Obama believes racial equality has improved during his presidency
Those are not the facts but facts never matter when Barack Obama is involved.
Barack Obama has been in overdrive in trying to boost his appeal to his base (blacks and Hispanics, in particular) as he loses the respect of the rest of America.
His latest bid to bolster his support among his most loyal of supporters is his recent claim that racial equality has improved under his reign. He did this in an interview with Univision-the Spanish-language network controlled by one of his most generous donors.
Justin Sink reports at The Hill that President Obama believes racial equality has improved during his tenure, partially thanks to policies — including his signature health care law — undertaken by his administration.
“If you look at the history of race in America, it’s usually not a single moment where everything gets solved — it’s a process,” Obama said in an interview Tuesday with Univision. “I think that because of our policies, there’s more equality than when I came in. With respect to health care, with respect to access to college, with respect to opportunity. I think because of the work Eric Holder has done under my direction I think the criminal justice system has improved.”
He may avoid and mock Fox News (just the news network with by far the highest ratings in America) but finds appearing on the Black Entertainment Network and Univision more congenial environments.
But what are the facts?
Deroy Murdock writes at the National Review that , in fact, black Americans are worse off under Obama
• When Obama entered office on January 20, 2009, U.S. unemployment stood at 7.8 percent. By April 2014, that Bureau of Labor Statistics figure had fallen to 6.3 percent — a modest improvement. Among blacks overall, joblessness dropped, though less significantly — from 12.7 to 11.6 percent. But for blacks aged 16 to 19, unemployment grew from 35.3 to 36.8 percent.
• Obama’s somewhat more sanguine unemployment numbers, such as they are, seem less about job growth and more about people simply abandoning the workforce — whereupon they conveniently exit the unemployment rate. The more revealing labor-force-participation rate thus fell from 65.7 percent in January 2009 to 62.8 percent last month, a portrait of disengagement last witnessed in March 1978. For black adults, that number slipped from 63.2 to 60.9 percent. While 29.6 percent of blacks aged 16 to 19 were working when Obama took power, only 27.9 percent were employed last month.
• Poverty has increased under Obama. Overall, 14.3 percent of Americans were below the poverty line in January 2009, versus 15.0 percent in 2012, according to the latest available data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. Similarly, the share of black Americans living in poverty expanded from 25.8 to 27.2 percent.
• Inflation-adjusted median household income fell across America, from $53,285 in 2009 to $51,017 in 2012, the most recent Census Bureau data indicate. Blacks slid, too, from $34,880 to $33,321 — and at a much lower income level.
• America’s population of food-stamp recipients soared overall from 32,889,000 in 2009 to 46,022,000 in 2012, the latest Agriculture Department statistics show. For blacks, the analogous numbers are 7,393,000 when Obama arrived to 10,955,000 in 2012.
• In spite of $275 billion in housing-market bailouts that Obama unveiled in his first month in office, home ownership actually has waned. In the first quarter of 2009, 67.3 percent of Americans owned homes. By 1Q 2014, that Census Bureau figure was 64.8 percent. Meanwhile, black home ownership during this interval sagged from 46.1 to 43.3 percent.
And there are more metrics provided by Murdock that reveal that Barack Obama is simply not telling the truth when he talks about his impact on the black community. Furthermore, Americans believe race relations have deteriorated during his years in office . That is likely to have what economists call a long-tail effect that will do longer-lasting harm to the black community. His open border policies will prove devastating to the black community as newly legalized immigrants flood the market, depressing wages and taking jobs that might otherwise have been filled with black citizens of America.
Hey..but facts do not matter to Barack Obama or to most journalists.