Lordy, Lordy, Lordy. The Left never ceases to amaze me. But actually, it’s not even the powers that be on the Left that never cease to amaze me…it’s actually the “African-American” community that never cease to amaze me. I am amazed at the unwillingness of “African-American” Democrats to stand up for themselves, and speak out against the absolute lack of respect that Democrats, and their big money donors, constantly show them.
I have been saying for quite some time now that, Democrats only care about the “African-American” Community every two years around November. After that, they expect “African-Americans” to go back “to the hood” until they are summoned again to be canon fodder for whatever political battle Democrats are fighting at that time.
Today, news was released that the world famous coffee company, Starbucks (Number 146 on the Fortune 500, with revenues of $19.163 Billion) plans to hire 10,000 Refugees worldwide, over the next five years. The CEO and Founder, Howard Shultz (net worth, $3 Billion, and Number 232 on Forbes 400 list), a well known hard-core Leftist, announced in a company wide letter on Sunday, January 29, 2017, that this hiring initiative was a response to President Donald Trump’s temporary suspension of Syrian refugees and temporary travel bans that apply to six other Muslim-majority nations.
On the surface, I don’t have a problem with Starbucks taking these steps. They are a private company, and as long as they don’t violate immigration law, they are free to hire whomever they want.
However, here is my problem. Why is it that Starbucks, a well known Leftist leaning corporation, is so quick to want to help Refugees, but seems to have no inclination to help “African-Americans” in the inner cities of America, particularly young “African-Americans” who desperately need to get on that first rung of the job ladder.
According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, the youth labor force is made up of Americans, ages 16-to-24 years old, who are working or actively looking for work. The labor force participation rate is the proportion of the civilian non-institutional population that is working or looking and available for work.
The labor force participation rate for all youth was 60.1 percent in July 2016, which was similar to what it was in 2015. Whites had the highest youth labor force participation rate in July 2016 at 62.7 percent. The rate was 43.1 percent for Asians, 56.2 percent for Hispanics, and 53.8 percent for Blacks. The rate for Blacks declined by 2.6 percentage points from last July, while the rates for Whites, Asians, and Hispanics showed little or no change. The youth unemployment rate (11.5 percent) and the number of unemployed youth (2.6 million) in July 2016 were little changed from a year earlier. The July 2016 unemployment rates for Whites was (9.9 percent), Asians (10.0 percent), Hispanics (11.3 percent), and Blacks (20.6 percent), which also showed little or no change from July 2015.
Since retail and food service jobs are normally the first jobs for many American youth, I’m just curious as to why Starbucks doesn’t seem so inclined to pro-actively hire 10,000 “African-American” youth? Maybe once Magic Johnson divested his interest in Starbucks, and sold his 105 franchises back to the corporation, Starbucks no longer felt the need to keep up the pretense of caring about “African-Americans”.
Once again, I am a Free Market guy, so in my opinion, the shareholders and board members of Starbucks Corporation should remain totally free to run their privately owned business in whatever manner they see fit. I don’t believe in quotas and Affirmative Action, so I’m not even looking at it from that standpoint. I just think it’s interesting how a man, Howard Schultz, who by his own admission is a “life-long Democrat”, who endorsed Senator Obama in 2008, endorsed the first “African-American” President again in 2012, and endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016, apparently seems to care more about people outside of America, than he does about “African-Americans”.
In his infamous “The Ballot Or The Bullet” speech from 1964, Malcolm X said:
They [Democrats] get all the Negro vote, and after they get it, the Negro gets nothing in return. All they did when they got to Washington was give a few big Negroes big jobs. Those big Negroes didn’t need big jobs, they already had jobs. That’s camouflage, that’s trickery, that’s treachery, window-dressing. I’m not trying to knock out the Democrats for the Republicans. We’ll get to them in a minute. But it is true; you put the Democrats first and the Democrats put you last.
It seems like Malcolm X, a.k.a. Malcolm Little, a.k.a el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, was correct when he said that “African-Americans” were “political chumps”, because here we are, nearly 53 years later, and after continuing to give nearly 90 percent of their vote to Democrats, there is no payback from the Democratic Party, or from their big donors. Starbucks wants you to talk about racism, but they don’t want to contribute to the thing that “African-Americans” need most from them…economic opportunity, in the form of jobs.