The "Black Vote"

State of the Union speeches usually throw bones in every direction, to every constituency that matters to a president. But even though black male unemployment is at record levels, even higher than when the president declared the “recession” over, it remains beneath the notice of the First Black President.

  Bruce A. Dixon, Black Agneda Report

The white half is president.

Whether you're a a dependable friend or a despicable enemy, or if your cause is just worth a prevaricating presidential applause line, you'll get it. If the president judges you worth patting on the head, pointing to as an example, or lying to or about, it will happen then and there. And if you're not mentioned at all, anyplace from the beginning to the end, well, you just don't matter much.

[...]

Black concerns, as we noted a couple weeks ago, are irrelevant to the president, and black communities powerless. Since the First Black President is pretty much guaranteed the black vote anyhow, record black unemployment wasn't even worth acknowledging, much less lying about.

There you go. The SOTU this year was a campaign speech, and he doesn’t think he needs to waste words and time pandering to a constituency he apparently believes is captive. Perhaps unemployed black people should think twice before they vote this year.

I think this article is a bit off the mark. I don't believe black communities are powerless.  But further, it’s not Obama who is responsible for the fact that black male unemployment is at record levels. Even though it may strike them especially hard, unemployment is not about blacks. But let the author argue…

[O]stensibly “color-blind” approaches to black unemployment simply don't cut it, and in some cases aren't even meant to. The United States has libraries of color-blind criminal code on the books. But still we manage year after year to arrest, convict and imprison disproportionate numbers of black and brown people for crimes that go unpoliced and unprosecuted among whites.

We have a very, very long way to go to address why and how blacks are disproportionately unemployed, uneducated and jailed in this country and what could be done about it. That’s another issue. A serious important issue that is so hard to tackle we don’t really try. It’s easier to enact laws to try to force a different condition. (And I’m not being glib.) But as we can clearly see, the laws don’t really fix it. They can’t. Laws can’t eliminate deep-seated and sometimes unrealized prejudice. Laws can’t erase generations of substandard education and health care and differing cultural views and values.

It’s a fair point, however to claim that “’color-blind’ approaches to black unemployment simply don't cut it, and in some cases aren't even meant to.” Indeed, any approach to black unemployment coming out of Washington is very likely not “meant to” solve it.

Further into this article, the author gets to what I think is the real argument against Barack Obama for all unemployed Americans, and if black males are disproportionately unemployed, then they should be disproportionately looking for another president because of it.

Barack Obama pledged to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour in his first term, and to fight for measures that would make it possible for millions to organize unions on the job. Despite a thumping majority in Congress his first two years, the president chose not to pick those fights.

[...]

This is the real Barack Obama. A second term won't unleash him. The uncritical black support Obama has received throughout his campaign and his presidency thus far have already set him free to be who he really is ---- a craven servant of Wall Street, a torturer and militarist, a “war president” that even Condi Rice and Dick Cheney now have kind words for, a president who demonizes teachers and federal workers and protects telecoms and mortgage fraudsters from prosecution.

And there you have it.  So, support him at your own peril.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.