People of Color: Do the media Overreport Violence, Underreport Unemployment?

In the middle of the summer, the media reported a disappointing turn in the numbers. In June the unemployment rate in Oakland rose slightly to 17.2 percent, or 35,000 men and women out of work. No other big city in the state had such a high jobless rate, according to the State Department of Labor. 

This disappointing statistic was mentioned Wednesday morning in a meeting room on the second floor of Oakland's City Hall. Around 40 people had gathered to grapple with a spending plan for $13 million from the federal government aimed at helping Oakland's jobless men and women. What wasn't mentioned at the meeting was data from Policy Link finding that the majority of Oakland's unemployed aDoethe meida re men of color. 

Unemployment is often reported this way, said Jakada Imani, the executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. In addition to scant reporting on unemployment rates for different groups, unemployment is presented as a lone number measuring the economy; as if unemployment was like the weather, a phenomenon beyond human control. 

Reporters should probe deeper and understand unemployment statistics as the outcomes of decisions made by politicians and executives, said Imani. He pointed to choices made by executives at the twin superstars of the Bay Area economy: Google and Apple. Despite spectacular earnings, the two companies created only 4,600 jobs worldwide in the last three years. That's about the number of jobs lost in Northern California when Toyota executives closed the East Bay's NUMMI plant in April. When the naked numbers are put in the context of deliberate actions made by powerful people, the unemployment story becomes more complete.  

Unemployment reporting is not just removed from political and social context, said Duane Poe of Solutions for Community, a consulting firm in Oakland, it's also often removed from history. How, for example, does the current unemployment rate for men of color compare to historical rates? If the media challenged Americans to look at the the complexion of the nation's workforce in good times and in bad, a fuller picture of joblessness would emerge, said Poe.

That's easier said than done. The United States Department of Labor thwarted an investigation by the San Jose Mercury News into the race of employees at Yahoo, Google, and three other Silicon Valley companies. The Labor Department agreed with the tech companies' lawyers that the race of employees amounts to a 'trade secret.' 

By removing unemployment data from critical context and by not constantly investigating the employment practices of businesses large and small, the media helps to keep unemployed men of color invisible. 'There are no solutions because the problem doesn't exist,' said Imani. But that doesn't mean the media ignores men of color. Poe notes that violence among black and Latino men is a treasured topic for newspapers and local television news. Yet this subject, too, is frequently denied context. 'If we were to ask these young brothers on the corner what it would take to get them off the corner, we'd get the answer I got when I did social work: 'A job,'' Poe said. 'The media could do a better job of tying social ills to unemployment,' he added. 

This link between crime and unemployment can become a pernicious cycle, which is also an afterthought in much coverage about rising unemployment in the nation, said Joe Brooks, vice president for civic engagement at Policy Link. The difficulty experienced by men of color with criminal records in finding a job is missing from too many media reports, Brooks said.  

In Oakland City Hall on Wednesday morning, the city's Workforce Investment Board, which is tasked with allocating federal dollars awarded by the Workforce Investment Act, voted for changes that Oakland's mayor says will make the institution more transparent and better able to serve Oakland's unemployed. Whether the mayor's predication proves true or not, the nation's economy suggests the unemployment story will not be going away.