Why Record Black Male Unemployment Remains Invisible to the First Black President

[President Obama continues to ride and promote the myth that “post-racial America” has been achieved.  This has not only been useful to the corporate/capitalist claims that the political system is “democratic”, but is also essential for claiming and asserting the misleading “democratic” cover for imperialist interventions and occupations around the world.  Yet the reality of black oppression, and of other oppressed and targeted peoples in the US, grows deeper and more brutal by the day.  Outrage and anger is growing among those who have been considered “automatic” supporters of the Democratic Party.   Bruce Dixon (of Black Agenda Report) looks into the problem of  record black joblessness–and government inaction and indifference. — Frontlines ed.]

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02/01/2012

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon,Black Agenda Report

Black unemployed in Houston, TX

State of the Union speeches usually throw bones in every direction, to every constituency that matters to a president. But even though black male unemployment is at record levels, even higher than when the president declared the “recession” over, it remains beneath the notice of the First Black President.

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It’s not complicated. In the Obama White House, like everyplace else, crucial tasks get accomplished, less important ones put off, and the least meaningful ignored altogether. Take the State of the Union address, typically a grab bag affair with a little something for everybody that matters.

Whether you’re a a dependable friend or a despicable enemy, or if your cause is just worth a prevaricating presidential applause line, you’ll get it. If the president judges you worth patting on the head, pointing to as an example, or lying to or about, it will happen then and there. And if you’re not mentioned at all, anyplace from the beginning to the end, well, you just don’t matter much.

The president gave several paragraphs to what he called “emissions-free energy sources,” by which he means “clean coal,” “safe nuclear power,” and whatever his energy and utility company donors tell him is important. He threatened Iran, extolled the virtuous men and women in uniform, and praised the American spirit. He talked about job training for positions which many think actually don’t exist. He demanded that Congress send him bills that they’ll never pass anyway, but that he could have demanded in 2009 and 2010 when he actually had control of Congress. He promised jobs as firefighters and cops to returning veterans.

But despite levels of black unemployment not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, this was a matter that went unmentioned. Black concerns, as we noted a couple weeks ago, are irrelevant to the president, and black communities powerless.

A closer look: Obama’s hypocritical claim of the Apple/Steve Jobs allure

[A comment from Revolutionary Frontlines:  “Capitalist Crisis and Empire Quandary leads to media hyperbole, political hypocrisy, empty promises and false claims of better days ahead”

Barack Obama, the political leader of US imperialism, is heading into a re-election campaign with growing discontent and opposition across the country, including among traditional supporters of the Democratic party.  In his State of the Union address this week, he made a string of new and repeated promises to re-capture these drifting and angry voters,   as he promised to bring jobs back from overseas and support domestic innovation and business.  Apple electronics and Steve Jobs got special mention and praise from the President.  Apple, making record profits from its popular iPhone and iPad products, produces most of its goods overseas–the largest part being made by Foxconn in China and India, in factories holding hundreds of thousands of workers being paid $1 an hour.  If Foxconn increases pay rates and regulates safety and working conditions, China’s global edge in maintaining  cheap labor pool will lose its allure.  If the cost of production rises, Apple’s profit edge and competitiveness will suffer.  Therefore, every Foxconn adjustment in pay and conditions is matched by increased demands on productivity.  The NY Times article, below, details the situation at Foxconn.

The Chinese workers are caught in the middle of this.  They are not the enemies of workers in the US–they suffer from the same exploitation for profits, at the hands of the same crisis-wracked and bankrupt capitalist system, as we, and people worldwide, are suffering from.  There is no solution in workers fighting each other for a place in the exploiters’ production line.  The path forward is made with solidarity, with finding the ways to support each other and to unify our struggles against the capitalist-imperialist system.  With each day, millions more are seeing that the capitalist system, in its ever more vicious and desperate turns, is losing its credibility and legitimacy as a leading or organizing force in human affairs. — Frontlines ed.]

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Click this link to see video:  Made in China

An explosion last May at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China, killed four people and injured 18. It built iPads.

January 25, 2012

In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad

By CHARLES DUHIGG and DAVID BARBOZA, New York Times

The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.

When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.

Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.

“Are you Lai Xiaodong’s father?” a caller asked when the phone rang at Mr. Lai’s childhood home. Six months earlier, the 22-year-old had moved to Chengdu, in southwest China, to become one of the millions of human cogs powering the largest, fastest and most sophisticated manufacturing system on earth. That system has made it possible for Apple and hundreds of other companies to build devices almost as quickly as they can be dreamed up.

“He’s in trouble,” the caller told Mr. Lai’s father. “Get to the hospital as soon as possible.”

In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

After a rash of apparent suicide attempts, a dormitory for Foxconn workers in Shenzhen, China, had safety netting installed last May. Foxconn said it acted quickly and comprehensively to address employee suicides.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

“If Apple was warned, and didn’t act, that’s reprehensible,” said Nicholas Ashford, a former chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the United States Labor Department. “But what’s morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that.”

Apple is not the only electronics company doing business within a troubling supply system. Bleak working conditions have been documented at factories manufacturing products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and others.

Current and former Apple executives, moreover, say the company has made significant strides in improving factories in recent years. Apple has a supplier code of conduct that details standards on labor issues, safety protections and other topics. The company has mounted a vigorous auditing campaign, and when abuses are discovered, Apple says, corrections are demanded.

And Apple’s annual supplier responsibility reports, in many cases, are the first to report abuses. This month, for the first time, the company released a list identifying many of its suppliers.

But significant problems remain. More than half of the suppliers audited by Apple have violated at least one aspect of the code of conduct every year since 2007, according to Apple’s reports, and in some instances have violated the law. While many violations involve working conditions, rather than safety hazards, troubling patterns persist.