Is Obama good for Black Americans?
Townhall – Mona Charon – 8/23/2013
Median family income for
black Americans has declined a whopping 10.9 percent during the Obama
administration. It has declined for other groups as well -- 3.6 percent for
non-Hispanic whites and 4.5 percent for Hispanics - but the figure for blacks
is huge. This decline does not include losses suffered during the financial
crisis and the recession that followed, but it instead measures declines since
June 2009, when the recession officially ended.
That's not the only bad news
for African-Americans. The poverty rate for blacks is now 25.8 percent. The
black labor force participation rate, which rose throughout the 1980s and
1990s, has declined for the past decade and quite sharply under Obama to 61.4
percent. The black unemployment rate, according to Pew Research, stands at 13.4
percent. Among black, male, high school dropouts, PBS' Paul Salmon reports, the
unemployment rate is a staggering 95 percent.
Black poverty is up,
employment is down and wealth is down. The dissolution of the black family
continues unabated, with 72.3 percent of black children born to unmarried
mothers. Black males constitute just 6 percent of the population yet comprise
more than 40 percent of those incarcerated in state and federal prisons and
jails. One-third of black men aged 20 to 29 are in the purview of the criminal
justice system (incarcerated or on probation or parole).
Would it interest black
moviegoers to know that under Ronald Reagan's policies, median African American
household incomes increased by 84 percent (compared with 68 percent for
whites)? The poverty rate dropped during the 1980s from 14 percent down to 11.6
percent. The black unemployment rate dropped by 9 percentage points. The number
of black-owned businesses increased by 38 percent and receipts more than
doubled.
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