Bob Johnson, blacks and Democrats now 'tolerate' 15% white unemployment

Bob Johnson, blacks and Democrats now 'tolerate' 15% white unemployment

bob_johnsonBlacks and Democrats have been comfortable tolerating high unemployment for whites and blacks since at least the 1930s.

The real question Bob Johnson, founder and CEO of BET Network and owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats, should ask is why blacks tolerate the failed Democratic Party to the tune of regularly giving them over 90% of their votes. Instead, he issued the following, late last week:

This country would never tolerate white unemployment at 14 and 15 percent. No one would ever stay in office at 14 or 15 percent unemployment in this nation, but we’ve had that double unemployment for over 50 years,” Johnson said while speaking at the National Press Club about the gap between whites and blacks in America.

“The national average is 7.7 percent, and African-American unemployment is 13.8 percent. To be honest, it’s probably greater than that when you count the number of African-Americans who have simply given up on finding employment,” said Johnson, who is also founder and chairman of The RLJ Companies.

In 1972, the unemployment rate for African-Americans was 11.2 percent in January of that year and as low as 9.4 percent in December of that same year. It dipped as low as seven percent in April 2000. The unemployment rate for blacks in February 2013 was 13.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Johnson said the challenge was to figure out why the unemployment rate for blacks has been so high, “and if that doesn’t change, somebody’s going to have to pay— 34 million African-Americans are not going to leave this country, millions of African-Americans who don’t have jobs.”

“Somebody’s going to have to pay for them. Somebody’s going to have to take care of them, and if somebody’s going to have to take care of them, that money’s got to come from somebody. And whoever’s paying for it is going to be upset about it, and they’re going to start looking for somebody to blame,” Johnson said.

We appreciate Johnson’s frustration with the failed economic policies of the Obama administration, as this was not the first time that he has lashed out at the Democrats. And we certainly agree with his warning concerning how society will have to “pay” (whether in welfare and other costs) for failed citizens.

But Bob, sadly, Americans of all hues tolerated above 14% unemployment for Whites via FDR’s Democrats from 1933-1940; and a similar under-employment (unemployed and part-time that doesn’t include the discouraged) rate (15.9% and higher) for the last four years from President Barack Obama’s Democrats. And yes, the exponentially higher such rates that Democrats tolerate are a moral abomination, as are the welfare policies of Food Stamp Nation.

Increasing numbers of Americans are economically illiterate. How else did the nation re-hire such an epically failed Chief executive last November? It doesn’t help that nearly all Republicans, advocating the supply-side policies that lifted the fortunes of blacks to historically high levels from the mid-1980s through the mid-2000s, face an African-American electorate blindly loyal to the class warriors that Bob Johnson famously loathed back in 2011:

Well, I think the president has to recalibrate his message. You don’t get people to like you by attacking them or demeaning their success. You know, I grew up in a family of 10 kids, first one to go to college, and I’ve earned my success. I’ve earned my right to fly private if I choose to do so.

And by attacking me it is not going to convince me that I should take a bigger hit because I happen to be wealthy. You know, it is the old — I think Ted and Fred and I we both sort of take the old Ethel Merman approach to life. I’ve tried poor and I tried rich and I like rich better. It doesn’t mean that I am a bad guy.

I didn’t go in to business to create a public policy success for either party, Republican or Democrat. I went in business to create jobs and opportunity, create opportunity, create value for myself and my investors. And that’s what the president should be praising, not demagoguing us simply because Warren Buffet says he pays more than his secretary. He should pay the secretary more and she will pay more.

Bravo Bob. Let’s educate the nation writ large not to tolerate high unemployment for any group except the lazy and corrupt. Obama’s continued failed policies are hopefully helping in the instruction.

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Mike DeVine

Mike DeVine

Mike DeVine is a former op-ed columnist at the Charlotte Observer and legal editor of The (Decatur) Champion (legal organ of DeKalb County, Georgia). He is currently with the Ruf Law Firm in Atlanta Metro and conservative voice of the Atlanta Times News.

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