Last year, on my second day on the job as the new Senior Director of Economic Programs for the NAACP, I went to London with our President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous to attend a conference on Global Youth Employment. Eight months later I, along with the rest of the world, am seeing images of economically disenfranchised youth throughout England rioting and rebelling. The ignition for these rebellions appears to be the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan, a young black man, by the police. Youth rioting and rebelling in economically disenfranchised areas in relation to possible racial discrimination and police brutality is something with which most Americans are all too familiar. In a BBC video clip in which Darcus Howe, a black English migrant, is interviewed about the riots, Mr. Howe states that what is happening throughout England is insurrections similar to those throughout the Arab world, where youth have been a leading force in street protests demanding change from their government. Where I agree with Mr. Howe is that these incidents of riots and rebellions from economically disappointed and disenfranchised youth are not something that is limited to the context of London or even England.
During the 2010 Global Youth Employment Conference in London, sponsored by the NAACP, CNBC, The Blackstone Charitable Foundation, the International Youth Foundation and others, the crisis of global youth unemployment was highlighted. Between the years 2008 and 2009 global youth unemployment increased by almost 7 million. This is about 35 times the increase in global youth unemployment that occurred before the recent global recession. As BusinessWeek wrote in its February 2011 article "The Youth Unemployment Bomb," "[A]n economy that can't generate enough jobs to absorb its young people has created a lost generation of the disaffected, unemployed, or underemployed -- including growing numbers of recent college graduates for whom the post-crash economy has little to offer." The relationship between youth unemployment and long-term social and economic disenfranchisement coupled with austerity budgeting, which threatens to lessen the opportunities and support provided to the youth of today, reminds me of the words of Dr. King: "The people will rise up and express their anger and frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard."
Laurie Penny, in her article "Panic on the Streets of London," writes:
The people running Britain had absolutely no clue how desperate things had become. They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong. And now my city is burning, and it will continue to burn until we stop the blanket condemnations and blind conjecture and try to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain.
What is happening in Britain today, like what happened in France in 2005 and 2007, and in Israel with some of its largest demonstrations focused on growing economic insecurity, can serve as a warning to the United States. We must recognize that our current economy is one that can also breed despair that can easily turn to rage. The record-breaking global youth unemployment rate of 13 percent is far below the 2010 youth unemployment rate in the United States of 19.1 percent. Similar to England, youth of color have even worse unemployment numbers. In the U.S., about 22 percent of both Asian-American and Latino -American youth are unemployed. For African-American youth the unemployment rate was 33.4 percent, representing just over a third of all African-American youth in the labor market.
There is a consensus as to how to address these types of challenges. In a 2010 report on employment trends, the International Labor Organization notes that comprehensive training, as well as programs that include classroom and on-the-job training, technical and non-technical assistance, financial support for the employer and employee, and job placement services have all been shown to have the most success in advancing youth employment. These type of programs require private- and public-sector partnerships in order to properly function.
Recently, such a program was announced in New York City. Mayor Bloomberg announced a $130-million project focused on black and Latino men that will be funded by two private foundations and the New York City budget. This program will invest in job training, educational classes, paid internships, and paid mentorship positions all aimed at young black and Latino men. This type of local initiative is important but must be replicated on the national level and throughout countries across the globe. The global recession must be met by a global investment in our future, and this will mean targeting economically disenfranchised and, often, youth of color. The NAACP and its new Economic Program department is dedicating itself to these type of initiatives, and in this globalized 21st century, we recognize that bridging racial and economic disparities is not a domestic challenge but an international one.
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Those governments who don't prepare for this eventuality are negligent in their duty to the governed.
The jobs bill put on the table by Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky is a good start, but she needs a strong coalition of support. I hope she gets it, or we're going to see rioting here, too.
Heck - like what happened in France in 1789...
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Disenfranchised.
The meaning is that someone did something to the disenfranchised that is illegal and unjust.
Two out of three of the youths in question have jobs, one in three does not. What injustice was done to that one? Are there other differences between that one and the other two that are significant?
