Build them up: helping young black men overcome biases and find jobs isn't easy

Bill Leavy, executive director of the Greater West Town Project, which has a $439,879 contract, said he has worked hard to find other ways to pay for the programs his organization offers. He said some of the cuts have been balanced by increased funding to serve dropouts. The alternative high school run by his agency receives money from the Illinois Board of Education and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, which funds it to work with wards of the state.

Jobs for Youth/Chicago also receives grants from other government agencies, including a large one from the labor department that it used to place more than 1,000 young people in jobs. In addition, it relies on donations and fundraisers.

Sharon Simmons from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago, which offers employment and career programs at four locations on the West and South sides, said she has fewer staff to work with teenagers. When their caseloads are full, they have to refer interested teenagers to other agencies.

But exactly how many teens participate in these programs is questionable. According to city data provided to the Reporter in November, 2,443 teenagers participated in the last fiscal year. A few weeks later, officials added more than 800 teens to the rolls. But neither of those totals matched reports the employment programs made to the city, or state documents, which added even more teens. Program directors also say they are sometimes confused about how to count and categorize the teens.

Mutscheller, from the Mayor's Office of Workforce Development, said that there shouldn't be any discrepancies and had trouble explaining why they exist. "The numbers might be in flux, but I don't know why that would be because they represent a static time period," he said. "Things might also be entered retroactively, but I don't know that for sure.

"I wish that this was more black and white and didn't have so many shades of gray," he added.

By any measure, however, few teens are getting help. Thirteen of the 43 programs placed no teenagers in jobs last year, and only three found jobs for more than 20 teens, according to their yearly reports to the city. On average, the agencies' contracts were about $321,000.

Caminer and McMahon said this doesn't trouble them, because the federal law emphasizes helping teenagers earn high school diplomas or GEDs, or build skills.

Wuest, of the Alternative Schools Network, stresses that a diploma or GED increases a teen's chance of earning a decent wage exponentially. "If I can get a dropout back into school, then the benefit to society is over $300,000," he said.

Leavy said that 30 years ago there were what he calls "survival jobs," including back-breaking but well-paying work in steel mills and factories. But these jobs have virtually disappeared. "It is short-sighted to just give someone a part-time job and send them on their way," he said.

Still, according to city data, only 448 teenagers, or 14 percent of all program participants, got GEDs or diplomas, or gained skills last year.

Also, those who run these programs say that they have little money and are under pressure to meet the performance standards. Under these weights, they say, some shy away from taking the hardest-to-serve teens.

Malcolm Jackson, coordinator of the Goodwill program, said that it would take years for some of the teenagers who walk through his door to get both a GED and a job. He doesn't think it's a fair expectation. Twenty years ago, the crack cocaine epidemic was in flail swing and now the children born in that time are coming of age, he said. Many have been subjected to hardship as a result of their parents' drug abuse.

"I had one young man whose grandma was 54 years old and died of a crack overdose," Jackson recalled. "Both of his parents are strung out. Now, how can he go to work? He has so much emotional stuff inside him. And, when he starts to act out, they put him in jail. If we had funding, we could work with them for three or four years. Then, we could give them incredible outcomes."

Even though he works hard to help, many do not meet the federal standards, Jackson said. He pointed to Ricardo Sanchez, a thickly built man with a slight hunchback and stubble on his face. Because Sanchez has had problems passing the GED, Goodwill has yet to get full credit for working with him, despite the fact that he has held a job for more than a year.

One Tuesday in September, Sanchez came to the Goodwill program after working the nightshirt for 12 days in a row cleaning the floors at a downtown Jewel.

He said he works hard because he wants to provide for himself, his girlfriend and the baby they are expecting. But he also likes the fact that he's doing legitimate work. Once a high-ranking member of the Latin Kings, Sanchez spent his teenage years in prison for selling drugs. When he was released just after his 18th birthday, he wanted to do something with his life.

"I got tired of what I was doing, and, when I got out, the neighborhood gang I was involved in had changed," he said. He also credits his girlfriend: "She was pushing me to change."

Sanchez credits Goodwill for not only helping him land his job, but for teaching him computers and getting him two internships. The idea that he might be able to do something more with his life than cleaning floors has kept him going. "This program showed me it never gave up on me," he said.

Caminer, from the Mayor's Office of Workforce Development, concedes that Chicago's programs have struggled in recent years. He notes that the population of teenagers they see is harder to serve than in sub urban or rural areas, and the competition for jobs is fiercer in Chicago.

But he's skeptical that the programs turn away those most in need of help. In order to be eligible to participate, teenagers have to be poor, high school dropouts, homeless, runaways, foster children, pregnant or parenting, or ex-offenders--all of those factors, along with low literacy skills, are considered substantial barriers to employment.

