Lawyers' Committee's Barbara Arnwine's CBC Testimony Addresses Racial Injustice and Economic Opportunity of Minorities and Unemployment
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 17, 2010
CONTACT:
Stacie B. Royster
202-662-8317, office
sroyster@lawyerscommittee.org
WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 17, 2010- Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Executive Director Barbara Arnwine released the testimony below on the occasion of the Congressional Black Caucus' "Out of Work But Not Out of Hope: Addressing the Crisis of the Chronically Unemployed" Hearing:
Chairwoman Barbara Lee and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, my name is Barbara Arnwine and I am Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony on behalf of those citizens, especially in communities of color, who have been severely impacted by the current job crisis. Established in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy, the Lawyers' Committee is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that involves the private bar in providing legal services to address racial discrimination. We fulfill this mission by using the skills and resources of the bar to address matters of racial justice and economic opportunity such as the high unemployment rate in the minority community.
The Senate's vote on February 24th to help create and restore jobs across the country by empowering small businesses, was a necessary first step but still falls severely short in remedying the job crisis for many Americans. Communities of color desperately need a more robust response from Congress to immediately and directly address their needs.
While focusing on small businesses is important to help spur this economy, we must address the needs of nearly 16 percent of African Americans and 13 percent of Latinos who are unemployed. Even amongst those with a college education, the disparity is evident for African Americans. For instance, the unemployment rate for black male college students was nearly twice that of white male college graduates - 8.4 percent to 4.4 percent. Hence, it is critical that the House, Senate and the Administration strongly examine and address special challenges facing the minority community beyond income. While we hope to someday surpass racial stereotypes in this society, we cannot do so by denying that they still exist and aspects of the current gap in the unemployment rate are evidence of this.
To help address the alarmingly high rate of unemployment in the African and Latino communities, the Lawyers' Committee stands in alliance with the Congressional Black Caucus in supporting a comprehensive jobs package that "uses existing federal programs and targeted job creation to those communities with the highest rates and longest history of unemployment." Additionally, the Lawyers' Committee recommends initiatives such as the following:
1. Establishing an Interagency Task Force in the Federal Administration to provide more effective oversight and accountability amongst agencies that enforce federal laws requiring equal employment opportunity and fair employment practices,
2. Strengthening enforcement and monitoring of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other civil rights laws prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity. For example, funding to support paired testing should be reinvigorated to ensure that workers with similar qualifications are not subject to disparate treatment based on race,
3. Ensuring that stimulus dollars reach the communities hit hardest by the recession so that jobs are created where unemployment figures are highest,
4. Integrating universal, age-appropriate and culturally-relevant financial education opportunities into the K-12 curriculum and into post-secondary and community-based education settings,
5. Greater funding and support for professional development and job training programs to equip workers for sustainability in the workplace,
6. Passing the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act which increases Pell Grant scholarships, invests in HBCUs and lowers interest rates on student loans,
7. Abandoning the misuse of credit checks as a condition for employment. The use of credit histories by employers is of special concern not only because they are riddled with errors, but the practice disparately impacts workers of color. Despite the claims by some employers, there is no social science to support that a worker's credit history accurately predicts job performance or who may commit workplace theft,
8. Abandoning the misuse of criminal histories as a condition of employment. For a myriad reasons, including the targeting of communities of color in the war on drugs, workers of colors are disparately impacted by the use of criminal histories as a screening device in employment. Criminal histories are sometimes incomplete or filled with errors which may make them unreliable. Social science supports that after sufficient time elapses with no illegal activity, persons with prior convictions are no more likely to commit crimes than workers with no criminal convictions,
9. The confirmation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) nominees. Until the EEOC is properly functioning, we remain without guidelines regarding the use of credit checks and without updated guidance on the use of arrest and conviction records.
As members of the Congressional Black Caucus and some civil rights leaders have recently noted, addressing low-income issues does not adequately remedy the problems within the African American and Latino communities. As reported by the Economic Policy Institute, among African Americans and Latinos, about 40 percent of workers will be unemployed or underemployed at some point in 2010. We urge Congress to address the underlying problems that lead to such sobering racial disparities and not be satisfied with a generic short-term fix. We must employ targeted long-term strategies that remedy each piece of the pie before we can serve the whole plate as an effective and comprehensive remedy to eliminating the jobless crisis.
About the Lawyers' Committee
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, was formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to involve the private bar in providing legal services to address racial discrimination. The principal mission of the Lawyers' Committee is to secure, through the rule of law, equal justice under law, particularly in the areas of fair housing and fair lending, community development, employment discrimination, voting, education and environmental justice. For more information about the LCCRUL, visit www.lawyerscommittee.org.
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