Domestic Policy and the African American Quest for Social and Economic Justice

In 1984 Harvey Brenner, a sociologist, prepared a report for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. In it, he showed that for every 1 percent increase in the rate of unemployment there is an associated increase of 5.7 percent in murders, 4.1 percent in suicides, 1.9 percent in mortality, 3.3 percent in mental institutionalization, and a 4.7 percent increase in divorce and separation.1 Other studies have found correlations between increases in unemployment and increases in child abuse, alcoholism, wife battering, and other individual and community pathologies.2 Multiply Brenner’s 1 percent increase by a factor of 10 over multiple generations to get a sense of the damaging consequences of longterm unemployment on the African American people.