No answers--not even the question--in this article. Why is that?
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I agree absolutely that something must be done about our high unemployment, but I do not think the answer is job training. Job training doesn't create jobs, and it won't do any good to have better educated people standing around, unable to find work.
Thanks for your article Dedrick Muhammad!
Nobody wants pity. It is of absolutely no practical use....
"Britain has a far more redistributive welfare system than France, which is why France's crime problem is mostly a matter of Muslim immigrants, not French nationals. Meanwhile, England's welfare state is fast returning the native population to its violent 18th-century highwaymen roots.
Needless to say, Britain leads Europe in the proportion of single mothers and, as a consequence, also leads or co-leads the European Union in violent crime, alcohol and drug abuse, obesity and sexually transmitted diseases.
But liberal elites here and in Britain will blame anything but the welfare state they adore. They drone on about the strict British class system or the lack of jobs or the nation's history of racism.
None of that explains the sad lives of young Shannon Matthews and Scarlett Keeling, with their long English ancestry and perfect Anglo features.
Democrats would be delighted if violent mobs like those in Britain arose here -- perhaps in Wisconsin! That would allow them to introduce yet more government programs staffed by unionized public employees, as happened after the 1992 L.A. riots and the 1960s race riots, following the recommendations of the Kerner Commission.
MSNBC might even do the unthinkable and offer Al Sharpton his own TV show. (Excuse me -- someone's trying to get my attention ... WHAT?)"
If it was good enough for the people of the Bible, then it should be good enough for us.
(precautionary: /snark off)
Thank you for your civility, it's somewhat rare here.
First, let me be clear; I'm quoting an article to start a conversation, those aren't my words. So, I can't answer for the author, but I can give you my opinion.
I make a distinction between the redistributive welfare system, like Britain and where we are headed; and having a safety net.
If you legitimately can't find a job, then we can still afford to provide limited government assistance. What they have in Britain, and what many progressives advocate for, is excessive.
There's a saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention"; and that applies to both individual effort and the creation of charities. The fruits of excessive assistance has become evident in Britain; not just in the behavior of looters, but of the demoralization of their society in general.
But you're right, the emphasis should be on job creation, and the redistributive welfare system saps both capital and the human creative spirit.
"In 2008, a 9-year-old British girl, Shannon Matthews, disappeared on her way home from a school trip. The media leapt on the case -- only to discover that Shannon was one of seven children her mother, Karen, had produced with five different men.
The first of these serial sperm-donors explained: "Karen just goes from one bloke to the next, uses them to have a kid, grabs all the child benefits and moves on."
Poor little Shannon eventually turned up at the home of one of her many step-uncles -- whose ex-wife, by the way, was the mother of six children with three different fathers.
(Is Father's Day celebrated in England? If so, how?)
The Daily Mail (London) traced the family's proud Anglo ancestry of stable families back hundreds of years. The Nazi war machine couldn't break the British, but the modern welfare state has.
A year earlier, in 2007, another product of the new order, Fiona MacKeown, took seven of her eight children (by five different fathers) and her then-boyfriend, on a drug-fueled, six-month vacation to the Indian island of Goa. The trip was paid for -- like everything else in her life -- with government benefits. "
Exactly what cultural values need to be reformed is debatable, as is exactly how to reform the welfare state.
What happened in Britain has more to do with the dysfunctional aspect of their welfare state, and it's contribution to depriving motivation. Without motivation, hope is meaningless.
Not only that, but in a triumph of feminism, a lot of them are girls. Even the "disabled" (according to the British benefits system) seem to have miraculously overcome their infirmities to dash out and steal a few TVs.
Congratulations, Britain! You've barbarized your citizenry, without regard to race, gender or physical handicap!
With a welfare system far more advanced than the United States, the British have achieved the remarkable result of turning entire communities of ancestral British people into tattooed, drunken brutes.
I guess we now have the proof of what conservatives have been saying since forever: Looting is a result of liberal welfare policies. And Britain is in the end stages of the welfare state."
Continued in Part Two