Al Jazeera's Fault Lines presenter Avi Lewis hosts a debate about race & the US recession with Jesse Jackson of the Rainbow Coalition; Rosa Clemente, an activist and former Green Party Vice Presidential candidate; Linda Chávez, director of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity and the Reverend Greylan Hagler of the United Church of Christ.

If we are living through a Great Recession, for people of color it is a quiet depression. Among whites with a college degree, the unemployment rate as of September 2009 is 4.0 percent. For blacks with a college degree, the unemployment rate is nearly twice as high at 7.2 percent. Hispanics fare slightly better. The unemployment rate for Hispanics with a college degree 5.6 percent.

The unemployment rate is higher among men than among women. For black men, 25 and over and at all education levels, the unemployment rate is 16.1 percent while for black women, 25 and over and at all education levels, the unemployment rate is 11.0 percent. For black men and women ages 15 to 24 without a high school degree the unemployment rate is a staggering 42.7 percent. The New York Times has an interactive feature where you can find the unemployment rate by various demographics.

Below the fold is a breakout of unemployment data (U3) by demographic groups.

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I wrote a piece yesterday that I hoped a few people might see, and it upended a hornet's nest, which I had kind of hoped might happen, but I didn't think would. I'm glad that so many people read it and wrote about it, as racial problems in the U.S. are something I think we need to think about and talk about.

But in the 250-odd comments that people wrote, things kept going off on tangents and getting away from the main thrust of my piece. No doubt I could have made my points more clearly, and since I think this subject is important enough that we should keep talking about it, and since it gets hard to keep things organized when there are already more than 250 comments, I thought I'd try to explain a little better what I think the problem is.

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A year or so ago, this was a great place to come to catch up on the news. I came here, to Daily Kos, and a few others like the Poorman, Talking Points Memo and Sadly No, every day.

A year ago, posters were already touting their candidates, but it seemed fairly neighborly. No more. Now, the only reason I really come here is to see how bad things have become.

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