Op-Ed

Is Black America Better Off Under Obama?

Published

10 years ago

January 5, 2015

By Lauren Victoria Burke
NNPA Columnist

“Like the rest of America, Black America, in the aggregate, is better off now than it was when I came into office,” said President Obama on December 19, in response to a question by Urban Radio Networks White House Correspondent April Ryan.

What planet African Americans are doing “better off” on is unknown. What is known is that President Obama is about to leave office with African Americans in their worst economic situation since Ronald Reagan. A look at every key stat as President Obama starts his sixth year in office illustrates that.

Unemployment. The average Black unemployment under President Bush was 10 percent. The average under President Obama after six years is 14 percent. Black unemployment, “has always been double” [that of Whites] but it hasn’t always been 14 percent. The administration was silent when Black unemployment hit 16 percent – a 27-year high – in late 2011.

Poverty. The percentage of Blacks in poverty in 2009 was 25 percent; it is now 27 percent. The issue of poverty is rarely mentioned by the president or any members of his cabinet. Currently, more than 45 million people – 1 in 7 Americans – live below the poverty line.

The Black/White Wealth Gap. The wealth gap between Blacks and Whites in America is at a 24-year high. A December study by PEW Research Center revealed the average White household is worth $141,900, and the average Black household is worth $11,000. From 2010 to 2013, the median income for Black households plunged 9 percent.

Income inequality. “Between 2009 and 2012 the top one percent of Americans enjoyed 95 percent of all income gains, according to research from U.C. Berkeley,” reported The Atlantic. It was the worst since 1928. As income inequality has widened during President Obama’s time in office, the president has endorsed tax policy that has widened inequality, such as the Bush Tax cuts.

Education: The high school dropout rate has improved during the Obama administration. However, currently 42 percent of Black children attend high poverty schools, compared to only 6 percent of White students. The Department of Education’s change to Parent PLUS loans requirements cost HBCU’s more than $150 million and interrupted the educations of 28,000-plus HBCU students.

SBA Loans. In March 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that only 1.7 percent of $23 billion in SBA loans went to Black-owned businesses in 2013, the lowest loan of SBA lending to Black businesses on record. During the Bush presidency, the percentage of SBA loans to Black businesses was 8 percent – more than four times the Obama rate.

President Obama continued Bush’s economic policy by deciding not to allow the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010 and agreeing to make them permanent in 2013. While he did this Black civil rights leaders said nothing. Soon after, in the president’s budget, there were cuts to community block grants and a budget increase for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. President Obama’s support of the Bush tax cuts are support for “trickle down” economics — that is, a tax break for the top 1 percent. Billionaire Warren Buffett spoke against the Bush tax cuts. There would have been $4 trillion in additional revenue had the president simply let the Bush tax cuts expire.

In 2011, when Al Sharpton told CBS’ 60 Minutes that, “Obama already said he won’t do anything for Blacks, duh,” it signaled that Black civil rights leaders would not push the first Black president hard on Black issues. Sharpton has been in the White House 61 times since 2009, probably more than any member of Congress, including leadership, over that period. With that type of access to power one has to ask: Where are the positive policy results?

The good news is that President Obama has appointed more Black people as federal judges than any other president in American history. The federal prison population has decreased and the rate of Americans without health insurance has dropped, even with Republican governors in the South blocking the Affordable Care Act.

But the president appears to be unwilling to use the full power of his office to push targeted policy to assist African Americans as he has done for Latinos, gays and lesbians, and other groups.

As he spoke on December 19, President Obama said of African Americans that, “They’re working hard… They’re out there hustling and trying to get an education, trying to send their kids to college. But they’re starting behind, oftentimes, in the race.” Obama seems to understand the historic adversity Blacks have faced yet that understanding hasn’t translated into the hard mechanics of specific policy such as funding for summer jobs, budget increases for community block grants or substantial increases for Pell Grants or programs such as GearUp.

All segments of Black America seem willing to give President Obama a pass on his failure to deliver for African Americans.

Lauren Victoria Burke is freelance writer and creator of the blog Crewof42.com, which covers African American members of Congress. She Burke appears regularly on “NewsOneNow with Roland Martin” and on WHUR FM, 900 AM WURD. She worked previously at USA Today and ABC News. She can be reached through her website, laurenvictoriaburke.com, or Twitter @Crewof42 or by e-mail at LBurke007@gmail.com.

