General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: So the Post Office Whipped UPS and FedEx in terms of delivering packages for Christmas 2013 [View all]kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)about racism as well as making business for their corporate buddies. For years, the Federal government and especially the USPS was the premier equal employment opportunity employer in the USA. During the early 50s and right after WWII, many black returning soldiers could find no decent paying jobs anywhere except within the Federal government. For many well educated black men, the only good jobs for them were within the Federal government...and most especially in the post office. Unionized and working for fair wages and good benefits, black heads of households were able to provide a decent standard of living for their families, pay for higher education and and put a little aside for their future. For years, black men with PhDs and Masters degrees wither worked as cab drivers or within the post offices in major cities including D.C. Naturally, the ignorant and the bigots or more precisely the ignorant bigots found this good fortune of minority men to be a huge problem and used this as a basis for smearing the Fed government and any unionized workforce that provided good wages and benefits to blacks and women. The stereotype of the "lazy, black government worker" predated the "welfare queen" by at least two decades. And you know the rest of the story...the attacks continue especially since so many educated minorities and women once found good paying jobs and benefits within the Federal government and later within state governments. Thus you have the never-ending attack on public sector workers at the local, state, and Federal levels...from trash collectors (since gone the way of private contractors and huge increases in costs to municipalities) to postmen and women.
Just a brief summary...but study more about the issue to find out the untold story.