Transcription
What's good, people? Welcome back to the Onyx Report, black masculinist news for the day. Hope everybody's well. Like, share, subscribe, join, donate, hit the hype button, support the show so we can continue to bring you this independent black male thought.
Anyway, um, want to have a little conversation about, uh, careers. And I hear that in the spaces I entertain, uh, on YouTube, there's some very strong opinions about black male career options. And, um, I just kind of wanted to add a couple things to the conversation.
But before we get to that, um, y'all know, over here we like to shout out black men. And, uh, we have a series ongoing indefinitely, but quite organic, called the Sacred Black Masculine, right? #sacredblackmasculine. At random, as it crosses my desk, I like to point out black men who are doing what we're often accused of not doing on one level or another.
This is USA Today. And it deals with the recent shooting in San Diego at an Islamic center. All right. Uh, the article's titled "Beloved Security Guard Killed in a Mosque Shooting, Remembered as a Hero." Nearly $2 million has been raised for the family of Amin Abdullah, the security guard killed in an attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego. This is dated May 19th.
Um, yeah, and you can see here, you know, starts out with, uh, May My Thai Gutierrez talking about Amin on patrol, said she felt safe. He was like a hawk. She told USA Today, describing the fervent work ethic of Abdullah, a long-time and beloved security guard at the Islamic Center of San Diego. "Even if it was a quiet day, he was on alert and ready if anything happened."
On May 18th, Gutierrez's worst fears came true when two gunmen opened fire at the center in what police are investigating as a hate crime. Officials said it was Abdullah who confronted the gunmen and sacrificed his own life to protect worshippers, staff, and school children at the mosque. "His actions were heroic," San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said at a news conference. "Undoubtedly, he saved lives."
There's a picture of him right there. You know, um. And it says here, uh, Amin Abdallah, father of eight, long-time security guard at the Islamic Center of San Diego, said he was killed while confronting two gunmen who opened fire at the mosque. Um, you know, the suspected gunmen, ages 17 and 19, were found dead of what police described as self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Authorities have not yet identified the suspects as of May 19th.
A fundraiser for Abdallah's family, organized by the Islamic Center and the Council on American Islamic Relations, amassed more than $1.9 million in donations. The campaign mourns him as a San Diego martyr. Imam Taha Hussein, um, the director of the Islamic Center, told reporters that Abdallah's bravery saved as many as 140 children at the mosque school. "If he didn't do what he did and sacrificed his life, the two suspects would have easily access have easy access to every single classroom. We're so proud of him."
All right. Uh, it says the three people that were killed that day, uh, shortly before noon on May 18th, the two gunmen rushed past the security checkpoint at the mosque. Wahl said Abdallah didn't hesitate to act, authorities said, and began shooting at the suspects before they returned fire. While in the midst of a gun battle, Abdallah grabbed his radio and told the teachers to lock the doors. Wahl said Abdallah continued firing at the suspects before he was shot and killed outside the mosque.
As the firing unfolded nearby, teachers in the building scrambled to get children into hiding places. By the time the shooters reentered the building, the rooms they walked into were completely empty. Uh, two other men, um, uh, Uh, Nadir and Mansour, were shot and killed outside the building before the two suspects, uh, fled the scene. And, uh, they described him as a hero for many. Said he became a security guard in 2019 after the attacks in New Zealand at a mosque that killed 51 people. Um, after he was hired, he became a fixture at the mosque there. And kind of goes from there.
Uh, so I just wanted to kind of shout that out real quick before we get started. Tragic incident, and yet, you know, business was nonetheless handled. So, shout out to, uh, Abdallah Assoum well, uh, in his, uh, future and spirit. And, uh, yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, um, so yeah. I wanted to talk a little about career options. And part of the reason that we need to do this is things are changing so quickly. It's hard to keep track, right? Of where to go. Now, during the era I grew up in, you know, everybody was talking about going to college. Going to college was almost a guaranteed access to middle-class life, right? White-collar employment meant that that was the new shift. And then the 1970s, that was what was going on. I remember my mother was a little more keyed into that than my father. My father relied more on the work strategies that black men relied on. Truck driving, factory work, you know, um, >> [music] >> the kind of work that men often would even drop out of school and support families to work. Matter of fact, they put women through school working the kinds of jobs we worked. Problem was, by the time you got to the end of the 1970s with deindustrialization, those jobs went overseas. And black men had to scramble in the decades of work strategy that we had, or what work strategies ended up not working for us. But women were being pivoted into white-collar employment via higher education. You know, so you saw started to see more black men follow suit.
