Jesse Jackson is speaking out to identify patterns of of long-running economic discrimination that he says is keeping unemployment numbers high among African-Americans.
He had this to say on the topic in a recent interview with WPIX New York:
Well you have Wall Street and Harlem on the same island. And when you think about Yahoo and Ebay and companies like Amazon with no blacks on the board, that’s a great disparity.
Beyond the issue of freedom, we’re free but not equal, the disparities keep growing. It happens because of discrimination. You have patterns that target race discrimination.
For example, for many people, their first business was their home. But when these banks foreclosed on homes after subprime lending, the banks got bailed out but the people got left out.
We embraced the dream but we didn’t embrace the civil rights. You have to enforce equal opportunity [employment] and affirmative action. For example, what does it mean that 50 years later, there are zero black owners of Coca-Cola franchises? ONE owner of a Pepsi-Cola franchise? 20,000 automobile dealerships and only 200 are black? NFL and there’s not one black owner; [professional] baseball not one; only one in basketball.
These patterns of economic segregation have basically been left off of the table. These are patterns of economic discrimination (source).
Do you agree with Rev. Jesse Jackson’s theory on economic discrimination?
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