by Duane Brayboy
Some years ago in the land of George W. Bush, the argument about the high Black unemployment rate was being made over and over again by Bush’s Black critics. At one point, Bush’s approval rating had fallen to a historic 2% low back in 2005 according to a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. His low approval rating was also based on the fact that just a month before that poll, Hurricane Katrina had hit the Gulf area and many Blacks felt that Bush did not respond quickly enough. Even when the Black unemployment rate fell from 10.8 percent just a few years after to 8.3%; the question “Does Bush care about Black people” still had a lot of currency.
Now fast forward to today and we will find that the unemployment situation in this country has gone from bad to worse. At the time of this writing, the Black unemployment rate has now reached a staggering 15.4%.
There are those that would argue that Obama is completely blameless when it comes to the economy and that he simply inherited a bad situation from the prior administration. While there is plenty truth to that suggestion, I believe Obama took complete ownership with his trillion dollar crap shoot starting with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Obama went from promising to “save or create” (whatever that means) millions of jobs to only hundreds of thousands.
While some national Black organizations have taken Obama to task with his stated commitment to job creation; in poll after poll Blacks still give him astronomical approval ratings in excess of 97%. Mind you, on the same issue, Bush was thrown to the dogs when the unemployment rate was better than it is today.
According to the latest CNN poll, 9 out of 10 Blacks think that Obama is doing a great job.
What is it? What is this hesitancy to simply tell the truth? While some commentators have suggested that Blacks are simply being patient with Obama due to the fact that he “inherited” this mess, I tend to disagree. You mean to tell me that all the examples of poor Blacks who were at their wits end financially under Bush, are now suddenly willing to be patient under Obama?
When the war in the Middle East was “Bush’s war”, many Blacks throughout the blogosphere did not hold back in posting pictures of crying Black soldiers who were supposedly forced to fight in a senseless war. We were also told that Black soldiers were dying at a much higher rate than White soldiers.
A shower of consciousness regarding fiscal responsibility was also widely seen throughout our blogs as many posted up counters showing the out of control spending that was taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama has clearly outspent Bush domestically, and is in a horse race to beat Bush’s spending record in the Middle East. Yet according to polling data, Obama is simply terrific for besting Bush’s failures.
Clearly there is a pact in the Black community to give Obama our thumbs up no matter what. What we don’t realize is this pact to not hold Obama to the standards he set for himself is worse than any damage from a racist sign from the Tea Party movement. Why? Because we prove that we hold past Presidents to a much higher standard than our nation’s first Black President. By withholding the truth, we tell future generations that Obama was simply good enough but not really prepared to fully take on the pressures to be President.
It’s time we break this pact and simply start telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help us God!
Duane Brayboy is the founder and editor of Blackinformant.com.
