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Record highs, housiing recovering, unemployment falling but much of black america left behind. >> what we see everyday is people struggling to put food on the table. >> reporter: at 13.7%, african-american unemployment is more than double the rate for whites. martin allen is trying to change that in his low income brooklyn community after turning his own life around. >> i was in prison, finishing up a sentence. i saw my stepson come through the same prison walls that i was in. right then, something went off in my head to say enough is enough. >> reporter: he started his own construction compan...

I did speak to one guy who is trying to change that, martin allen who spent 30 years in jail for robbery. he said i made some mistakes but it's my job to help young black and women get to work. take a listen. >> reporter: stocks hitting record highs and housing in recovery and unemployment falling but much of black america is feeling left behind. >> what we see every day is people struggling to put food on the table. >> reporter: at 13.7%, african-american unemployment is more than double the rate for whites. martin allen is trying to change that in his low income brooklyn community after turn...

Recently a young mother who fired a warning shot into the air after she was being attacked by her husband, into the air. no one was injured. she received a sentence of 20 years. in the same state. she couldn't hold her ground. that says to me that there is a difference in the way we dispense justice between those who are african-american or poor or minority than others. >> that same woman had a protective order against her husband as well because of abuse suffered in the marriage in the past. >> absolutely. >> a lot of questions surrounding that. i do want -- we have to meet the promise of get...

And it wouldn't even get to the house floor. >> yeah. let's look at some numbers, then we can analyze these together. the national unemployment rate is 7.8%. but if you break it down racially, for white americans, it is 6.4%. for african-americans, 13.7%. is there something that the president and our lawmakers can do to address that discrepancy? >> sure. starting with the american jobs act, there are a number of different proposals, everything from infrastructure to health care i.t. there are a number of folks who can be trained or already have specialized training and we just need to create o...

You regular stories of people living below the line. the policies and decisions that create the poverty in which they live, what they are doing to survive in tough circumstances and what we can do as a nation to affect poverty. we recognize it's a tough topic and many in politics prefer not to talk about it at all. that's exactly why we want to talk about it. although the official poverty rate didn't increase last year, it was still at 15%. translating to 46.2 million people. when you break it down by age, 21.9% are under the age of 18. 13.7% are between 18 and 64 and 8.7% are over the age of ...