Why do minorities lead in unemployment statistics?

MINORITY UNEMPLOYMENT

2007

Everyone remembers the words of Martin Luther King : I have a dream that one day our

children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character ' Since

those words were spoken roughly four decades ago , the United States has undeniably come a

long way . Schools are no longer segregated . Fountains and buses are marked ' no more . The

ban on interracial marriages is a thing of the past . We even have a Constitutional amendment

that guarantees equal rights

for every race . However , despite these advances , we cannot

ignore the wide racial gaps that still exist in many areas . One of those areas is the employment

world . Recent data places minority unemployment rates at nearly double the national average (Holzer Offner , 2004 (Rubenstein , 2005 . In addition , minorities have experienced a drop in

labor force participation share rates as high as 1 .3 points (Kirschoff 2004 . What factors are

accountable for minority unemployment , and does a practical solution exist

One important factor in any type of unemployment is education . For minorities , this

factor is even more critical . For example , unemployment statistics are far lower for African

American college graduates than their high school drop-out or high school graduate counterparts (Kirschoff , 2004 . Higher education obviously makes a difference , but what if educational

opportunities are severely limited to certain groups ? Evidence suggests that such a dichotomy

exists for minorities

A large percentage of minorities attend urban (or inner-city ) schools In fact , while

roughly 50 fifty percent of inner-city

students fall under some minority classification (Kieckhafer , 2004 What type of education do

these students receive ? Consider the following statistic obtained by author Jonathan Kozol

average expenditure per student in Los Angeles private school 23 ,000

average expenditure per student in Los Angeles Unified School District 7 ,000 (National survey , 2006

Kozol characterizes the difference as apartheid schooling ' claiming that students enrolled in

inner-city schools are given a second- or even third-class education . Is his assumption correct

Since monetary funds are needed for up-to-date textbooks , quality teachers , and remedial

learning materials (such as workbooks , study groups , and tutoring sessions , the outcome of

lacking funds is quite obvious (Cajigaan , 2006 . Funding is also important for minority

students whose first language is not English . Proper monetary support would provide such

students audio-visual learning materials and cultural assimilation classes which could boost

learning capabilities (Community outreach guide , 2003 . In addition urban schools often do not

develop needed skill sets for employment in the real world . Many scholars blame a skill gap

between minorities and whites for the surge in minority unemployment beginning in the late

1990s (Holzer Offner , 2004

Despite the pressing problems evident in inner-city schools , suburban schools often offer

no better alternative . Nonpartisan organization Education Sector gathered student data from the

schools represented in the 2005 edition of Newsweek 's 100 Best High Schools ' The think

tank 's findings proved disturbing . Fully one quarter of the schools demonstrated significant gaps (some as much as twenty percent ) between...