Many of the people with whom I’ve debated have usually held the opinion that if one worked hard to qualify one’s self, one could obtain good paying employment.  I’ve been told to look at the Sunday papers.  I’ve been told that I’ll see a plethora of corporations who are looking for qualified applicants. The bottom line for my debating opponent has always been that, if one is not employed, one is lazy and just doesn’t want to work.

However, I saw and heard many people, especially African Americans, say that they tried to better themselves and tried to obtain employment, but were turned away. Consequently, many times the debate wound up being about the character of African Americans and their unwillingness to “pick themselves up by their boot straps and get a job.”

I lived in a predominantly Black neighborhood as a kid.  Many of my friends' parents worked as hard as any Caucasian I know and harder than many. I couldn’t believe that my friends’ parents were lying when they said they couldn’t get a job no matter how hard they tried.  They didn’t seem to me like people who didn’t want to work and they definitely weren’t lazy.

I really had no way to prove what I believed until I became an Operations Supervisor for a Fortune 500 global corporation.  In my article “Shock Over Richards’ Rant Curious”, I exposed some of the hiring practices of the corporation for which I worked.  It was then that I was able to understand that acceptance by the employers was the problem, not laziness on the part of the unemployed.