"The reality is that a lot of our clients have been abused or live in single-parent households. They have dropped out of school and been involved with the criminal justice system," Caminer said. "These are not our best or our brightest, or they would not qualify. It is not a surprise that we are not 100 percent successful."

Jim "Doc" Nichols is a tall, pencil-thin man who wears a checkered red, teen and black hat. He paces as he teaches his GED class. This late fall afternoon, he is preparing his class for a grammar test. He walks his stunts through each question. One of his habits is to hold worksheets in front of his mouth as he talks.

From behind the papers comes a booming voice. "The beautiful monarch butterfly flew across the pond. Which one is the adjective?" he asks.

The six students have their legs stretched in front of them. The Goodwill Industries' youth employment program is one of a few in the city targeted at young black men, the group least likely to get jobs. None of Nichols' students have completed high school. Many are fathers and have criminal backgrounds.

Most of them still have their thin, youthful physiques and faces. They wear large clothes that swallow them but aren't flashy--hooded sweatshirts and white t-shirts with jeans. Most wear one or two square diamond earrings.

On this afternoon, one of their parole officers, with a bulletproof vest over his shirt, observes part of the class. His presence makes the young men noticeably uneasy.

The conference room where they meet has some homey touches-something the program directors say is important. In the corner, there's a colorful children's kitchen set and a pile of toys. On the wall, a poster shows about 20 African slaves with a statement about how strength is found in the people who must struggle the most against adversity.

Most of the students eat chips and drink Hawaiian Punch out of cans. Yet they pay attention to Nichols.

"Which one is the adjective?" he asks again.

"'Pond,'" one student offers.

"No. An adjective-what is an adjective? Which one is an adjective?"

"'Butterfly'?" another asks, more tentatively.

"No," Nichols says.

"The adjective is 'beautiful,' dog," says Tyrone Canada, a thin 21-year-old with narrow eyes and long hair in a single braid.

"Yes!" Nichols responds as if he has won the lottery. He tells the men that one of his hobbies is taking pictures of butterflies, and that he has a membership to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Lincoln Park where a 28-foot-tall greenhouse is kept full of them. "I am going to take you there one day," he says. A few of the young men offer a half smile. Later, they say they like Nichols because he is patient and caring, spending time to take them places and asks them how their days are going.

One of the key components of the Goodwill program is helping the participants get their GEDs. But Nichols and Malcolm Jackson, the program coordinator, stress that much of what they do is fortify these young men as they go out into what will be, for them, a harsh labor market. They try to create a warm environment by always having food on the table, offering a lot of praise and sticking with the guys even when they make mistakes. They also have long group-style discussions where they talk about everything from being black men in America, to raising children, to avoiding getting in trouble with the law.

Before getting jobs, and even once they have them, Nichols says, the young men will have to cope with ingrained biases that see them as lazy and violent.

"These are marginalized people," says Nichols, a 68-year-old African American.

The program's leaders are not alone in realizing that young black men have particular problems, some societal and some internal, in trying to get and keep jobs. Jobs for Youth/Chicago, Chicago's largest job placement program for young people, has started a support group for young men.

During the last three years, nine agencies received federal dollars earmarked for young ex-offenders looking for work, and 67 percent of their clients were men. But that funding ended in late 2004. Agencies that don't have specialized services for young men often have trouble attracting them; women make up 60 percent of teens in youth employment programs.

Nationally, over the past 25 years, black men between the ages of 18 and 24 have seen big drops in employment; they now lag 30 percentage points behind men of other races. At the same time, low-income black women, some pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, have seen their prospects rise.

This trend is apparent in Chicago, especially for those out of school with no more than high school diplomas. Thirty-one percent of the young black men who fit this profile were employed, according to the 2000 census. The rest were either unemployed, serving in the military or out of the labor force altogether--which includes people who have stopped looking for jobs. That same year, 33 percent of black women with the same educational background were employed, as were 74 percent of white men.

Experts have offered a variety of reasons why young black men have been left behind.

For one, they have high dropout rates. About 22 percent of the city's black men between the ages of 16 and 24 are not in school and do not have high school diplomas, according to a study by Boston's Northeastern University. But, while Latino men have higher dropout rates, they are more likely to have jobs, the data show.

Thirty years ago, young men could get industrial and manufacturing jobs and make enough to raise a family. The few such jobs that still exist mostly go to Latinos, says Bill Leavy, director of the Greater West Town Project, which offers a training program in manufacturing, shipping and receiving. Leavy has been running employment programs in Chicago for more than 25 years.

The way it goes is that "blacks aren't hired, and Latinos aren't paid," he says. This is the result of stereotypes that paint Latino men as hardworking--but easily exploited--immigrants, and black men as lackadaisical, he says.

Andrew Sum, director at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Boston's Northeastern, agrees, adding that immigrants are the only group that has seen gains in employment during the recession. And those willing to hire black men often pick older ones who seem less threatening and more stable, he says.

