Community Essay : Persistence Pays Off--or Does It? : People hear all the time that job programs are being planned for South-Central L.A. But what many teens hear is, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’
A little over a year ago two things happened in Los Angeles. Everybody noticed one. Nobody but me noticed the other. The first we all know about. The world watched an all-white jury in Simi Valley acquit four Los Angeles police officers who beat Rodney King; afterward, a city went up in flames.
But something else happened the week that Los Angeles burned. My 19-year-old son returned here from Atlanta. For the past two years, he had attended Morris Brown, a historically black college where he majored in business.
Although he enjoyed the experience and adventure of being away from home for the first time, he still wanted to come back to Los Angeles. The way he figured it, when he returned he would complete his college studies and find a job, preferably with a company in which he could gain experience in retail or business management. Perhaps, if he was lucky, he could save enough money and get his own apartment. His calculations were only partly correct. He enrolled at Cal State Dominguez Hills and is taking business classes, but he has not found a job.
For the past year, he has checked the want ads, visited the college placement office, followed up on referrals, filled out dozens of applications and gone to numerous job interviews. The story is always the same, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” He is puzzled and bewildered. Almost daily he hears or reads that a major corporation or public agency plans to start a new job development or training program for youth in South-Central Los Angeles. If there’s a phone number he will call them. If there’s an address he will visit them.
Here’s what they’ve told him: He’s either too old or too young. He doesn’t have a residence in the targeted area. His parents’ income is too high. Or, they tell him the program is still in the talking or planning stage and suggest that he check back in a few months. This only adds to his frustration. I tell him: “Keep trying, don’t give up hope, persistence pays off.” Though he listens, I sense that he regards my words as little more than empty platitudes.
Despite the often negative media images of young blacks, the majority of them are like my son. They don’t join gangs, deal drugs and terrorize their neighborhoods. Yet I sometimes wonder how many personnel or job-placement directors have bought the myth that all young blacks are crime-prone or dangerous.
I hope not many. But it’s a painful fact that government figures report nearly one out of two young blacks are unemployed. During the past decade, their unemployment rate has remained stubbornly high. Obviously the riots didn’t help. The burned-out businesses meant fewer jobs for area residents. A year later, many of them still have not been rebuilt. Other business owners, citing riot fears, fled the area and probably won’t return.
The recession-wracked California economy has also deepened Los Angeles’ economic woes. While the national poverty rate among blacks in 1990 declined slightly to 31.9% from 32.2% in 1980, in California it rose to 24.7% from 17.5% a decade earlier. This has made even more black youth desperate, and made it harder for them to resist what they mistakenly think is the easy money and good life to be had in the streets.
Even worse, for many young black males a college degree doesn’t automatically mean a higher income. A 1990 Ford Foundation study found that in 1979, one in four African-American male college graduates had wages higher than $36,000. By 1987, fewer than one in five graduates had incomes higher than that. During the same years, the number of employed black males that earned less than poverty wages increased 161%.
Faced with this grim picture, it would be easy for my son to doubt his ability or question the value of staying in college. I won’t let him do that. I will continue to remind him that a college degree is a necessity. It will sharply increase his competitive skills and prepare him to confront today’s complex and technical job market. So far, he continues to hang in there, maintaining his studies and bringing home fairly good grades. Now it’s up to our business and political leaders to do even more to create opportunities for the thousands of young persons like my son. It’s still not too late.
