African American Youth Joblessness and the “New Normal”

Last week, President Obama took questions from an audience of young people, in person and by way of Twitter, during a session streamed live on the Web. At one point a young black man complained that despite all the government recent spending “our unemployment rate still rises” and that even though he is a college graduate he’s having trouble finding a job. The President responded with his now stock answer: the jobs were lost before I was elected and the Administration kept the country out of a real depression. These kids know what a real depression feels like. It’s having empty pockets in a madly consumerist society. It’s being unable to plan for a family and things like having children and sending them to school.