And just like in the '70s, as you had this shift to college education being the entrance to the middle class, a number of years ago, you started to hear more about STEM. In the last 15 odd years, more about moving into STEM fields. And now, at least in the spaces I entertain online, there's a lot of conversation about trades. But as far as college, this is the video that made me want to do this video. So, let's check out what's said here.
"Unfortunately, at Howard, and really across the country, we receive far fewer applications from black males than black females. I think in the 2025 application pool, we had upwards of 40,000 applications total. We had about 83 or 8400 from males. Now, to be clear, that's a a pretty significant number, especially when you think about our history. That's probably one of the largest pools of male applicants that we've ever received, but it pales in comparison to the black female."
Okay, I didn't cut it off there. That's where it it was cut, uh, when I first saw it, and I wasn't going to show the whole show anyway, even if I grabbed hold of it. I just wanted to point out that the numbers are pretty stark as far as college education and, uh, black male presence. Uh, especially at campuses like Howard, right? You know, it's a damn near might as well be a companion to Spelman at this point. And you see it reflected in the, uh, staff, the faculty, so on and so forth, from what I'm told.
But either way, uh, that said, um, when these kinds of conversations come up, what you hear a lot of is this, shoot, this question of, uh, moving into another direction. Uh, matter of fact, you'll hear more of something like this: "I would have gotten a trade early on. I eventually, later on, went back to get my, um, become an electrician. Um, but I would have done that a lot sooner. Maybe gotten, um, become an HVAC specialist or a plumber coupled with my college degree because I've come to learn that people in the trades make probably more than most individuals coming out of college. And people who have a trade are better positioned to start a business a lot sooner because they have a skill set that's usually in high demand. And for black men especially, since in most cases we lead the pack in unemployment and most corporations stay away from us for the most part, having this type of skill set will allow you to be able to provide for your family no matter where you are in the country. I would have gotten..."
So, that said, this is kind of what I hear more of. And I can't help whenever I hear this to think about somebody who, some of my long-term listeners might remember. There's a brother who was, he was a, a subscriber to a number of our channels, BGS, Green Gorilla, uh, you know, uh, Dr. Niel, you know, he's a long-time a listener and supporter. His name was Force Windu. And Force Windu self-deleted a number of years ago. Um, so I partly mention him because of what he taught me, but also just to shout out the brother and make sure he's not completely forgotten in these spaces. I mean, um, I remember talking to his wife after he passed, and we did a whole dedicated show where a number of content creators whom he supported got together and just mentioned the brother. So, I just want to kind of keep his name out there.
But Force Windu was an electrician. And actually talking to him and his wife after he passed was was illuminating because she talked about the hardships that he entertained. I think he was, I think he was in Philly, but he was definitely East Coast. And she talked about the the roadblocks that he kind of went through, uh, trying to become an electrician. And he talked, and she talked about, he bought, he said a little bit of this to me before he passed, but she kind of went into detail telling me their family story. And she was talking about everything from nepotism to racism, you know, keeping him out of certain spaces even though he was, you know, he got the proper certification, had the proper number of hours and experience and >> [sighs] >> And what it taught me whenever I think back to Force Windu was that for black men, there's no guaranteed path. Everything is under question. Everything is under examination. Everything shifts when we walk in the room. And one, one of the things his passing taught me was that whatever you choose, you're going to have to stay light on your feet. You're going to have to be flexible. You're going to have to be able to adjust quickly because even though something may be considered stable for some groups, they don't generally tend to be for black men.
Now, before I go into a little more evidence on the whole question of trades, I wanted to kind of give you a little information on where black men kind of stand, okay? Uh, okay, so I was scrolling through this. Let me go back to the top. So, this is blackdemographics.com. Shout out to them. I donate to them on a monthly basis. You can see right here on the right. Keep the data free and updated. Just donate a dollar ninety-nine a month. I highly recommend you do so just to kind of support it, to keep the information fresh, as I said, and so on and so forth. So, we're going to look at a little bit about black men's education and work patterns just so we have some context for where we are.
So, education-wise, you can kind of see from ages 25 and up as it relates to high school diplomas all the way through college, you can see the majority of where black men find themselves. Now, 59% has actually gone to college at least at some point. Um, you can see 23% have a bachelor's degree and higher. Right? It's smaller than all men, but there it is nonetheless. Uh, 22% have some college with no degree. 29% are high school graduates. You kind of see the breakdown from there. So, you know, this lets you know that the majority of black men are not going the academic route, per se.
