Black History Month (Part 9): The civil rights record of Barack Obama

As America’s first Black President, there is a natural assumption that he was a staunch civil rights leader with a record of accomplishment.  Not so.

It is often overlooked that Obama was a product of the powerful Chicago Democrat political machine – long known for its systemic racism.  It was the bosses of that political machine that forced out Democrat incumbent Black state senator Alice Palmer so that Obama could have the seat.  It was the Chicago machine that tapped Obama for the seat in the United States Senate.  His principal advisors at the time – and through most of his presidency — were Democrat machine insiders, mayoral advisor Valerie Jarrett the political machine’s consigliere, David Axelrod.

However one may examine the Obama presidency, it will be difficult to find any efforts to advance civil rights or push back against the last vestiges of institutional racism – especially in his hometown of Chicago.  He was not about to bite the hand that fed him.

In my book, “Who Put Black Americans in That PLACE?  The Long Sad History of the Democratic Party’s Oppression of Black Americans … to this Day”, I cover this subject in more detail – often from the standpoint of Black Americans.

“Black leaders were in Daley’s pocket. Since the 1930s, Black men like William Dawson maintained power as long as they kept their fellow Blacks confined to the ghetto and dependent on welfare—and voting Democrat.

So controlled were these so-called Black leaders that a group of Black Chicago alderman, known as the Silent Six, voted with Daley and against every open housing bill introduced in the city council. They were William Campbell, Robert Miller, William Harvey, Benjamin Lewis, Ralph Metcalf, and Claude Holman. For his subservience to the Democrat Machine, Metcalf would eventually become a congressman for the ghetto—as was William Dawson before him.

In Chicago you could be a Black leader if you followed orders from the White “boss” in city hall. To a large degree, this custom applied to Barack Obama. He saw himself as a “community organizer” but has no record of accomplishment for the Black community he organized. The same was true as a state senator and a United States senator. Many, including civil rights leaders, argue that his support of civil rights as president was mostly talk and symbolism without progress in alleviating the plight of impoverished and welfare dependent Blacks trapped in their historic PLACE of social, economic, political, and civic inferiority. Arguably, Obama can be viewed as the Democratic Party’s Black crony system’s greatest success.”

While Obama possessed a certain elegance not usually found in political machine types, he was a good fit with the organization, as I note in the book.

“As a state senator, and consistent with both Chicago machine politics, Obama arranged for taxpayer money to be granted to his friends in a process known as “earmarking,” over which there were virtually no restrictions. In one case, Capers Funnye, a distant cousin of Mrs. Obama, received $ 75,000 for an organization called Blue Gargoyle. There was never any public accounting for the money.

In his book The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House author Edward Klein wrote:

Barack Obama reveled in that system.  He sent money to friends and family (Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright were two more recipients of his largesse) as an Illinois state senator, and as a US Senator, he sent money to his wife’s employer. He was a master of patronage, rewarding loyal supporters with jobs and contracts.”

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“Obama, the Great Hope

Upon entering office, President Obama promised to improve the plight of Black Americans and lead the nation to an era of post-racism. After four years in office, he accomplished neither.”

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“As with the White Democrat presidents before him, Obama was given to grand racial gestures and strong rhetoric with little change in policy or outcomes. In response to a question from April Ryan, the White House correspondent for the Urban Radio Network, Obama said, ‘Like the rest of America, Black America, in the aggregate, is better off now than it was when I came into office.’

The facts say otherwise.  Black unemployment in 2008 was 9.1 percent, compared to a 5 percent unemployment rate over all demographics. By 2010, overall unemployment rate peaked at 9.7 percent (with the White rate at 8.7 percent). Black unemployment at the time was 16.7 percent. It is fair to say that while the White community was suffering a recession, the Black community was still in a full depression.

In 2015, after almost seven years in office, White unemployment was 4.5 percent, but Black unemployment was 9.5 percent—higher than White unemployment at the peak of the recession. The number of individuals on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), often referred to as food stamps, had risen by 45 percent during Obama’s tenure office.

Obama and the Democrats often cite the expansion of SNAP as a civil rights benefit. Rather than promote Black employment, Obama placed emphasis on more welfare that would keep millions of Black Americans in that PLACE of generational poverty. It was the same old welfare for votes scheme that has kept millions of Blacks segregated, uneducated and living below the poverty level.

Under Obama, the Black community was actually losing ground. Real Clear Politics reported that the poverty rate for Blacks was 25.8 when Obama took office, and by 2014 it had risen to 27.2. Almost 50 percent of Black children under the age of six live in poverty compared to 14.5percent White children in that age group.

