The racial justice movement hasn’t translated to economic equality for Blackworkers yet
Edwin Smith had just started a new job at a software company when, at an office happy hour, his boss told a joke in which the punchline was a play on words using the n-word.
“He tried to laugh it off and was like, ‘Don’t you go calling me racist now,’” recalled Smith, 41, one of the few Blacks in the company’s Houston-area location. “That was when I
“People just assume these inferiority things; they never look at the data.” William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO
began to think something didn’t feel right there.”
Smith moved on, earning promotion from inside sales representative to account executive. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, however, Smith and the only other account executive of color were among the first in the office to get laid off. About a month later, two more employees were laid off.
“This was no longer a coincidence,” Smith said. “They were all Black.”
The coronavirus pandemic is again exposing the inequalities Black workers face, who are experiencing unemployment at a far higher rate than whites. The unemployment gap between Black and white workers has nearly doubled since the virus forced shutdowns in early spring, even as corporations renewed pledges to hire more people of color and promote more Black executives to top positions following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police.
Before the pandemic hit, the Black unemployment rate was less than 3 percentage points higher that white unemployment rate; in September the gap grew to more than 5 percentage points, according to the Labor Department. Black unemployment was 12.1 percent in September, compared to 7 percent for whites and 7.9 percent for all workers.
The gap also expanded as coronavirus shutdowns were lifted and the economy began to recover. In May, when Black unemployment was 16.8 percent and white unemployment 12 percent, the difference was 4.8 percentage points.
William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO, the national coalition of labor unions, said the data shows that Blacks not only lost jobs more quickly, but also are getting rehired more slowly. While economists explain the unemployment gap in part by the higher concentration of Black workers in industries, such as restaurants and retail, that have been hardest hit by the pandemic, Spriggs pointed to another factor: discrimination.
“People forget what Black means. It’s a category created to make a set of people who we could legally discriminate against,” Spriggs said. “It’s one of the more disturbing things about the American economy.”
Unemployment gap
Systemic racism and discrimination — pushed to the forefront by Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police — is ingrained in U.S. economic history. In the century that followed the end of slavery, law and custom kept Blacks from wide swaths of the economy and labor market, blocking paths to prosperity that other groups have taken.
In the half-century that followed the civil rights movement, the economy opened to Blacks, but barriers to housing, education, employment and advancement remained. Spriggs noted that the gap in unemployment rates between Blacks and whites is often explained as a skills gap, that is, Blacks lack the specific skills employers are seeking.
That, however, doesn’t explain why the unemployment among whites without a high school diploma is consistently lower than Black unemployment. In September, unemployment for white workers without a high school diploma was 9 percent — 3 percentage points lower than the unemployment rate for all Blacks.
“When you ask most people, ‘Why is the Black unemployment rate higher?’ Knee jerk reaction, they’re going to tell you skills. No one ever pushes them when they say that,” Spriggs said. “People just assume these inferiority things; they never look at the data.”
James Douglas, president of the NAACP Houston Branch, has no doubt that discrimination is behind racial disparities in employment. As a law student at Stanford University in California in the 1970s, he interviewed with a Houston law firm that was recruiting on campus.
He thought he did well in the interview, but didn’t get an offer. Later, the professor who recommended Douglas to the firm told him that the older partners weren’t ready to integrate.
“That was a long time ago,” Douglas said, “but little has changed.”
What also hasn’t changed, Douglas said, are promises by companies to diversify their workforce and executive suites — promises that have yet to be fully realized.
Talking the talk
The National Football League, for example, released statements after Floyd’s death, saying there was “much more to do” to combat racism as a country. Critics, however, pointed out that former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who knelt during the national anthem to protest racism, has not played since 2017, even though he is regarded as better than many other quarterbacks on NFL rosters.
Wells Fargo also released a statement decrying racism in America, promising to “meaningfully contribute to the change” by doubling Black leadership at the company over the next five years. Shortly after, its CEO made a comment blaming the lack of diversity at his company on a “very limited pool of Black talent.” He later apologized.
If companies want to diversify their workforces, they not only need to make commitments, but also follow through, said Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, cofounder of The Sadie Collective, a nonprofit that supports Black women pursuing careers in economics, finance, and policy. Corporations also need to look ahead, not only identifying and recruiting workers for today, but also for jobs opening far into the future.
“You’re putting out a statement decades late,” Gifty Opoku-Agyema said. “So let's move.”
Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, 24, founded the Sadie Collective more than two years ago after doing an economic research assistantship at the University of Chicago and finding out that few Black women found careers in economics. The group provides both networking opportunities for Black and recruiting opportunities for companies.
“Businesses should look to work with grassroots initiatives addressing pipeline and pathway problems,” she said, “and put some money and power behind it.”