Racism is a sketchy explanation. As of a year ago, native-born black americans had 50% more unemployment than foreign-born blacks.

These racists make very fine distinctions: "I don't like African Americans. Nigerians and Jamaicans are ok, though. So I'll interview black people, but if they don't have a foreign accent..." [makes a 'get out of here' motion]

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.t01.htm

Uhh . . . dude. That's what you want.

I'm not trying to keep Americans out of jobs here, but isn't it good to require that foreign born people have jobs before they come here? I mean, I assume you are talking about immigrants. Why would you not want them to have some sort of employment related Visa before they get on the plane to come here and live?

This statistic, to me, says that the government is doing something right. Again, not trying to open up an immigration discussion, just saying that this statistic is a good thing. In general you want native unemployment to be higher than foreign born unemployment or you have a problem with your immigration program. In America Native unemployment is higher across every demographic, which is excellent in my opinion.

Just my two cents. I'm not an immigration expert or anything, but I am smart enough to know that I want the employable immigrants.

Uh, dude, I'm not making any immigration-related argument. All I'm saying is that those racist employers seem to have a really narrow kind of racism: "we hate black americans, but not black haitians or senegalese."

It's probably not racism then, but, umm, culturalism.

We don't have good vocabulary yet for distinguishing between race, culture and nationality because for most of history, these were very strongly correlated.

Very good point. That pretty clearly points to issues with education/culture (as it relates to dress, speech, expectations, etc...)/etc... NOT race.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a bit of personal history about the differences in native versus immigrant black perceptions. Interesting article.

http://www.gladwell.com/1996/1996_04_29_a_black.htm

I would wonder if there is a fear of hiring black men for extremely poor paying manual labour jobs for fear of the perception of slavery & racisim too.

I think fear of litigation is probably a significant factor. I have a friend who practices labor and employment law and he's kept on retainer at a few big companies to field calls such as "can we fire this person and not get sued?".

They literally have a point system. Race, sex, sexual preference and disabilities (basically any protected class) are all assigned a certain number of points.

Regardless if you're trying to fire someone for cause, if they are in some dangerous combination of protected classes (watch out for disabled black lesbians) and you want to minimize legal exposure, they'll advise you to keep them and put them in a position where they can do no harm to company.

He has one firm who has an employee who has sued them five (!) separate times for racial discrimination (according to my friend, anytime the person gets a bad review or reprimanded). They can't get rid of the person for fear it'll look like retaliation.

The whole situation is completely degenerate.

Sounds like a good reason for even a non-racist to avoid hiring minorities and other protected classes.

Actually, that's a generalized problem with firing protections of any kind; the harder you make it to fire anyone, the less likely they are to be hired in the first place. Another case where second-order effects can end up dominating the end results. "At-will employment" sounds like a worker disaster if you only consider first-order effects, but in my opinion it is actually the preferable scenario for a worker if you consider everything.

Well, for a good worker anyhow.

These second order effects are a big problem in Europe. The governments there make it very expensive to fire anyone; typically around 6 months wages for anyone laid off, I think. As a result, companies are loath to hire new workers, even when an economic upswing is under way. Result: chronically high unemployment rates and young people who can't get jobs and don't understand why, not to mention increased risk aversion for companies.

Unfortunately in most large companies that means "promote them to management".

Or the reverse may be true: that black men won't take those jobs because they perceive them as being "no better than slavery".