Having a Black president in the White House has not brought improvement to those trapped in the Democrat’s urban ghettoes. There were more racial protests and criminal violence in Democrat controlled cities than at any time since the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

It is no small irony that one of the cities suffering the greatest human carnage in the segregated Black communities was Obama’s political base of Chicago. Tavis Smiley, a progressive media personality summed up the Obama years. In an article in the Huffington Post, Smiley lamented: ‘Sadly— and it pains me to say this—over the last decade, black folk, in the era of Obama, have lost ground in every major category.’

On January 15, 2015, Black journalist and author Lauren Victoria Burke wrote a column summarizing Obama’s first six years in office under the headline: ‘Is Black America Better Off Under Obama?’ In response to the president’s contention, Burke answered:

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.

She covered several issues—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.

On poverty in general:

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.

On the Black/White wealth gap:

The wealth gap between Blacks and Whites in America is at a 24year 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.

On 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. It was the worst since 1928.

In terms of 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 reference to ‘high poverty school’ meant that Blacks are disproportionately attending urban schools where education is substandard if it exists at all.

On minority business, Burke writes:

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.

In her column, Burke gives credit to Obama for ‘understanding’ the plight of Black America, but not acting on it:

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 Gear Up.

This inability to translate rhetoric into action is central to the Democrat’s false narrative. The lack of action on civil rights has not been a Democratic Party oversight, it has been a matter of intentional policy.

Burke also understood how so-called civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton fit into the scenario. She wrote:

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?

Unlike Martin Luther King, who risked his life and fortune in the pursuit of civil rights for Black Americans, Sharpton has pursued civil rights as a lucrative business and has made millions of dollars in the process. Where King dared to look down the barrel of guns, Sharpton faces the lens of news cameras.

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

In referring to ‘all segments of Black America,’ Burke seems to be exposing such distinguished civil rights organizations as the NAACP and the Urban League as proponents of the pseudo-civil rights of entitlement and dependency. Both these organizations transitioned in the 1940s. They were once politically independent and focused on traditional constitutional civil rights. Now they are part of the Democratic Party coalition and proselytizers of the Party’s false narrative of civil rights advocacy.”

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“Obama Declares Welfare Dependency as the Norm

In a White House speech, Obama declared that generational dependency on welfare and entitlements is the new norm, calling them ‘the realities of how people live now.’

Even though the Obama administration policy greatly expanded the scope and cost of federal government programs, the president misrepresented the truth and reality by saying the following:

And let me be clear, this is not about big government or expanding some fictional welfare-and-food-stamp state, the 47 percent mooching off the government.  It is accounting for the realities of how people live now, today—the necessities of a 21st century economy. (emphasis added)

 In these remarks, Obama clearly states the Democratic Party’s belief in policies to create and maintain an ever-growing underclass in direct opposition to the Republican Party’s commitment to reducing welfare entrapment and giving those indentured to the Democrat’s political plantation access to the American opportunity society.”

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“Disappointing Legacy of Barack Obama

Barack Obama made history as the first Black president in American history. That is not an achievement. That is only a fact. With his election, Black and White Americans alike expressed hope that he would open the door to a post-racial color-blind society. For Blacks, he offered hope that the plight of impoverished Black Americans trapped in segregated cities would improve—including equal justice under the law, employment opportunities, better schools, and safer neighbors. He failed to meet those expectations in every regard. In fact, the plight of Black America measurably worsened during his eight years in office.

Despite his lip service admiration of Martin Luther King, Obama abandoned the doctrines of the slain civil rights leader to elevate the pandering racist and highly partisan false narratives preached by Al Sharpton. In many ways, Obama was more disappointing than any typical White president might have been because of the enormously heightened anticipation among Blacks and, indeed, among most Americans.

Like most presidents, Obama left a legacy based on who he is, what he had achieved, and what he did not. Certainly, his election was a significant indicator that the American public was not the collection of hateful White supremacists as Democrats and the left constantly proclaim. In terms of civil rights, his record was a failure.”

Looking at Obama in terms of civil rights – and improving the lives of the millions of Black folks trapped in the ghettoes of our major segregated cities – he was a disappointment.  It can be fairly argued that his predecessor, President Clinton, did more for Black Americans.

In Black History Month (Part 10) – and the final installment in the series – we will look at the plight of the millions of Black Americans who reside in segregated ghettoes in the major Democrat-run cities – deprived of jobs, quality education, decent housing, safe streets, government services, social mobility and access to America’s opportunity society.  You will see how systemic racism still flourishes in the ‘hood.

So, there ‘tis.