But, we continue here. Percentage in the labor force, about 64%, which is lower than 78% for all men. Uh, percent, uh, percent of labor force who are employed, 93%. Right? Versus 95% for all men. So, we have that. Um, full-time work. Right? 45% have worked full-time year-round. Full-time median earnings 2023 is $51,266. That's about $12,000 less than all men, but still, uh, middle class. You know, over $50,000. Right? Um, you got 34% with no earnings all year. 24% between $30,000 and $50,000 or $49,000. 26% between $50,000 and $74,999. 28%. $75,000 or more. And 54% $50,000 or more. Right? So, this is where black men kind of are.
Um, now, in terms of where black men are with jobs, right? You got the top five metro centers being San Diego, Seattle, Denver, Phoenix, Minneapolis. And the bottom five, Milwaukee, Birmingham, Little Rock, Cleveland, and St. Louis. Right? And it even breaks down black men for every 100 black women in terms of, um, the numbers there. Right? So, apparently you have more black men in the top five metros and fewer in the bottom five. You know, black full-time working population is $50,000 or more in these top areas. And it breaks down some of the smaller metropolitan areas, if you're interested. Um, let me see.
Now, I'm just going to put this up here just for a second. You can freeze-frame and look at it more in-depth if you choose. What when I say, and this is a whole different subject I talk talked about a few shows ago, when I talked about black men pulling out of marriages since the 1960s, this is the chart that that we can kind of see that happening. Right? Black men more likely to be married than white men until 1960, and then the shift takes place. So, you can look at that more in-depth at your, uh, at your leisure. All right.
And the second one I show is, uh, this page here that goes into black employment, so you can see, right? You got 69% black men employed. You got about 25% not in the labor force, 5% unemployed, um, and then 1% military. See the breakdown for black women. About 3% more who are employed, 2% fewer who are not in the labor force, about equal on unemployment, but these vary. Right? These numbers tend to vary. This data here is, um, 2022. So, this is obviously before we had the, uh, the last year and a half, you know? But these are just kind of the long-term numbers.
But here we go. So, these, there's two. This chart and the next one is the one are the ones I really want you to look at. So, this one's black occupations. See if I can enlarge it a bit here. All right. All right. All right. So, this just covers black doesn't, um, Oh, no, I'm sorry. It does. It does do men. Uh, so, men and women, so men is the middle section, women are the last section, and then you have the total up top. But you can see for black men, terms of occupations, majority are actually in production, transportation, and material moving, followed by management, business, science, and the arts. Right? Then you got service occupations, sales and office occupations, and then natural resources, construction, and maintenance. All right? So, that's the general breakdown for where men are in terms of employment. And this is probably, this show is, is probably more for young men, but I'm going to, I'm going to tell you why I'm doing this and what I hope to gain out of this conversation at the end. But I just want to give a kind of breakdown on where black men are.
Now, this one deals with black occupations more in detail, but it doesn't differentiate by gender. But, you can kind of, Oh my god, it does. My goodness, I'm sorry. So, you have the left column says men, the middle column says women, and then percentage of women, and you can kind of go from there. Uh, it's a little clearer now that it's larger. My eyesight is horrible. My apologies. So, uh, management, business, you know, you can see the breakdowns there. 694,000. It's fewer than, uh, the women there. But we're dealing with total employees, and there are more black women and more women in the workforce. Uh, so, those kind of skew those numbers. Nevertheless, um, you can kind of see the breakdown there. All right? So, for black men, uh, appears that management, uh, have the highest numbers. Yeah. And then, uh, yeah, I have, uh, food preparation. Okay, hold on. This chart is bigger than my screen. So, actually, uh, so, let me see. So, actually, the largest numbers are in transportation, looks to be followed by material moving, production, and it goes all the way back up to management, and continues to go down from there. Let me see. So, management 694, then you go into sales and related at 628,000, 684,000 at office and administrative support, and you go into food preparation, building and grounds cleaning and maintenance with over 400,000. Um, so, you can kind of see the breakdown here. So, this is where you tend to find black men.
And as the economy is shifting, the job market is shifting. One of the biggest questions we have is where things are going. Now, in terms of the trades where I hear a lot of people talking about, you know, moving away from college, going to trades, and I'm seeing this. Cuz I'm seeing fewer black men coming to campuses, coming to and to academia. Um, there are some warnings across the board. Uh, we're going to listen to about four minutes of this, but, you know me, everything is on 1 and 1/2 speed. Check out what this man has to say about the state of affairs for blue-collar employment.
