Are Blacks Better Off Under President Obama?
Are Blacks Better Off Under President Obama Than Before?
I do not like to write in such a provincial manner, asking the question that is posited in the caption of this blog, because it signals that we are a divided nation; yet the query are Blacks better off under President Obama is a question that begs itself, especially now when you have staunch President Obama supporters asking the same questions. There is still a sense of pride most Blacks have for our first Black President, which is only natural and their critique of President Obama is done sub-rosa and among their own. This too is the reason why I take a beating from some family members and church brothers and sisters because I am told that my critique of President Obama is akin to my piling on – of course I see it differently because my loyalty belongs to the Traditional Christian truth… even if I myself am culpable.
The thinking among many Blacks of having the first President with their hue… generates thoughts of grandeur… thinking that there are going to be special favors affording them. But it is the case that when Blacks are successful in any venture that those privileged few incorporate their White brothers and sisters in the venture. Most of the African American sports stars, rappers, and movie stars' agents, lawyers, and business personnel are mostly White and note too that the vast majority of the faces making up President Obama’s Administration do not look different from those that made up the previous forty-three Presidential Administrations. Permit me to give even more credence to my madness: Bill Cosby always had a plethora of White movie stars on the Cosby show – can anyone honestly say the same thing about “Friends’ or ‘Seinfeld’?
There are many Blacks who think that Oprah cares more about her White audience than her own race; but Oprah must know what Bill Cosby knew and what President Obama has figured out that being Black and successful mean that you must give our White brothers and sisters a ‘meaty bone’ since they make-up the majority. President Obama has to be like Bill Cosby or Oprah Winfrey and his policies must be neutral in their manifestations of largess. This is why African Americans living standards under President Obama will not improve because we are not a country of tribes… whereby when certain tribes are elevated to power in Africa or in the Middle-Eastern-countries… those in these newly empowered tribes fortunes are conspicuously changed.
There are countless country-mile long lines for any opened jobs that advertised here in the Big Apple and said lines are replete with African Americans seeking gainful employment. It is also a given that if the national unemployment were a given number, one must double it for African Americans. The attendant prejudices by many companies in liberal New York when times are ‘good’ of not employing Blacks is even more conspicuously so in these economic hard times. Case in point, there was a report, reported by one of the national news programs, that Blacks who had no criminal records and received an initial interview were less likely to be called back than their White counterparts who had criminal records. I laid this out to say that Black fortunes may remain the status quo under President Obama or they may be even worse because there are powerful variables outside of President Obama’s purview still ingrained in our society.
