NO UNEMPLOYMENT APPRECIATION
A record is a record.
The headline on page 3 of the Associated Press article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press Saturday said this: “African-American unemployment spiraled to record low in December.” That rate was 6.8 percent, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972.
So, not in the days of the huge economic recovery under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, not under the pseudo-balanced budget days of Bill Clinton in the late 1990s and not over the last eight years under the first black president, Barack Obama, has employment been so good for black Americans.
That, one might think, might lead to some appreciation for President Donald Trump, under whose leadership businesses have felt free to expand again and under whose governance the overall employment rate also has dropped into record territory.
But where is the appreciation?
Instead, one group of protesters planned to “take a knee against Trump” at Monday night’s College Football Championship game in Atlanta between the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama that Trump planned to attend.
The members of Refuse Fascism ATL said they would kneel outside CNN’s world headquarters in the city to be in solidarity largely with the pro football athletes who choose to take a knee originally against so-called police brutality but now in support of whatever is the protest du jour.
On Sunday, the NAACP urged its supporters to hold antiTrump signs and wear white to mock the “snowflake” that they said the president’s supporters use to describe their opponents.
(“Snowflakes” have largely referred to college students who are afraid of anything that clashes with their worldview, but never mind.)
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a former aide of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. whose business is now race, surfaced Monday to say the halftime song at the College Football Championship should be “We Shall Overcome,” the civil rights anthem often sung during protests 50 years ago.
He said most players for both teams are black and could not have played in such a game without the efforts of those a half-century ago. But he said while the players can compete on the field, they still face barriers after they take off their uniforms.
Thus, Jackson concluded, Trump’s policies and politics are antithetical to King’s dream for America.
In fact, though, a group of black activists claims such talk is a misappropriation of the former civil rights leader’s legacy.
“This is a stunning development,” Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper, a former congressional leadership aide and constitutional law professor, said in a National Center for Public Policy Research news release. “In the name of black America and our nation’s historic civil rights legacy, liberals want us to believe that having more money in our pockets and greater job opportunities is somehow a negative.”
He is referring to the bill Trump signed last month that will provide tax cuts for most individuals and companies and could lower unemployment even further.
In addition to Monday’s protests around the president’s visit to Atlanta, congressional liberals have planned “teachins” to protest the tax cuts and promote amnesty for illegal immigrants around King’s Jan. 15 birthday.
“I don’t understand the point of using — or, in this case, misusing — our memorial day for Rev. King to protest a tax cut allowing Americans to keep more of the money they’ve earned,” Project 21 member Dr. Derryck Green, a political commentator, said in the news release. “These teach-ins are really the liberals’ attempt to advise American taxpayers that their money doesn’t belong to them, and that it really belongs to a bigger and more intrusive government.”
He wondered where the “teach-ins” were under Obama, whose signing of the Affordable Care Act and other policies stymied growth during recovery from the Great Recession and whose actions “left upwards of 47 million people on food stamps?”
Unemployment for blacks fell under Trump from 7.9 percent a year ago, and unemployment for Latinos and Asians is 0.1 above record lows for both racial groups.
The sound economy and record unemployment mark don’t mean things are perfect for black Americans. Like all segments of Americans, fewer are working or looking for work (which means they aren’t counted in the employment statistics).
The highest proportion ever of black adults working was in 2000, when 61.4 percent had jobs. However, the dot-com bubble burst that year, the Democratic Clinton’s last, and the results of the 9/11 attacks reduced that number, and it reached a low of 52 percent during the Great Recession. But it is now back to 57.9 percent.
And if that number picks up in the months following the tax cut and businesses employ still more and give bonuses as have been reported, blacks will have even more reason to appreciate the president. But will they, or will they continue to believe to the seeming Democrat preference for fewer jobs, higher taxes and more government reliance. Which would you prefer?