South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Algernon Austin of the Economic Policy Institute points out that African-American workers have been dealing with high levels of unemployment for the last 50 years.

While whites have experienced periods of high unemployment during the 1970s, early 1980s, and in the past few years, their highest rates are in the range of the lowest unemployment rates for African Americans in the last 50 years. Thus, for African Americans, the last 50 years have been marked by extremely high unemployment occasionally interrupted by periods of merely high unemployment. At no point can we say that blacks have experienced a low unemployment rate.