US blacks blast urban unemployment

Most of the several hundred people in the televised town hall gathering stood up. How many knew someone facing foreclosure? Student loan debt? In jail? Considered suicide? Crowds of people stood up in answer to each of his questions.

“This is a state of emergency,” the civil rights leader and one-time Democratic U.S. presidential candidate declared.

The Congressional Black Caucus organized a town hall gathering in Miami to deal with black unemployment rates Monday evening, one of five taking place in August in distressed communities across the country. At issue is the stubbornly high unemployment rate in the black community, now at 16.8 percent nationwide, more than double that for whites and a figure that does not even include those who have stopped looking for work.

U.S Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat and the caucus chairman, said representatives are frustrated at being unable to advance bills in Congress aimed at encouraging job growth. Caucus members have introduced more than 40 such bills since January and none has passed. Republicans took control of the House of Representatives nearly nine months ago.

Now, the lawmakers are taking to the road to ensure angry constituents that they are doing all in their power to help, while offering a job fair in each city as assistance. In Atlanta, Georgia; Cleveland, Ohio; and Detroit, Michigan, the events have drawn thousands, and more than 1,000 people streamed into a downtown convention center Tuesday morning for the Miami job fair. Another will be held in Los Angeles, California, at the end of August.

“We left the complaint counter, and that's why we're on this tour,” Cleaver said.

The mounting frustration over jobs is beginning to have political repercussions among African-Americans.

“Unemployment in South Florida, especially in the black community, is no longer a crisis,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson said before the event. “It's an epidemic.”

The job fairs come amid a growing debate within the black community about the Obama administration's urban agenda. While black lawmakers have been reluctant to criticize President Barack Obama, the country's first black president, some are beginning to voice misgivings about the administration's focus on deficit reduction at a time of high joblessness and poverty in urban areas.

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