Economic crunch continues to hit minority workers hardest

It can be fairly easy to calculate the unemployment rate in the black community: Take the overall rate and double it.

For decades, black unemployment has been consistently higher than the general population’s rate, both in Illinois and across the country. The rate among Hispanics, while lower than blacks, still is higher than the overall figure.

And although the rate is worse in this recession, the pattern stretches over six decades and holds true even in rosier economic times. Experts say a confluence of events causes it, and it will take another series of changes to lower the rates in minority communities.

“Race has historically been a problem,” said Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and its executive vice president for advocacy. “Racial discrimination in hiring has been a problem. Educational attainment and access has been a problem. Opportunities for business ownership has been a problem. Unfortunately, we’re still living in a society where there are number of barriers for African-Americans to reach these jobs.”

Education out of reach

Going to college wasn’t an option for Fredereka Hill — it was a mandate, passed down from two generations of her family.

“I had a grandmother that completed the sixth grade, and that was her highest education,” the Rockford resident said. “She passed away last year and was a humanitarian who started her own homeless shelter and fed the homeless. That’s where the cycle was broken for my family. My mother went back and got her bachelor’s (degree) in child development. It started with her — she said everyone has obstacles in their way, but it’s up to you what you do with them.”

Hill, 38, enrolled in a licensed practical nursing program at 18 as a way to support her then-newborn son. After 15 years in nursing, she moved from Indianapolis to Rockford and started working at Chrysler LLC’s Belvidere assembly plant to earn a better wage.

Now laid off, she is taking classes at Rock Valley College to finish her bachelor’s degree in nursing.

Among blacks, Hill is in the minority — 36 percent of blacks in Winnebago County have a high school diploma, and less than 5 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to data from the 2000 U.S. Census.

With one in four blacks in the nation living at or below the poverty line — with figures topping 60 percent in some areas — the biggest barrier to education is often economics, Shelton said.

“A college education is an expensive commodity,” he said. “Needs-based programs like Pell Grants have traditionally been very helpful, but frankly, there’s quite a gap there. ... A Pell grant in 1976 paid for my tuition at Howard University. Now the high end is about $5,200, which isn’t going to cut it for many people.”

The deeper a family is in poverty, the less likely it is that the children will advance in school, said Charles Gallagher, a social work professor and chairman of the sociology department at Philadelphia’s LaSalle University.

“If you look at the poorest neighborhoods, many young men don’t finish high school,” he said. “Dropping out of high school is economic suicide. Why would an employer not hire someone with a high school or even a college degree in this market? If I’m hiring, I’m going to go up to what I can get for $7 an hour.”

Jobs on the move

Gallagher said blacks had higher work force participation rates at the turn of the 20th century than whites until the Great Depression and World War II caused shifts in living and employment trends.

“The Depression pushed workers off farms and into cities,” he said. “Black men would come to the city and for the first time in their lives weren’t able to get jobs.”

In the 1950s, manufacturing started to move from northern states to the South, where labor was cheaper, Gallagher said. It then moved to Mexico and overseas, where even cheaper wages were found.

“The kinds of high-wage jobs that require minimal amounts of formal education disappeared,” he said. “(Companies) either succumbed to the ‘buggy whip’ theory, in that they were making something that wasn’t needed, or they moved south or out of the United States, or technology allowed them to automate.”

In the 1970s, white flight prevailed as whites started to move out of urban areas and into suburbs. With them went many of the service-sector jobs held by blacks, Gallagher said, as businesses relocated after them.

The jobs that were left in urban areas — such as finance, real estate and law — required advanced degrees and were inaccessible to many blacks, who continued to live in the cities.

“In the poorest neighborhoods, there’s no industry, there’s no gainful employment to be had,” Gallagher said. “A lot of these stores, the corner barbershop, the mechanics, the hardware stores have closed. You can’t compete with Wal-Mart and the large chain stores. That’s happened all over, so there’s a very different environment left in terms of jobs.

“Getting your foot on the first rung is hard enough. They live in a neighborhood where there aren’t jobs that provide a living wage like were there just a few years ago. It’s unbelievably stacked against these young men and women.”

Hispanics working for less

Although Hispanics still have an unemployment rate higher than the general population, their rate isn’t as high as in the black population. Gallagher said part of the reason is that Hispanics, especially first-generation immigrants, are willing to take jobs others won’t.

“A lot of new immigrants have a lower price point than native Americans,” he said. “There’s a kind of narrative here from employers who say these people work harder than whites and blacks and that’s why they’re overrepresented in industry. The research tells a very different story. It’s not that they’re working harder, they’re just willing to work for less. Every extra dollar an hour in pay is literally profit (business owners) don’t get back.”

The unemployment rate has risen among Hispanics but hasn’t spiked because many workers simply return to their home country if they can’t find work here, Gallagher said. He expects the figure to rise as sectors typically filled with Hispanic workers, including the construction and service sectors, continue to suffer.

Breaking the cycle

Decades of research have identified many of the causes for high unemployment among blacks. But identifying the trends is one thing; changing them is another story.

Shelton said when children are caught in a generational cycle of poverty, often no family members are encouraging them to move on to college or even finish high school. But if the students are approached at a young age with the promise of a paid tuition in exchange for good grades, they can be diverted into a college track.

“What we’ve seen are scenarios in which a group would go into a grade school and say to the kids, ‘Work hard, get a good grade and everyone who graduates will have their tuition paid,’” he said. “We’ve followed those kids, and a lot more were able to go to college and not get lost to the streets and other problems. They had something they were working for — ‘I’m going to work hard and go to college.’ Most kids don’t feel that way because, for them, it’s not true.”

Along with encouraging education, more opportunities must be made to allow minorities to start their own businesses, Shelton said.

“Let’s look at more opportunities to start small businesses,” he said. “College is not for everyone. Some people would rather just get out and dig through the soil, cast their shovels down and build a business. We’ve got to create real opportunities for them to do that and not limit ourselves to jobs in big corporations.”

Denniece Foreman hopes to plant her own shovel. The Machesney Park resident, 53, was laid off from Danaher Corp. after more than 30 years on the production line. She’s enrolled in the Dislocated Worker Program and hopes to attend culinary school in the fall with an eye toward opening her own restaurant.

Foreman knows she’s in a good position — through careful saving, she and her husband have enough money to live without her income. Very few of her former co-workers are as lucky.

“I always wanted to be a cook, so this was the perfect opportunity,” she said. “I’m a little scared, but excited.”

Sean F. Driscoll can be reached at (815) 987-1346 or sdriscoll@rrstar.com.