By Victor Ochieng
The conversation surrounding the police killing of unarmed African-American men is ongoing. Discussions are centered on whether Black lives really matter in America and why the people who swear to protect these lives end up as the killers.
However, as these conversations continue, the Black community shouldn’t forget to address the issue of unemployment and lack of business ownership that are equally serious threats to Black survival.
We saw the killing of Alton Sterling and Eric Garner by white police officers and we’ve seen how, in several cases, the police officers involved in the killings are let off scot free. Sterling and Garner were ex-offenders who utilized their informal entrepreneurial abilities to fend for their families and evade the discriminative job market.
Many ex-offenders, aware of the exclusionary formal job market, opt for entrepreneurship.
“Ex-offenders re-entering communities face a host of problems, a major one being barriers to employment because of their criminal records,” says Carmen Solomon-Fears, specialist in social policy at the Congressional Research Service. She added, “Most employers now conduct background checks, with the result that people are often denied employment or even fired from jobs because of their criminal records.”
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