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Commentary

COMMENTARY: President Biden, The Constitution and Race

The Democratic Party needs to pause and reflect on the real issue, which is race and not an aging President. Once again, we see the Kool-Aid of division being swallowed, not by the MAGA Right, but by Democrats who know better and openly profess a love for democracy and the Constitution of the United States. So, the question is how can one love the Constitution and at the same time only obey those sections that agree with our way of thinking?

Published

1 week ago

July 19, 2024

Oakland Post

Dr. John E. Warren contends that it is the race of Biden’s successor, Kamal Harris, that is the real issue underneath the fearmongering about the president’s age. Courtesy photo.

By Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher
The San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper

The Democratic Party needs to pause and reflect on the real issue, which is race and not an aging President.

Once again, we see the Kool-Aid of division being swallowed, not by the MAGA Right, but by Democrats who know better and openly profess a love for democracy and the Constitution of the United States. So, the question is how can one love the Constitution and at the same time only obey those sections that agree with our way of thinking?

When President Biden wins re-election, his age or any other issue will only become a problem when there are signs he is unable to fulfill the duties of the Office. The 25th Amendment to the Constitution handles the succession process setting out how the Vice President assumes the Office of the Presidency and how the Office of the Vice Presidency is to be filled. The elephant in the room is Vice President Kamala Harris, who happens to not only be a woman, but also Black.

This is the same Black woman who was Attorney General of the largest state in the Union. She was an elected U.S. Senator from that same state which had given us the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren and President Ronald Reagan.

She has been elected by the Democratic Party’s primary process which made Joe Biden the presidential candidate, and Harris the vice-presidential candidate.

So, is the real issue the age of a man who, in the last four years, rescued this nation from the brink of destruction?

Is it the Democrats opposing the President staying in the race who may have Alzheimer’s and memory loss, rather than the President who remembers what he has done and how he rescued a struggling nation?

Is it the Democrats complaining about the President and know that Trump has a better chance at winning against a last-minute replacement than running against a President who has already beaten him before? In knowing all these facts, especially the presence of the 25th Amendment, the only card left in the deck is race.

It appears that some White Liberal Democrats just don’t want a Black woman in the orbit of really becoming President and they would rather disgrace and destroy a good man because of a bad debate than take a chance on a Black woman running the White House.

Let’s not get it twisted. It was a Black Congressman from South Carolina, James Clyburn, who motivated Black America to vote for Joe Biden when it appeared that he was out of the race for the presidency.

It is the Black Vote that put him in office and it is the Black Vote of the Congressional Black Caucus who, in this race for the White House, is standing in unity with the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives in a Republican-controlled Congress against whimpering calls from a few democrats for the President to “step aside.”

Once again, the clarion call is to stand with the Constitution and not be like the Supreme Court who is now stomping upon all that it stands for in an effort to protect and insulate the convicted felon that we, the people, would keep out of the White House.

A move to oust President Biden would surely guarantee an election victory for Trump.

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Opinion: A Strange Tale of Two Political Fights: Sheng Thao and Donald Trump

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao must be wondering how can a convicted felon with 34 guilty verdicts be riding high, while she, an uncharged elected official, fights for her political life? That’s how strange politics is in America today.

Published

2 weeks ago

July 12, 2024

Oakland Post

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Presidential Candidate Donald Trump.

By Emil Guillermo

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao must be wondering how can a convicted felon with 34 guilty verdicts be riding high, while she, an uncharged elected official, fights for her political life?

That’s how strange politics is in America today.

On the national stage, President Joe Biden made an historic ask of Americans this week. It’s summer, and everyone is a “low information” voter now. But for the sake of the country, and the future of democracy, it’s time to pay attention. Get nerdy now.

Biden is essentially tied with Trump, a newly convicted felon, which tells you how cockeyed political values are in America.

Instead of policy, Trump is all bluster talking about a pre-debate drug test because he’s sure Biden is going to be “jacked up” on some kind of performance enhancing drug.

That kind of thing gets attention. Not whether you’re going to things to improve people’s lives.

But rest assured, if Donald Trump is elected for a second time, the blueprint is already out. The Heritage Foundation’s plan calls for a “Department of Life,” and a theocratic-based world view where abortion is illegal, and minorities of all stripes are disempowered.

A vote for Trump represents a radical reformatting of democracy.

POLITICS IN OAKLAND

In the meantime, local Oakland politics is slightly different, but no less confounding.

Sheng Thao, 18 months into her tenure as the first Hmong American to be mayor of a major U.S. city, is recovering from the worst week in her life.