"And this is the biggest reason why America's gamble on blue-collar isn't working because money is getting spent on the wrong programs in the wrong places. Last week, The Wall Street Journal released a massive story on why so many people who chose careers in the trades still ended up with more debt and lower salaries than traditional college graduates. One of their stories followed a US Army veteran who moved from Tennessee to Houston to attend the Universal Technical Institute, where he took on $45,000 in student loans and then got hired at an automotive company in North Carolina that's paying him $23 an hour, which, if you don't know, is only about a $47,000 annual salary before any overtime. However, his company was also willing to reimburse his $250 a month student loan payments, so this ended up getting framed as something of a feel-good story. But let's really zoom out for just a second. In 2026, the average college graduate has $32,000 in student debt if they have vassal loans or $42,000 in debt if they took out private loans, but those are a lot less common, so most people are closer to that 32. As of last spring, the average college graduate is earning over $66,000 straight out of school with hiring expected to increase by 5.6% this year. So, the average traditional college student is taking on it less debt and making more money than this feel-good story about the trades that The Wall Street Journal was highlighting. Another example they gave talked about an aircraft maintenance program at a trade school in Florida that cost about $40,000 over the course of 14 months. And this one hit pretty close to home because I used to be the engineering career specialist at Utah State University, which is a traditional four-year school that also happens to offer an aircraft maintenance degree, which in 2026 only costs $18,000 for in-state students. Less than half the cost of that private trade school in Florida, while also offering all of the other resources that a university provides. Like dorm life, sports games, clubs, dating, parties, etc., etc. From both a financial and a lifestyle well-being standpoint, the program at USU is an infinitely better deal than the one in Florida. But, policymakers over the past 6 years have seriously failed to see the nuances of that reality when it comes to workforce training. And this is where America's blue-collar gamble ultimately fell apart. Because the problem was never that universities are bad and trade schools are good. The problem is that policymakers treated a return to the trades as a universal solution to a problem that was never universal in the first place. Labor shortages are not national. They are local. And throwing money into workforce training programs only works when it matches regional demand. Over the past 6 years, the United States funneled $1.3 trillion towards restoring blue-collar infrastructure because it felt like the right thing to do after decades of telling young adults that college was the only answer. And also because it fed into a really appealing narrative about who we are as Americans, which ultimately helped them get more votes. Without really stopping to ask, are there truly enough stable, well-paying careers for young adults on the other side of today's job market? At the end of the day, America's blue-collar gamble isn't failing because the trades aren't valuable. They absolutely are. It's failing because we keep treating one category of careers or one category of education as a universal solution in an economy where there are no universal answers."
I'll see you in the next one. All right. So, I thought that was pretty interesting, especially the tail end. The [snorts] tail end of it is more what I was focused on more than anything else. And that's where he says that [music] uh, you know, there's a question of how many of those jobs that are available. But, what he doesn't add is race into the equation. So, how many of those jobs are available and how many are accessible to black males, especially when you consider this history here.
"In New York and Philadelphia, blacks own less than 20% of the cabs. Government licensing closes the door to economic opportunity. Nearly a thousand occupations in the United States exclude people who do not have licenses. Now, I do know this is an older video, but just give it a minute. Sometimes the licenses cost money. Sometimes they require the applicant to pass complicated tests that have little to do with the job. Sometimes getting a license requires a friend in the business. All those licensing laws do just one thing, keep outsiders out. Those outsiders are often members of minority groups. Uh, back during the '30s and '40s, uh, there were practices, uh, that that were rampant in the South, particularly, uh, in the, the former slave-holding states, uh, where blacks were specifically excluded by predominantly white unions. Example, electricians unions, plumbers unions, railroad firemen unions, and at that time, the the records of history will demonstrate that, uh, it was the purpose of white unions to exclude, uh, blacks, minorities in general, from the workplace. In fact, there were statements specifically made in connection with occupational licensing regulations that if this law is successful, it will have the effect of reducing to a minimum the involvement of blacks or Negroes, as they were called then, in the workplace."
"This is the Mount Zion United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. Back in 1880, when Washington was still a segregated city, this beautiful building was built by black artisans, black plumbers, carpenters, and masons. And mind you, all working on the black supervision. So, in many other important public buildings in the city and in cities throughout the South. Today, that sounds remarkable. Even now, black people have a hard time breaking into the skilled construction trades. The fact is, in the late 1800s, black people were better represented in many of the skilled trades than they are today. Today, such blatant racism is illegal, and many union leaders would like to see more black workers in union jobs. But again, good intentions don't always produce good results. The effect of the government endorsing, uh, collective bargaining and the closed shop concept within the union movement was that it, uh, basically locked in place, to a large degree, for a generation or two to come, uh, white domination of unions. And when you confer upon a union, in effect, monopoly rights to bargain collectively for the entire workforce, uh, they, in effect, can lay out the conditions, they can set the price, uh, for their labor, uh, and they can control entrance to that particular industry."