Retail and service sector jobs are all that are left in many neighborhoods. Sheryl Holmes, chief executive officer for Community Assistance Programs, which runs a youth employment program in the South Side's Englewood neighborhood, says stores and restaurants are more open to hiring women than men. "I find that employers are afraid of the young men," she says. "They don't have much experience with them and they just listen to what they hear on the television and they become afraid. There is stiff competition out there for jobs, and the employers figure, 'Why bother?'"

Paris Craig, who attends a GED class at Jobs for Youth/Chicago, believes he has experienced discrimination in his job search. He filled out 18 applications and has gotten no calls back. And, recently, he says, a "young lady" friend of his went into a sandwich restaurant and asked if they were hiring. The manager told her yes and gave her an application.

A few hours later, he says, he went into the same restaurant and asked for an application, but was told they weren't hiring. Craig says he doesn't know why he was turned away, but guesses it had something to do with the fact that he is a black man. He also wonders if his hairstyle is to blame. Craig has dark chocolate-colored skin and about a dozen thin braids in rows against his scalp.

Not hiring him because of that, he says, is ridiculous. "I have never been locked up. I don't deal drugs or gangbang," he says. "If you get to know me, I am not the stereotypical black male. In fact, I am scared of the drug dealers and gang bangers--same as you."

In studies, employers admit that they believe black men fit a negative profile, says Kirk E. Harris, senior vice president of the Chicago-based Family Support America, a national information clearinghouse. In addition to this enduring racism, young black men often have to deal with employers who say that "soft skills," such as how an applicant presents himself, are more important than ever, says Harris. One of his specialties is fatherhood programs. "What they are saying is that how you look and how you talk really matter in whether you get the job," he says. "For young black men, this means that they must be multicultural. They have to know the latest rap artist in order to get along with their friends and they need to know how to operate in this other world of work."

Harris adds that braids are so off-putting to employers that, in order to land a job, Craig and other young men must cut them. It shouldn't be that way, he says. "The only thing an employer should be looking at is the young man's skills. But we just live in this society. We don't make the rules of engagement."

The prejudice against young black en is compounded by the fact at many have criminal backgrounds. In 2000, a third of those released from Illinois prisons were between the ages of 17 and 24, and they were more likely than other parolees to return to prison within three years, according to a Chicago Reporter analysis of Illinois Department of Corrections data. About 60 percent of those in state prisons are black. Many studies have documented that it is harder for ex-offenders to get jobs than those without criminal records.

Canada, of the Goodwill program, spent a year in prison for firing a gun while he belonged to a gang. Since he was released in June, he has been applying for jobs and says he will take whatever he can get. His girlfriend gave birth to a daughter while he was in prison and is pregnant with his second child. Canada says he feels pressure to support his family, but his conviction seems to be the excuse employers need to turn him away. "I don't feel like I get a fair shake," he says.

An additional stumbling block for some young men, experts say, is that they worry that child support will eat up all their money once they start work.

The 1996 Welfare Reform Act mandated that states more aggressively identify fathers to recover some of the benefits given to mothers and children.

Some experts say this increased enforcement could play a role in the lack of vigor some men bring to their job searches.

But a small number of young men in Illinois actually have child support orders against them. In Cook County, 2,789 residents between 16 and 24 have such orders, according to the Illinois Department of Public Aid. About 30 percent are connected to welfare cases.

Thomas Cauley was sent to the Goodwill program by the child support court. A thick man with wrinkles across his forehead that make him look like he could be in his 40s, he is 23 and has three children. He says he has some concern about child support taking all his earnings, but he still wants a job. He already owes more than $1,000 and doesn't want his bill to get any bigger. Being completely dependent on his family for money wears on his self-esteem.

One day after class, Nichols starts talking about the emotional toll joblessness takes on the young men. They often talk tough and are full of bravado.

But Nichols says the young men aren't as confident as they seem. His job is to build them up--a difficult task considering all that is trying to tear them down. He also tries to get them to believe in their dreams again. "They do have aspirations--we all do," he says. "But so many things stand in their way. My job is to diminish that, to show them they can do anything. I have to love them unconditionally."

Jim "Doc" Nichols is a teacher in a GED program at Goodwill Industries, but he also serves as a surrogate grandfather to many of his students.

THE NUMBERS

Where the Jobs Are

Teenagers on Chicago's North Side are more likely to be working than those on the South Side. Experts say there are more businesses on the North Side, and that professional parents have more connections.

Fewer than 20 percent of 16- to 19-year-olds working

* 20-29 percent o 16- to 19-year-olds working

* 30-39 percent of 16- to 19-year-olds working

* 40 percent or more 16- to 19-year-olds working

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Community Renewal Society
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