After the U.S. Department of Labor issued Employment statistics In April at the beginning of this month, an editor in our New York bureau asked me what makes me different.

Like most American labor journalists, I was shocked by the few jobs created last month. How the report magnified a worker’s rumors shortage. I am so concerned about the small number of people employed in leisure and hospitality that I never responded to the editor.

But I, along with everyone else, have overlooked a more worrying number-the unemployment rate of black Americans has risen to 9.7% Even if the total unemployment rate is 6.1%. For whites, the ratio is 5.3%.

In the year since the murder of George Floyd, the United States has reassessed discriminatory practices in workplaces and policing, housing and medical policies, and even infrastructure maintenance. But I want to know whether these changes (albeit vitally important) can meaningfully improve the lives of blacks if economic reforms are not a priority.

Unemployment among black Americans is almost always double The phenomenon of whites is attributed to differences in educational opportunities and social networks, as well as discrimination in the workplace. Historically, these two numbers tend to move in at least the same direction.

More than a year ago, when the Covid crisis broke out, black Americans had just begun to benefit from a ten-year bull market.Then, the health crisis seemed to target their communities, thereby shutting down highly concentrated industries, including restaurants and retail, and Kill them at a very high rate.

Given their economic needs, it remains to be seen whether the rapid recovery in the United States will also target black Americans. Often ignored.

White Americans began to rise from the 2008 financial crisis in 2012, but black Americans faced Double-digit unemployment rate after many years. Some economists accused the U.S. Treasury Department of carrying out a two-stage recovery, saying that this caused Wall Street’s concerns about inflation to increase the inflation rate, so that disadvantaged workers can be pulled back into the labor market.

Others say that the lack of recovery is the United States’ neglect of black economic needs for centuries.

Soon after the United States released the enslaved blacks in 1865, Promised Give each of them “40 acres, a ule son” to ensure their economic freedom (mu son was originally a loan). That never happened. Instead, a system of cropping emerged, which made the newly liberated people depend on their predecessors financially.

“I don’t think the black community has ever recovered from slavery,” said Trahern Cruise, an organizer of black living in Minnesota.

Cruise said that the government owes black Americans hundreds of years of damages, including direct payments to the descendants of slaves and investments in schools and medical institutions that serve the black community, which is the same as the 16 US payments to detained Japanese Americans. 100 million U.S. dollars is similar. During the Second World War.

Advocates say that compensation is the best way to bridge the widening gap between rich and poor between black and white American families. Such policies are highly controversial, but they have gained public support in recent years. The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill establishing a federal committee to explore this concept in April.

Rashad Robinson, chairman of the militant group Color of Change, said that in the final analysis, employment opportunities are the number one problem for African Americans. He said: “When we ask people the most important thing, they are talking about work, they are talking about salary, and they are talking about having a high-quality standard of living.”

The Biden administration stated that it will not allow its Covid recovery plan to proceed like the previous one, and Pledge Base the economic target on the black unemployment rate rather than the total unemployment rate.

The chief economist of the Labor Department, Janelle Jones, said: “If some communities are left behind, the economic recovery will not be complete.”

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