Thread: Don't underestimate Kanye (and Trump) – Rapper could successfully deliver for forgott

Don't underestimate Kanye (and Trump) – Rapper could successfully deliver for forgotten black communities

By Patrice Lee Onwuka | Fox News
Published 6 hours ago

Rapper Kanye West meets with President Trump Thursday to discuss manufacturing jobs and job opportunities for former inmates. This is what black political leaders fear and why black elites now hate him. By working with the White House, West may successfully deliver opportunity to black communities that have been left behind.

Black pundits and media have already ripped into this meeting. On Don Lemon’s CNN show, Democratic commentator Bakari Sellers pointed to Kanye as an example of “anti-intellectualism,” while right-leaning commentator Tara Setmayer called him another “token Negro of the Trump administration.” A columnist for the black news site The Root panned the meeting as “what is sure to be the lowest collection of IQs in a 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue room since George W. Bush cuddled with Millie, his puppy.”

Celebrities aren’t pleased either. Beyonce and Jay-Z reportedly have severed all ties with Kanye and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, over Kanye’s vocal support of President Trump and Kim’s visits to the White House to discuss criminal justice reform. Comedian D.L. Hughley compared this meeting to that of a black slave and his white master.

It’s not surprising that these influential black figures malign any kind of outreach to the Trump administration. Perhaps they fear what these two forces together might accomplish for the black community: greater economic success and recognition by black America that its allegiance to progressive politicians has outlived its usefulness.

Already nationwide, blacks have been gaining in the workforce. The national black unemployment rate stands at 6 percent – the second lowest monthly rate in recorded history, just behind May of this year.

However, Chicago’s uneven economic prosperity demonstrates why more needs to be done to boost opportunity for blacks where despair persists. West recently announced that he's moving back to his hometown of Chicago.

Illinois had the nation’s highest black unemployment rate in 2016. In the Chicago area in 2017, the black unemployment rate was 15 percent although the city’s overall unemployment rate had fallen to 3.3 percent. Even worse, a third (37 percent) of 20-to-24 year-old black men in the city were out of work in 2016, compared to 9.3 percent for all men that age.

High unemployment is especially concentrated in certain blacks areas – particularly the south and west sides of Chicago. But this was not always the case.

The South Side of Chicago was once home to the steel industry and other industrial plants. In its heyday from 1900 to 1970, blacks benefited from employment at mills, as well as jobs generated by a manufacturing-driven economy, from waitressing to construction.

When major steel companies started to close in the early 1980s, economic blight followed and persists today.

The editorial board of the Chicago Tribune explained: “Manufacturers left long ago. There are few retail and restaurant jobs. All the economic activity is located miles away in the Loop and elsewhere in metropolitan Chicago. Too many young people have inadequate job training and … nothing to do.”

West aptly recognizes that the return of manufacturing and skills training would provide real opportunity for the young black population in Chicago.

President Trump is the right person to get it done. Domestic manufacturing is experiencing a resurgence as the economy has added more than 325,000 manufacturing jobs under this administration. Manufacturing optimism is at an all-time high thanks to tax cuts and tax reform.

At the same time, under Ivanka Trump’s charge, the administration has made workforce development (from apprenticeships to retraining) a priority, leading big-name employers to commit to training 3.8 million workers over the next five years.

Despite this sustained high level of optimism, manufacturers say the lack of skilled workers to fill an estimated 500,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs poses significant challenges to growing their businesses. This is where government, the private sector, and the education system can come together to help out-of-work people gain the skills they need to secure work and a better life.

If manufacturing returns to places like the South Side of Chicago, and the black workforce has access to the training necessary for those jobs, workers will be able to look forward to real careers. The economic prosperity that has eluded poor neighborhoods for over a generation can return.

Kanye West is not an economist, academic or community organizer. -- He has aligned with President Trump to create opportunity for left-behind black communities. This makes him unacceptable to the black patrician and celebrity class. But if he’s successful, he will be a hero to those who just want a chance.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/kany...e-failed-to-do

YES! YES!! YES!! Manufacturing jobs are the key to helping communities with large numbers of unemployed and underemployed workers. Bring it all back. Industry should have been training these workers all along, but instead they were packing up and running like cheap little cowards to Mexico and China leaving our own dear citizens in a lurch and on the soup line instead of a production line.

SHAME!! SHAME!! SHAME!!!

KEEP THE TRUMP TRAIN ROLLIN' ROLLIN' ROLLIN'!! VOTE ALL REPUBLICAN IN NOVEMBER!!!

So proud of the President, Kanye and Jim Brown for working on this problem together. They will solve it. They are all smart, successful, go to, know how to, will fight to win to solve a problem. Very anxious to watch the press conference after the lunch, if they have one. Sure hope they do!!!

Bring the trades back into our schools Grade 9 -12!

Teach these kids a skill to get a JOB!

Then go on to a 1 or 2 year certificate.

Start a program in these run down communities to clean up their streets, the graffiti, garbage, buildings and homes!

Get them paint, cleaning supplies. Make these welfare and Section 8 mooches WORK in the community for their free stuff.

Get low risk prisoners cleaning up neighborhoods.

Get them paint, cleaning supplies. Make these welfare and Section 8 mooches WORK in the community for their free stuff.

Get them a job and they won't need these welfare programs. They can earn their wages and buy their own stuff with their own money. JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!!

The unemployment rate while really good because it's so low does not accurately reflect the number of unemployed and underemployed workers available in the US. Every adult on welfare under 65 needs to be counted as an available worker and recruiting programs need to be instituted so that they are made aware of all jobs. Also, every working age person on welfare needs to have a current resume on file and employment security needs to help them write one if they need assistance. You would be amazed at how much talent is laying to waste in our welfare system, caught in a terrible slave cabin trap.