O ne of Tuesday’s State of the Union applause lines came when President Trump said, “Something I’m very proud of: African American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded.” The same claim had been made days before, after rapper and business mogul Jay-Z expressed some cautionary comments about black prosperity on CNN’s The Van Jones Show. The remarks prompted Trump to scold Jay-Z with a tweet claiming that his year-old administration was responsible for black unemployment being at a historic low. On the eve of the State of the Union address, Erin Aubry Kaplan spoke with economist Steven Pitts about the president’s claim. Pitts is the associate chair of the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education; his field of focus is issues of job quality and African American workers. Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political and social issues. The...