Left Fails Minorities on Jobs
For years, many young, urban black men, some high school graduates, some not, others holding General Educational Development high school certificates, have been seeking full-time entry-level work.
Most of them are loyal Democrats who were inspired by the election of a black president. But, jobless after six-plus years of Barack Obama’s presidency, they’re frustrated, and have begun to question their party’s commitment to jobs, especially minority jobs.
Unfortunately, high school and GED instruction doesn’t cover the historic and current economic impact of Democratic policies on minorities, the negative consequences of which are still being felt.
Now illegal, Jim Crow laws were products of the post-Civil War, solid Democratic South, a region which has since been freed from Democratic control. The right-to-work South now offers greater job opportunities for all Americans, including minorities.
Early minimum-wage laws sought to exclude minority immigrants. Jonah Goldberg explained: "The first minimum-wage laws were advocated by progressive economists on the assumption that if you forced employers to pay a ‘white man’s wage,’ they’d only hire white men."
The Democrats’ commitment to minimum wage hikes has made it much harder for unskilled applicants to find and hold a first job. Some Democrat-controlled jurisdictions have raised their minimum wage to $15 per hour, a level which benefits union members and others who were able to keep jobs but which imposes heavy burdens on smaller businesses that cannot pass through higher labor costs to consumers. Accordingly, jobs and new job opportunities are lost.
The Davis-Bacon Act, still revered by Democrats and their union paymasters, was passed during the Great Depression specifically to prevent minorities from competing for federal contracts against all-white unions.
Perhaps the most pernicious influence on minority job opportunities today has come from the Democrats’ impulse to open America’s borders and grant amnesty to illegal immigrants.
From a Senate report: "In 1970, less than 1 in 21 residents were foreign-born; today it is almost 1 in 7. The annual rate of immigration is almost double its level from the Reagan years, and more than triple its level from the post-WWII boom years. Meanwhile, while 1 in 15 men aged 25-54 were not working in 1970, it is now 1 in 6; the total number of women aged 16-65 not working has increased 30 percent while their population has increased less than half that amount."
The Democratic Party’s expressions of concern over joblessness, especially minority joblessness, lack sincerity. After all, it’s logically irreconcilable for politicians to express genuine concern about jobs and wages for unskilled workers, while simultaneously advocating the legalization of millions of unskilled illegal aliens.
But blacks aren’t the only minority suffering from Democratic economic and immigration policies. According to Census Bureau data, in 2012, 33.7 million Hispanics of Mexican origin resided in America, 82 percent of whom were native-born Americans, naturalized or permanent legal residents. There are millions more legal Hispanics of other national origins.
Ironically, unskilled black and Hispanic citizens, largely Democrats, have equal opportunities to remain jobless under their party’s wage and immigration policies.
