As Blacks Become Increasingly Frustrated With Obama, Cornel West Isn’t Alone Anymore

by Yvette Carnell

While some African-Americans were fixated on the march to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington over the weekend, Dr. Cornel West was taking a more sober look at the plight of African-Americans. Appearing on Al Jazeera America’s Talk to Al Jazeera on Monday.  West said over two million Americans have been incarcerated over “soft drugs” during Obama’s tenure and decried the  “crack cocaine versus regular cocaine” disparity.
West continued to blast Obama for not doing battle with the people on Wall Street who engineered the recession, claiming that in Obama’s America, there is a two-tiered justice system. He then pointed out “massive unemployment” and “increasing wealth inequality”, accusations which are supported by data.

Dr. West is normally accused of grandstanding where Obama is concerned, but a recent Pew poll proves that many African-Americans now share his outlook. According to the poll, only one in four African-Americans say the situation for African-Americans  has improved during Obama’s tenure. And about half of African-Americans say things are about the same now compared with five years ago, which is on par with whites.
Also, abc News reports the following:

Unemployment among blacks remains in the double-digits, at 12.6 percent in July, nearly double the rate of whites. The median household income for a typical black family is just 60 percent that of whites – a gap that has grown since 2009. Nearly one in three blacks lived in poverty in 2011, almost double the national average.

And now even some African-American lawmakers are lamenting their frustration with how race relations have actually gotten worse under Obama. During an interview with The Hill, CBC chairwoman Fudge was asked whether race relations have gotten better or worse under Obama.
“Right after the election of the president, I would have thought it was going in a positive direction, but I am not so sure anymore,” she said.
“I think we have lost ground as it relates to our tolerance of people who are different or people who we believe have not worked hard enough. You hear the language all the time on talk radio — the buzzwords, often primarily directed at low-income people and communities of color.”
And now as we consider military action in Syria, all of the domestic issues which impact Black America will head toward the back burner, yet again.