President Obama, the nation’s first black president, has not done much for African-Americans, according to bloomberg.com.
Millions of African-Americans have seen their tenuous hold on prosperity slip since Mr. Obama reached the White House. Moreover, the recession and the halting recovery, although painful for most Americans, have been especially brutal for blacks as they have lost jobs, homes and seen their wealth wiped out.
Currently, black unemployment stands at 14.1 percent, nearly twice that of whites, which is 7.4 percent. The racial gap which had narrowed between 2005 to 2009, has since widened since the recession officially ended in June 2009. When Mr. Obama was inaugurated, African-American jobless rate was 12.7 percent compared to 7.1 percent for whites.
“These groups have been very, very hard hit, not only in the recession, but in the recovery that followed,” says economist Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution. “Things have been very grim.”
