The Meaning of Work

'It's Hard Out in This World'

Why does Chris Dansby not have a job?

What happened? What can he do about it? What did he do wrong?

As Chris navigates the part of the nation populated by black men like himself looking for work, there isn't a day he doesn't wonder about these questions, the last one most of all.

"I don't know, man. It's hard out in this world. It ain't geared for me," he said. "I ain't making excuses, you can get out of it, but. . . ."

But why was his neighborhood's unemployment rate 16.3 percent while at the same moment, in predominantly white Ward 3, the jobless rate was 1.5 percent? Why, last year, as he grew discouraged, were 70 percent of all white men working, 71 percent of all Asian men, 75 percent of all Hispanic men -- and 60 percent of all black men? And only 49 percent of all black men between ages 18 and 24? And only 43 percent of all black men 18-24 with a high school diploma or less?

" . . . But I don't blame anybody," Chris said. It's all on my shoulders."

The unemployed black male: He has been studied and commented upon more than any other any category of American worker, and always to conflicting conclusions. Some academics say the problem traces to what they describe as cultural issues within the black community: Fractured families, demeaning music, sports millionaires as role models, thuggishness as a virtue -- all contribute to a "culture of failure" of which joblessness is a part. The problem, these academics say, is behavioral.

Others, however, say it's structural, and point to a 2004 study in which employers were found to be as willing to hire a white man with a criminal record as a black man with a clean record. It was a finding that echoed the results of earlier studies, including a 1991 survey of hiring practices in Chicago in which employers said blacks were worse hires than whites because "they don't want to work," "they don't know how to work," "they come late and leave early," "they've got an attitude problem" and they are "just not as good."

The problem, these academics say, isn't behavioral but societal. Slavery began it, racism continues it, and it entrenches itself every day in neighborhoods such as Ward 8 in forms such as inferior schools, which lead to poor job skills, which lead to employment rates of 43 percent.

Back and forth the arguments go in the search for solutions, and meanwhile, underneath them, on the ground level that is Ward 8, Chris was saying, "I think this is the roughest period of my life. Because it can go either way. It could go, I'm out on the street, homeless, asking people for money, or it could go the way I want it to go."

He was on his way to a job interview. He was using his thumb to wipe a spot off his tie, which he never completely unties, instead looping it over his head because he's not sure he'll be able to retie it. He was thinking about what he would say. "I think I give a good first impression. I smile. I'm dressed nice. I try not to use slang."

But he was concerned about his résumé -- and all that it didn't say. For instance, it showed him working at the Giant Foods warehouse for two months, and what would an employer think of that? Should he mention that he was working the overnight shift? That on his last day, "I felt good when I got off work, I didn't feel sleepy"? That his eyes got droopy somewhere along Martin Luther King Boulevard, and they closed on Alabama Avenue, and when he slammed into a utility pole the engine ended up in the front seat, and the hospital bill that he has yet to pay is $1,500, and that's one of the reasons he needs a job? Preferably near a Metro stop?