First, a group of Oakland citizens qualified enough signatures to hold a recall election of Thao. Then, on Wednesday, 15 people were shot at an unauthorized Juneteenth celebration in the city’s Lake Merritt area. The topper came Thursday, when the FBI executed a pre-dawn raid of a number of houses including Thao’s, all connected to a case reportedly involving improper campaign donations from Andy Duong, a Vietnamese American businessman whose company, CalWaste, won the contract to run the city’s recycling program. No arrests were made, just boxes and computers hauled from the various homes. Not a good look.

THAO: “I AM INNOCENT”

For five days, Thao was silent, but on Monday, she came out firing her best shot.

“I have done nothing wrong,” Thao said at a news conference. “I can tell you with confidence that this investigation is not about me. I have not been charged with a crime and I am confident that I will not be charged because I am innocent.”

Thao said she was seeking answers from the U.S. attorney as to why she wasn’t “offered the opportunity to cooperate voluntarily.”

Good question. Unless they thought she was hiding something.

Thao addressed the shootings last week first with care, then said she won’t be distracted from the real issues of Oakland. Like safety or the selling of the Oakland Coliseum to a Black-owned group.

But she went back to questioning the timing of last week.

“I want to know more about the handful of billionaires from San Francisco and Piedmont who are hell bent on running me out of office,” she said, questioning how the recall announcement and the raid seemed orchestrated with the media “to fan the flames and bend the facts to shape a narrative.”

Trump, the convicted felon, overcomes reality and is propelled by “friends” who see him as a winner. Thao was voted in through RCV, rank-choice-voting. She was the most people’s No. 2, not No. 1.

Maybe that’s why few allies are standing up behind her now. The Oakland NAACP, and even one Asian group is calling for her to resign.

For Thao, this will be the test if her story can overcome it all, again.

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. See him at www.amok.com

Oakland Post

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Opinion: What about Joe? Follow Kamala’s Lead

Big Dem donors and media are keeping alive a troubling narrative about last week’s debate: that Joe Biden isn’t fit to be president and should step aside. Biden may have had a lousy debate night, but for our democracy and for all people of color, he’s still the best possible choice.

Published

3 weeks ago

July 8, 2024

Oakland Post

Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris

By Emil Guillermo

Big Dem donors and media are keeping alive a troubling narrative about last week’s debate: that Joe Biden isn’t fit to be president and should step aside.

Biden may have had a lousy debate night, but for our democracy and for all people of color, he’s still the best possible choice.

But now newspaper editorial boards, like the New York Times, have warned: For Dems to win, Joe must go.

What do they know? They aren’t doctors.

More irksome is that few are willing to say what should be obvious. If you replace Biden this late in the game, there should be no other person but his No. 2.

Oakland’s Kamala Harris.

They will mention Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom while too often overlooking Harris who was the best thing going for the Biden-Harris ticket on debate night.

When Biden was down, Harris had his back.

“What we saw tonight is the President making a very clear contrast with Donald Trump on all the issues that matter to the American people,” Harris said on CNN. “Yes, there was a slow start, but it was a strong finish. And what became very clear through the course of the night is that Joe Biden is fighting on behalf of the American people on substance, on policy, on performance. Joe Biden is extraordinarily strong.”

Harris also looked strong. She was filled with an appealing youthful political vigor.

It was everything Joe Biden wasn’t on debate night.

She acknowledged the rough parts, which included a moment where Biden seemed to lose his thoughts. Was he talking about Covid? Medicare?

Still compare that one senior moment with Trump, who showed off his strength as a functioning pathological liar.

No. 45 sounded louder with a clearer voice than No.46, but that doesn’t mean with all his lies and 34 guilty verdicts he deserves to be No. 47.

Undaunted, Biden said last Friday in North Carolina, he intends to stay in the race, pointing out he knows how to do the job and that unlike Trump, he knows how to tell the truth.

But the media continues to question whether Biden can do the job. A CBS poll found that only 27% of voters believe he has the mental health to be president.

If more negative polling data comes in, Biden may be forced to decide whether this is the time to bow out and retire from public life.

I’m keeping my eyes on Harris. Think Biden must go? Remember, Harris is on the ticket that’s raised millions of dollars to fight Trump.

With reproductive rights of women one of the strongest issues the Democrats have, leaning in on the first female African American/Asian American vice president, may be the Democrats’ best, if not only, answer.

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He’s covered politics from Hawaii, California, to Washington, DC when he hosted NPR’s “All Things Considered.” See him on www.amok.com