The Black Commentator has a good piece on the Bush Depression that has already hit hard many Americans of color. This is the black and Latino situation, which has many elite white male capitalists as the ultimate creators of it:

Unemployment now stands at 13.3 percent among African American – 15.4 percent for black men. There were 124,000 fewer black people at work in March than in February. Hispanic workers’ unemployment was 11.4 percent last month, up from 7.0 percent a year ago. The rate for white job seekers stood at 7.9 percent in March, up from 4.5 percent a year ago.

These are gross underestimates of unemployment since the government under top capitalists’ pressure leaves out people who have given up looking for work, or who want full time work but can only find part time work. Capitalism’s catastrophic failures can also be seen in many other areas:

Unemployment is not the only area where capitalism’s current crisis is battering African American individuals and families. Taken as a whole black people are getting poorer as a result of developments over which they have no control. The mortgage crisis has hit especially hard with housing foreclosures reducing economic assets that people had worked hard to acquire and was key to their plans for the future. African American median family income has actually declined over the past decade.

photo credit: japetonida

United for a Fair Economy has a good report by Amaad Rivera, Jeannette Huezo, Christina Kasica, and Dedrick Muhammad on how dire this situation is, with related data on the “silent depression”:

Many American Blacks today are already experiencing a silent economic depression that, in terms of unemployment, equals or exceeds the Great Depression of 1929. Almost 12% of Blacks are unemployed; this is expected to increase to nearly 20% by 2010. Among young Black males aged 16-19, the unemployment rate is 32.8%, while their white counterparts are at 18.3%. Overall, 24% of Blacks and 21% of Latinos are in poverty, versus 8% of whites. In the corporate world, we are seeing the highest executive pay and the biggest bailouts in history. CEO pay is 344 times that of the average worker.* The riches of the few mask the deepening recession in the working class and the depression in communities of color. Extreme economic inequality (which the U.S. experienced in the 1920s and is again experiencing now) is often a key indicator of recession and/or depression.

The Black Commentator article also notes the international impact:

The situation facing African Americans and other people of color in the U.S. has a global corollary. The policies carried out by the major industrialized countries amid the expanded process of globalization have for decades increased the inequities both between and within many countries.