"Restrictive labor laws are just like minimum wages in some ways. In effect, they force inexperienced workers to charge more for their labor and thus keep them from competing for jobs. There are many examples, but one of the most infamous is the Davis-Bacon Act, passed in the racist days of 1931, but still in force today. The Davis-Bacon Act is a 50-year-old law passed during the depression, the purpose of which was to prevent employers from undercutting wages at a time when it was very much a seller's market in employment, a very high unemployment rate, and it was a worker protection act. Now, it's very much outdated today because the Davis-Bacon Act, 50 years later, has become a union protection act. The net effect of the Davis-Bacon Act today is that it favors union construction firms. Most blacks are in non-union construction firms or are independent tradesmen. Davis-Bacon excludes them from most government contracts."
"Was the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. And the Davis-Bacon Act says that all workers in federally funded or federally assisted construction projects [music] must be paid the prevailing wage. And if you look on page 6513 of the Congressional Record on March 31st, 1931, you'll you'll see Congressional testimony where Congressman will say, 'See that contractor over there? He brings cheap colored labor up from the South, puts them in cabins, and it's labor of that sort that has to compete that white Americans are competing against.' There was all kinds of testimony in support of the Davis-Bacon Act that's that was that demonstrated that they wanted to keep blacks out of construction. And see, the tragedy of it is that the Davis-Bacon Act is still on the books today. And [music] and and another part of the tragedy is that black Congressmen, they also support the Davis-Bacon Act. Now, they support the Davis-Bacon Act because unions want the Davis-Bacon Act. Now, the the people who support the Davis-Bacon Act, they they just don't use the same rhetoric. >> [music] >> They use a more enlightened rhetoric in support of the Davis-Bacon Act."
Okay. So, here you have this whole question of where black men fit in this whole dynamic. How secure our our options are. Right? Especially when you consider, uh, let me see if I can, How do I bring this in? Bear with me. Let me going to transfer this over here. Okay. Especially when you consider that, right? You do have conversations going on since April of this year, uh, about repealing it. Right? You have the Davis-Bacon Repeal Act going on '25 to '26. Right? So, hopefully, we'll be able to find out some more about where that stands very soon.
But really, the focus of today's video is twofold. Right? It's twofold. Number one is to warn us to never get too complacent in any strategy because things are moving too fast. And the moment we think one thing is is universal, the ground shifts underneath our feet. So, we got to stay versatile. We got to stay open to new information and definitely stay in dialogue with black men about what's going on on the ground.
Number two is I was hoping to use the comment section as a space, particularly for young men to listen to brothers who are in the fields that they're interested in, give insight and advice about where they are. What state of, uh, affairs is going on in various, uh, various fields, various areas where black men work. Whether it's the trades, whether it's in the academy, whether it's construction, it doesn't matter. I want to know what are the state, what is the state of affairs in each given field possible based on who's listening to this program? And would you recommend it for young black men trying to find a place to get started? What advice would you have based on what you've experienced, based on what you've observed? You know. Break it down so that people can have some options because part of the problem with looking all at all this stuff online is it doesn't often, um, appeal to black men. It's not often targeted to black men, and you definitely don't always get to hear it from black men who are having these direct experiences. So, please, um, use the comment section to actually give brothers insight. Some who might be trying to enter the workforce, some who might have been pushed out and are trying to find a way back in, and some who, um, you know, are trying to transition from one, uh, type of labor to another. Hopefully, uh, the dialogue that will take place, uh, in the comment section will be useful in that regard. You know.
But at the end of the day, um, I'm not at all arguing that the academy is solely the way to go. Um, nor am I arguing that any one field is the way to go. Um, I myself, you know, got my training in the humanities. My son is is it just completing his junior year in college, but he's in a STEM field. Um, and then, of course, we're hearing a lot of information about tech. Questions about what AI is influencing and what's being shut down, and then conversations, of course, about trade jobs. So, let's break it down in the sub, in the comment section about what the best options may be to be may be. What are the roadblocks? What are the things to consider? Let's go from there. All right. Appreciate it. Hope you all are well. Look forward to reading the comments. I'll let y'all later. Peace.