Special Edition: Black Jobs - What Are They, Where Are They and Can Anyone Apply!?!?

Last week, in the span of 48 hours, millions of conversations flooded social media, TV screens and group chats--all with a singular opening salvo:

“What the hell is a Black Job?!”

Regardless of our politics, sensibilities or sense of humor, Black folks in particular went into overdrive—from our creativity to flat out ire. Black AI content creator, King Willonius, wrote a song arranged in 70s soul styling begging the question, “Can somebody tell me what a Black job is?” EXTRA CREDIT TO HIM FOR THE ALBUM ART, as well (chef's kiss). While MSNBC political commentator, Symone D. Sanders Townsend , posited on-air, “I’m still trying to figure out what a Black job is. Am I at my BLACK JOB right now? I don’t know.” Note: I love Symone! Like love!

So let’s talk about Black jobs. Black Americans have a storied and complicated relationship with labor in America—and by complicated, I mean SLAVERY! If we use 1619 as the beginning and the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment as its end, then Black Americans spent 246 years subjected to forced, unpaid labor in the United States of America--no easy path to success there, my friends.?

Spoiler Alert: the next 100 years weren't exactly BLACK JOBS BLISS for Black Americans either.

During the 1930s, Black activists organized protests in cities across the US against store owners who operated in Black neighborhoods but refused to employ Black workers. The campaigns were called, “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work.” These activists sacrificed their physical safety to apply so much economic pressure on business owners that they created thousands of new jobs for African Americans during the Depression.

So... Is a Black Job Black because Black folks risked their lives to demand access to said job?

Maybe to understand Black jobs, you have to understand how hard Black Americans have fought for fair wage labor in this country. From 1910 to 1970, more than six million Black jobseekers left the American south to find opportunities to work and support their families in the urban Northeast, Midwest and West. It was such a huge shift, demographers deemed it "The Great Migration."

Starting with the World War I labor shortages in northern factories, Black workers took on thousands of jobs in steel mills, railroads, meatpacking plants, and the automobile industry. It meant leaving what had always been their economic and social base in America and finding a new one. Is it a Black job just because the Black person picks up their life and moves to the other end of the country to do it??

Today, we give workforce realities like racism, misogyny and homophobia softer, more palatable names like bias. We even give offenders a CORPORATE GET OUT OF JAIL FREE CARD by assuming said bias must be unconscious. These Black jobseekers couldn't talk to HR; it would take an act of Congress (well a Presidential Executive Order and a World War) to move past the systemic racism that kept them from even being considered for fair wage work.

Black Jobs… Black Jobs…

I mean nothing says Black Jobs like when World War II came along and factories that wouldn’t hire Black workers were forced to open those jobs to them if America was going to have a shot at being on the winning end of the conflict. Car factories were being converted to make military jeeps, and baseball cap factories were being converted to produce gunstocks. That and Roosevelt signed the Fair Employment Practices Committee—forcing southern industries to hire Black workers and apprentices for production on all military and wartime goods. Maybe a Black job is a job a Black person gets to help America win a war... or maybe a Black job is a job Black people get when the government mandates a halt to the systemic racism that precluded them from getting it otherwise??

To quote Alice (from Wonderland), “Curiouser and curiouser!" NOTE: This is the part of the newsletter where I drop in a universally recognized quote to lighten the mood of the content…

I wouldn't be doing MY Black Job, if I didn't mention the other piece of the relationship between Black Americans and the US labor force. The last three and half years have seen the longest sustained, lowest levels of Black unemployment on record... like since we started looking at employment and unemployment rates.

But don't get too excited and think... "YES, DREW! THOSE ARE THE BLACK JOBS!"

As of May 2024, the unemployment rate for Black or African Americans in the United States was 6.1%, which is lower than the long-term average of 11.46%. For context, the average unemployment rate for Black Americans was about 8 percent from 2016 to 2020 and 11 percent from 2000 to 2015.

Black job seekers have been making historic advances in employment, but Black Americans have the highest unemployment rate of any ethnic group in the country. And it's not because they aren't trying to find work. In fact, Black women typically have the highest labor force participation rate of any group of US women, meaning that a higher percentage of Black women are either employed or unemployed and looking for work.

PRO-TIP: You can never look at the US unemployment numbers and gauge how America is doing without looking at how Black Americans are doing--because when America gets a cold, Black folks get the flu. To understand what's around the corner for the country you have to look at what's happening at the edges.

Are Black Jobs jobs that were created by Black people?

I think of the Black entrepreneurs who couldn't get hired doing what they loved or didn't see their community being served so they created companies and BLACK JOBS for them and thousands of their Black employees. As early as 1900, Black business owners were employing Black people to provide services that other business owners wouldn't provide Black people--funeral homes, grocery stores, drug stores, gas stations and barber and beauty salons. Those business owners invested in what would become Black-owned insurance companies, newspaper publishers, trade schools and manufacturers. I think of a man like John H. Johnson, the founder of Ebony and Jet magazines and Fashion Fair Beauty and Cosmetics. He started those businesses and became a millionaire many times over to create corporate and first line jobs for Black people as much as he did to create products for Black people. Now think of the folks at World Wide Technology, the largest Black-owned business in the United States, with $17 billion in annual revenue. I'm pretty sure the non-Black folks who work there do NOT consider their jobs to be BLACK JOBS--I'm just saying...

From the 1970s to today, so many people looked at our historic firsts as representations and proclamations of BLACK JOBS. We've had so many incredible first--too many to name or reference. I had a picture of Kenneth Chenault on my desk all through my 20s, and you couldn't tell 26 year old me that being the CEO of American Express wasn't a Black Job! For the sake of accuracy, Chenault was the third CEO of a Fortune 500 company; that was Dr. Clifton Wharton, Jr. when he became the CEO of TIAA-CREF, now known as TIAA. If THAT was the case is President of the United States or Vice President of the United States a BLACK JOB!?!?

Yeah, let's not talk politics.

When it boils down to it, what I know for sure is the term "Black Jobs" could make you chuckle or cringe, but the the historic fights that Black people in this country have shouldered just to find work, to be CONSIDERED for hire, to be paid equitably are no laughing matter. The uneven playing field that Black American jobseekers still have to engage upon can't be forgotten or dismissed because some incredible Black people broke 100+ year records and got hired where no one Black previously had ever been hired.

The American workforce is still woefully inequitable. We have to take every opportunity to engage on how to make it more equitable--no matter the newscycle or zeitgeist. History can be awfully inconvenient and uncomfortable, but context matters, truth matters.

I think of my own job. Perhaps it IS a Black Job. This country was built by Black Jobs. From 1619 straight through to today. My job is an incredible one being done by a Black man--a Black, gay American who gets to speak to the world and hopefully make it a centimeter better. If you made it to the end of this edition of The Black Guy in Marketing, my humble hope is that you think I'm doing a good job at it.

EDITOR'S NOTE: ALEXA. play Kool Moe Dee's "I GO TO WORK !"