African Americans and the Struggle for a New Society
African American history is the heart of American history. This is true because the manipulation and the exploitation of African Americans, along with their ceaseless struggle for freedom and equality, has somehow been at the center of virtually every major political and economic turning point in the countryÂs history. This fact is reflected today in the growth and consolidation of a new class of poor with African Americans at its core, a class that is compelled to fight for a new society. We talk of a "new class" of poor because this poverty is unprecedented in its nature and scope. Advancing electronic technology is so revolutionizing the economy that jobs are being eliminated faster than they are being created. This process is creating a new class of people who are essentially economically superfluous; their labor is no longer needed. This class includes not only the permanently unemployed, but the millions of temporary and contingent workers and the low-wage workers who don't even make enough to live on. The first to be plunged into this new poverty were the unskilled and semi-skilled, but today even highly skilled workers are not safe from having their jobs automated or outsourced. After World War II, with the mechanization of Southern agriculture and the ending of legal segregation, the number of African Americans working as laborers and semi-skilled assembly line workers in the nationÂs factories increased suddenly and substantially. And it was precisely this section of workers that was the first and the hardest hit by the process of people being replaced first by automation, and then by robots and computers. Millions of African American workers were concentrated in the manufacturing sector, and this sector was the first to be robotized. This process continues to accelerate. From 1995 to 2003, 11 percent of the industrial jobs were eliminated worldwide, yet global industrial production rose by 30 percent in the same period. This process of robotizing production is creating a kind of poverty never seen before in this country. It is creating a new class of permanently poor and destitute people who are essentially outside the capitalist economy. For historical reasons â because of the legacy of slavery and racism â the African American worker is at the core of this new class. But though the core of this new class of poor is African American, the new poverty that is developing is not based on racism. Racism may shape its form, but the driving force in the creation of the new poverty is electronics, and electronics will continue to wipe out jobs, regardless of the color or the skill level of the worker who holds the job. The petty privileges once enjoyed by the white worker are rapidly disappearing as millions of once stably employed white workers are plunged into poverty. While people of color are disproportionately poor, two-thirds of the poor are white. Nonetheless, the grim statistics bear out the position of the African American worker at the heart of the new class of poor: - By one estimate, nearly 25 percent of all African Americans have incomes below the official poverty line. Other sources put the figure at 33 percent. - 12 percent of African American men ages 20 to 34 are in jail, compared with 1.6 percent of white men in the same age group. - 74 percent of those sent to prison on drug charges are black. - 50 percent of New York CityÂs black males are unemployed. These figures should be seen in the context of the overall polarity of wealth that has developed in our country: - The top 1 percent of all U.S. households own 38 percent of all wealth. Wealth inequality generally fell from 1929 to the mid 1970s, but since then, it has doubled. - 5 percent of Americans own 59 percent of all wealth; the top 20 percent own 83 percent of all wealth. The bottom 20 percent have zero wealth. - The value of the minimum wage has fallen 35 percent in real terms since its peak in 1968. full: http://www.lrna.org/league/PT/PT.2005.2/PT.2005.2.1.html
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