"Unemployment for African Americans is projected to reach a 25-year high this year, according to a study released Thursday by an economic think tank, with the national rate soaring to 17.2 percent and the rates in five states exceeding 20 percent.

Blacks as well as Latinos were far behind whites in employment levels even when the economy was booming. But throughout the recession, the unemployment rate has grown much faster for African Americans and Latinos than for whites, according to the study by the Economic Policy Institute. [...]

The economic devastation for blacks and Hispanics is underscored in another study issued this week by a Boston-based nonprofit research organization called United for a Fair Economy. "State of the Dream," its annual report issued in connection with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, asserted that blacks and Hispanics are three times as likely to be poor as whites; that blacks earn 62 cents for every dollar whites earn; and that the family median net worth of whites in 2007 was $170,400, compared with $27,800 for blacks and Hispanics.

"We have a long history of discriminatory policies and practices, including outright segregation, redlining, misguided urban renewal plans and predatory lending, that have prevented people of color from building up personal wealth," said Brian Miller, executive director of United for a Fair Economy and co-author of the report. [...]"

Read the full article by Dion Haynes in The Washington Post.