I haven't started reading it yet, but I am sure it is going to be a very interesting 3 week article piece.
As a person who is a minority, I do sometimes wonder... and I guess it is partly due to my experiences when i was younger and the fact that my parents lived through the days where you drank out of a 'colored' water fountain... I wonder if I would be back on my feet right now working, at minimum 25,000 a year, if I were white. About 4 ears ago, maybe a few months before the Wolrd Trade Center 9/11 situation, I became unemployeed. No problem, I said to myself. I have a degree already, I'm back at school for a second degree in IT. I should be fine.
4 years and 30,000 dollars in debt later (school loans), I just now got a job and a unloader taking out boxes out of a truck... for 100 dollars a week. Inbetween I was a security guard and was fired for speaking out about a supervisor putting peoples lives in danger and a telemarketer for about a month.
My uncle said, "be careful, because if you have to start over, its going to take you longer because your Black." I thought to myself that might have been true in the 80's or even early 90's but not now. I'm smart, have a lot of talent, very personable... it wouldn't take me more than a year... mbe 2 before I got something.
I'm still waiting.
Many people seem a little shocked when thy speak to me after a while and wonder how I ended up here? A security guard? You could be a supervisor or manager... people I worked with say or the career manager at public assistance would try to get me a job that paid good money because I have a degree and from your demenor your a profesional.
Trust me when I say this. I gave up being a manager (even though I am well equipted to do so.. more than who I have bumped into over the years) and go for the low jobs now.
I sort of refuse to believe it is because of the color of my skin as to getting looked over, but I do wonder how I am having this long streak of jobless-ness or under-employement.
Maybe no one wants me because I haven't proved myself yet. I am trying to go back to school but because of what happened at my old job as a security guard I lost my student loans until I pay back 5000 (I had dropped classes because I was sick and then hospitalized).
So I am trapped. Can't sem to move forward, can't get the experience, can't get the knowledge.
It can't last forever I suppose. Where I am working at now has advancment. Maybe I can move up somewhere if I can take the abuse of moving 1000 packages an hour (from 10 lbs to 100).
Some days are really hard on my nose and ears, legs and arms.
Sometimes I wonder, if I was white and put on a suit with a dark overcoat would I have been hired somewhere else for more?
At any rate, this NY Times expose should be thought provocing.