Everything Is Bad! (Unemployment Edition)
Welcome to Black America, where no one has a job, and our government is trying to destroy us.
On Thursday, when I wasn't trying to sell half my wardrobe on my birthday (recession indicator!), I was reading stories on The 19th and URL Media about the plight of Black women who once had good government jobs or were working hard in the private sector, who are now unemployed, demoralized, and broke.
It's very much like the Grinch came early two years ago and never stopped Grinching, so all the Black women in Black America are struggling with the having of nothing.
(The Grinch is "anti-Black racism" in this story. He's also orange and possibly demented.)
But we're not alone!
While more than 600,000 Black women lost their jobs between 2025 and now, Black men aren't doing much better. Recent reports show they are also under siege, with more than 500,000 Black men also out of work.
That's more than 1.1 million Black people, and we're only 15 percent of the U.S. population!
Also, while the government says unemployment is somewhere around 4 percent, Black unemployment is higher, at 7 percent. And those numbers are likely far worse than reported because of how unemployment is counted.
Many people who lost their jobs aren't receiving unemployment because they maxed out months ago and fell off the reporting rolls. They're the "functionally unemployed."
And the Ludwig Institute reports that the functional unemployment rate is likely around 24.3 percent.
I'm not really enjoying living through every verse of Sade's "Feel No Pain," y'all!
I've been without a job since January 2025, being an early trendsetter (as always) and leaving my job a good three months before the government started pushing Black women out of the public sector. I also got out before DEI officially died in the private sector. While I've managed to cobble together a living through consulting brands on their digital media strategies, freelance writing, and the occasional live event, I'm Dorinda Medley to this shit, and doing "not well, bitch!"
It also doesn't help that most of my friends and colleagues in media are out of work too.
For a decade, I was the person people came to for a job. Now the people I would go to for a gig are also struggling. And the few people I know who still have jobs are dealing with such fraught circumstances that they're in no position to help anyone. They're all one bad day from joining the rest of us in "the poor house."
Wait? Do they still have poorhouses? Pretty sure the government cut those under Reagan or something.
I mean, I'll probably be OK. I still have marketable skills, but a lot of people do, and they're living in their cars. It's just a dark, bad time.
But maybe we can send some Congress critters to the unemployment line come November 3rd? If that sounds appealing, check your registration, get your mail-in or absentee ballot ready, vote early if you can, and know your rights if federal agents show up at your polling place on Election Day. We have the power to create the change we want, and it starts with voting. Emphasis on "start," because no matter who wins Congress in November, the road ahead will be dark and filled with terrors, and it's going to take all of us to push back and stop this country's rapid slide into oblivion.
Winter is coming.
And in this story, winter is basically the end of everything we've known this country to be. Will that end be a new beginning, where we emerge better, stronger, and on a path to Democracy for all, or will it be a rapid decline in our quality of life and freedoms?
Well, just as George R.R. Martin is never going to finish writing "Winds of Winter," our future also remains unwritten. Hopefully we'll do a better job with America's final season than the showrunners on Game of Thrones did.
The Problem with 'Potential'
On Wednesday, I wrote about the Cornell 7 story, the true "potential" of young men accused of being predators, and tied it to why women—especially women of color—are being pushed out of leadership positions in all fields.
It all boils down to how we might hold bad men accountable and keep predators out of our lives—for good.
The men accused in this case are often protected because of the three P's—power, privilege, and potential. Many come from powerful families that sit at the intersection of wealth and the privileges that come with it. And when women like the accuser come forward, they're often told not to think of how a crime may have been committed, but of the potential of the accused.
But their potential is the exact reason we should prosecute rapists and why the media should amplify these stories. Because a person who commits rape can have the potential to become a leader. The potential to become an executive or a politician. The potential to sit in some of the highest offices in the land. The potential to be a president. If you allow someone who would violate another human to access power, they don't become more remorseful or respectful; they become more reckless and abusive. And that's how women's rights and protections come under attack. It's how Roe v. Wade gets overturned. It's how the men in the Epstein files go uninvestigated and unprosecuted by multiple administrations.
It's how you can incite a mob in an attempt to overturn an election, but go unpunished.
All our problems start at the top, and if the person at the top is an accused predator, we probably have a lot of problems.
Read the full story "What the Cornell 7 Story Reveals About Women, the Media, Race and Power."
The Midterms Are Coming, Are You Ready?
For the last few weeks, I've been writing URL Media's We The Many newsletter about the U.S. Midterms, and ... baybee, I've dropped some bangers!
Like this recent one about the GOP dusting off their old racist dog whistle hits in hopes of scaring up some votes this November.
The new slate of attack ads is AI-produced and heavy on Democrats allegedly wanting to “defund the police.” And while “Willie Horton” is sometimes still Black, other times he’s Latino or an immigrant being accused of destroying America from within. This, of course, ignores that if you’re white, you’re more likely to be attacked, defrauded, killed, or maimed by another white person, as most crimes are intraracial.
It also ignores the reality that crime across the country is down. Because of this, the GOP—they do control all three branches of government, after all—could feasibly run on that, but some of the safest large cities are Democratic strongholds, while some of the most violent ones, like my hometown of St. Louis, Mo., are in red states.
It’s a mixed bag, and not the surefire hit some are hoping it could be.
Said Republican Sen. Thom Tillis to the Associated Press: “I don’t see that bubbling up as a major issue for the voters.”