Natalie A. Thompson and Hazel Trice Edney, NNPA
- As the Black unemployment rate leaped another eight percentage points last month – from 10.6 percent to 11.4 percent, the White unemployment rate actually remained the same – at 5.4 percent, less than half the rate for Blacks.
In addition to that in every economic category, from the poverty rate to housing loss African Americans remain historically and consistently at rock bottom – a condition exacerbated by the national housing and Wall Street financial crisis that forced Congress to reluctantly pass a $700 billion bailout last week.
”We’re in a weaker financial position related to the mainstream in the first place,” said Alfred A. Edmond, Jr., editor-in-chief of BlackEnterprise.com, in an interview with the NNPA News Service. “The saying goes, ‘when the rest of America gets a cold, Black America gets pneumonia.”
