I bet you didn’t know President Obama had a Black agenda. Apparently, he does. After three years of ignoring his largest voter base, the White House held an African-American Policy Conference November 9th. The White House also issued a report, in case you haven’t been paying attention, “outlining how the President’s policies directly impact the African American community.” Reading this report you would think blacks are living Zip-a-dee-do-dah days under the Obama administration.
This will come as a surprise to the Congressional Black Caucus and the 16% of black Americans who are jobless and on a downward economic spiral. Obama is loath to refer to himself as black much less give audience to a black agenda. (He’s worried it may scare off other voters.) Let’s not forget it took the CBC more than a year to get a second meeting with Obama even though over 95% of blacks voted for him in 2008.
A press release touting Obama’s never heard of black agenda noted:
“African Americans were hit especially hard by the recession, struggling with significant economic losses, including near-record high levels of unemployment and low incomes compared to the national average.
Since day one, the President has fought to restore the strength to the middle class, protect the interests of the low-income families, and allow those hardest hit by the economy to have access to the American Dream.”
If Obama really had a black agenda from day one, why are blacks disproportionately harmed by the recession? And why has the income gap between blacks and whites grown even wider? Obama has never had a black agenda and his report “The President’s Agenda and the African American Community” is nothing more than brazen pandering to 95% of black voters whom he neglects the other 364 days of the year.
Overall, the report highlights how initiatives like increasing Pell Grant funding, Obamacare, foreclosure prevention programs like HAMP (which have helped few), and his ill fated American Jobs Act “have made a significant impact in the African American Communities.” With the exception of funding to historically black colleges and universities, all these programs are targeted to all Americans not blacks specifically.
The 45 page tome also is peppered with pictures of the first family and photos of Obama with black people. I bet the White House had to comb through lots of files to find those. Adding the final touches to the report were photos of Obama and First Lady Michelle at the Martin Luther King Memorial dedication because no report on black people would be complete without it. This is one of the most flagrant cases of political pandering I’ve seen, particularly from America’s first black president who makes it a point to avoid uttering the word black people.
I wonder what Congresswoman Maxine Waters thought about all this great work Obama portends to have done for Blacks, especially since Waters criticized Obama for not visiting black communities? Following Obama’s remarks at the CBC annual dinner when he told blacks they need to get off the sofa, take off their bedroom slippers, put on their marching shoes and stop complaining, grumbling and crying, Waters said she found Obama's comments "curious" and didn’t “know who he was talking to.” One can only imagine what Waters said about Obama’s new black agenda, probably “Who does Obama think he’s kidding?”