t able to part the sea and make all better with a flick of his finger, but he sure could get a little tougher on Congress and banks.

Earlier this week we learned that green jobs were indeed a huge area of actual growth we’ve had from stimulus money. But, we also heard from an article in Fortune magazine that there actually are a lot of jobs out there vacant because the skills needed to do these jobs just aren’t there. Therein lies the conudrum of the ‘oldwhiteivycans’ that these unemployments numbers show: you can’t repeat the past and expect different results. You can’t blame private companies who want qualified professionals to fill important positions. You can blame government, though, for slow stimulus that isn’t stimulating the American people; but instead is following the orthodoxy of ‘oldwhiteivycans.’

Green jobs are great. But, I wonder how many of them are permanent and how many of them actually require the skills of a workforce already marginalized by years of discrimination?

Obama, you should know better.

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