San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
What do black workers have to lose under Trump? Plenty
President Trump has a reliable comeback when questioned about racist statements and policies. He points to record low black unemployment.
When Jay-Z charged Trump with racism on CNN in January, the president tweeted back: “Somebody please inform Jay-Z that because of my policies, Black Unemployment has just been reported to be at the LOWEST RATE EVER RECORDED!”
At best, Trump is partly right.
The whole truth is that most of the decline in black unemployment took place under President Barack Obama, plummeting from nearly 17 percent in 2010 to 7.8 percent as Obama left office. Trump has further reduced it by just over a point to the current rate of 6.3 percent.
And Trump fails to mention that black unemployment rate remains roughly double that of white unemployment.
He also fails to mention that his administration’s policies have made it harder for most black Americans to get good jobs and build wealth.
Trump famously talked about blacks during his campaign as a group with no jobs, bad schools and violent neighborhoods. “What the hell do you have to lose?” he said, suggesting that black people fail to see their best interest by not voting for him.
Trump’s overwhelmingly white rallies cheered his condescending question and its implication that black Americans can’t find their way out of desperate lives.
At those rallies, Trump preferred to focus on the 22 percent of blacks in poverty. At one point during his campaign, he falsely claimed that more than half of black youth are unemployed when the true number was 27 percent.
In fact, 40 percent of black Americans have jobs paying between $35,000 and $100,000. An additional 12 percent earn between $100,000 and $200,000. African Americans are 9.1 percent of Americans in management and professional jobs; 12.6 percent of sales and office jobs; 10 percent of elementary and middle school teachers.
In other words, about half of black America is in the middle class or beyond. They go to work every morning. The growth of this striving black middle class over the past half century is the cornerstone of America’s effort to achieve racial equality.
Economic growth in the first year of the Trump administration disproportionately benefited rural and small-town America. Most of this growth, at a rate of 3.3 percent in mining, construction and manufacturing — the highest rate since 1984, according to the Washington Post — took place in sectors dominated by white men. Meanwhile, there was only 1.3 percent growth in the service industries, education and retail in central and big cities, areas with large minority populations.
According to the Brookings Institution, white rural America received “a slightly disproportionate share of U.S. job growth, while the nation’s big cities slightly underperformed.”
Today, the critical economic question from black America to any president is: What are you doing to bring blacks up to par with opportunities and wealth in white America, by helping the black middle class climb the ladder of upward mobility through better education, more earnings and greater wealth?
In his time in office, Trump has built a legacy as the president who is undermining the rise of the black middle class.
In the face of racial bias in the private sector, government jobs have proved to be a reliable means for African Americans to get stable jobs with middle-class salaries. A UC Berkeley Labor Center study found blacks are 33 percent “more likely to be employed in the public sector compared with a nonblack worker.” Black America is disproportionately represented in the federal workforce — 18.1 percent. They are 18 percent of U.S. Postal Service workers and 17 percent of active-duty soldiers.
In his first six months in office, Trump cut more than 10,000 federal jobs; both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama added jobs in their first six months. Last month, he wrote that pay raises for federal workers scheduled for 2019 should be canceled. Trump also made a point of eliminating Obama-era rules protecting minority workers.
In April 2017, he ditched President Obama’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order, which ensures that the government works only with federal contractors that have good records on labor and civil rights violations.
And Trump has pulled away from federal plans to help blacks become business owners.
His 2018 budget proposed eliminating the Minority Business Development Agency. And he’s repeatedly asked to drop the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund and Community Development Block Grants, which support jobs, businesses and housing in lower-income neighborhoods.
Trump has also opposed raising the federal minimum wage and opposed Obama-era protections for overtime pay for white-collar workers.
The growth of the black middle class, despite the history of slavery, legal segregation and ongoing discrimination, began with A. Philip Randolph, the black labor leader. He pressured President Franklin D. Roosevelt to let African Americans into booming World War II defense industries. It continued with the passage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made race-based employment discrimination illegal.
But President Trump doesn’t know any of this. Thus, he’s ignoring the very policies and programs that have steadily helped African Americans enter and rise within the middle class.
The answer to the insulting question — what the hell do you have to lose? — is that American blacks no longer have a president who understands their desire to follow in the footsteps of television’s fictional George Jefferson and get “movin’ on up” to better jobs, more money, and claim their rightful piece of the American Dream.
Juan Williams, a co-host of Fox News’ “The Five,” is the author of “What the Hell Do You Have to Lose? Trump’s War on Civil Rights.” He will speak at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Commonwealth Club, 110 The Embarcadero, San Francisco. For tickets, go to www.commonwealthclub.org/events. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at SFChronicle.com/letters.