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Black unemployment rates in the United States are at record lows. But is it time to celebrate? Problem Solved examines Black job seekers’ experience in the modern labor market. Drawing on years of fieldwork and interviews with Black working-class job seekers in Inglewood, California—a historically Black city remade by stadiums, a new federal jobs system, and the promise of online work—author Jasmine D. Hill explores what a racialized consciousness can and cannot do in the face of inequality. Hill shows that while these modern “solutions” reduce unemployment, they also create a wider problem: working poverty. Problem Solved reveals how racialized capitalism, predatory corporate development, and notions of racial progress in the labor market brought on by technology can mask persistent inequalities and harm the Black working class. These interventions also undermine the hard-won skepticism that has long allowed Black Americans to see clearly what this country claims about opportunity. To counter these forces, Hill points to a tradition of potential solutions, including radical political education for economic justice.
Jasmine D. Hill is an award-winning researcher and Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she writes about racial inequality in the labor market and the experiences of Black workers and families within racial capitalism.