In 2011, as Illinois politicians redrew congressional district maps, they exercised a power grab that was intended to protect those already in office or even gain more seats for Democrats.

Officials split some of the state's growing Latino population between districts already represented by Democrats and those where they hoped to see Republicans lose. An incumbent Democrat like former Chicago-area Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. was supposed to have little problem holding a seat that for three decades has been held by an African-American. But in 2011, no one knew then that Jackson would spend a portion his term in seclusion trying to manage a mental illness. And no one knew that, after winning reelection earlier this month, Jackson would resign amid allegations of misappropriated campaign funds.

Now, with Jackson out and Illinois set to stage a special election in February, Jackson’s former district could end up being represented by a white Democrat from Chicago’s suburbs. And for the crowded field of mostly black candidates that have expressed interest in Jackson’s old job, winning support of Latino voters and at least a smattering of white voters may be the key to victory.

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In the 1970s and 80s, political power struggles flared in cities around the country as whites decamped to the suburbs, said David Bositis, a senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Minority voters were frequently divided among crowded fields of black candidates, leaving room for well-financed white candidates often backed by conservative business interests to win by narrow majorities, Bositis said.

That’s a pattern that dominated elections in cities like St. Louis for decades, according to Bositis. In the 1980s and 1990s, the number of black elected officials peaked in cities like Los Angeles. Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, cities like Baltimore and Gary, Ind. -- a city which was then about 90 percent black -- began to elect more liberal white politicians with substantial support from black voters. Black officeholders had to work harder to appeal to white liberals and, in the Dallas and Los Angeles areas, even fought to have them drawn into their once overwhelmingly black districts. Now, the growing presence of Latinos will likely spur a new political resort that begins with more politicians courting Latino voters and may later lead to an increase in Latino officeholders, Bositis said.

"But in a lot of places that’s still a ways off," Bositis said. "It’s not just about population numbers. Its also about age."

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The people are in one place, many of the new jobs in another, according to a recent report.

"Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs In Metropolitan America," a May report from the Brookings Institute, found that nearly 70 percent of people in large metropolitan areas live near some form of public transit. And despite transit route coverage varying from region to region, one rule held true: it's city dwellers with low incomes that have the best access to public transportation. Suburban communities occupied by middle-income and low-income families have the least access.

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This jobs-transportation disconnect has helped to fuel the nation's stunningly high black unemployment rate, Roderick Harrison, a Howard University Sociologist and fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Research, told The Huffington Post in April.

"The jobs are being created in the sorts of places you can't get to without a car or without dedicating significant time and significant resources to the commute," Harrision said.

Workers of color are disproportionately clustered in low-pay and low-skill jobs, making them more likely to be dependent on public transportation. That was the reality before the recession, and it hasn't changed now that the recession has ended, Harrison said.

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Two weeks.

That was the longest stretch of time Michael Seals, 58, has ever looked for work. That was the longest stretch, until now.

Seals, an Atlanta native, has watched his hometown grow from charming city to thriving metropolis -- and the fortunes of many fellow African Americans grow with it. He describes himself as a man who is good with his hands, having spent nearly a decade as a supervisor at an area cabinet company. The firm specialized in outfitting kitchens and bathrooms in the high-rises that changed Atlanta's skyline, and in the subdivisions that transformed what had been the countryside into sprawling suburbia, in places as far away as North Carolina and Tennessee.

"By 2008, the housing market here, it just plain fell out," Seals said. "The owner came to me and said they had to cut back. That was the end of my job and the beginning of a very rude awakening."

Overall unemployment fell to a better-than-expected 8.8 percent in March as the economy added roughly 216,000 jobs, the Labor Department announced Friday. Those are the kind of figures that economists say indicate a strengthening recovery, though they caution that it's well below the rate of job growth the nation needs to see -- uninterrupted, for years -- if employment is ever to return to a level comparable to the years before the Great Recession.

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When the recession began in 2007, black and Latino workers lost their jobs at a faster clip, said Roderick Harrison, a Howard University sociologist and demographer who is also a fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Research, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Now, despite the recession's official end and incremental job gains for all types of workers, it's black and Latino workers who are having the hardest time finding work again. The industries that added jobs during the recession -- health care and educational services -- and those that have begun to do so now have historically employed more women then men. That's why the uptick in black unemployment in March was driven largely by black male unemployment, Harrison said.

Black workers are typically less educated than white workers. But before, during and after the recession, black college graduates have been far more likely than their white peers to be unemployed, Harrison said. And for more than a decade, the ability to get to a job in a car has become the key to work. Office jobs -- the kind this month's job report indicated are being created -- are by and large located in far-flung suburbs, not in the cities and inner-ring suburbs where most black people live, Harrison said.

"The jobs are being created in the sorts of places you can't get to without a car or without dedicating significant time and significant resources to the commute," Harrison said.

Read more at the Huffington Post.