President Obama has done a lot on the low-low to aid African Americans through the worst economic crises in 80 years, says the White House, directly countering the cries from some black leaders that Obama has ignored their plight.
With the White House’s 44-page document, “President’s Agenda and the African American Community,” which is a version of the earlier report, “Creating Pathways to Opportunity,” they highlight all of the different ways the Obama administration has been working on behalf of the most negatively impacted demographic by the prolonged economic malaise. The repot states that The Recovery Act kept 1.3 million African Americans above the poverty line in 2010. The “President’s Agenda” also points to the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit had benefited over 2.2 million black families as well as half of all the nation’s African American children.
Despite this list of accomplishments, some say that this report and meeting with black leaders in Washington was long overdue.
“Many of us would have preferred it if this had been held earlier,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League and a staunch supporter of Obama. “But that’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is that there’s a commitment by the White House to strengthen the dialogue with a broader group of leaders who are very interested in the direction of the country, and who represent communities that have really taken for the worse in the recession.”
The White House also held the African American Policy in Action Leadership Conference, the first event of its kind. Those in attendance included a wide spectrum of black personalities, including Susan Taylor, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Martin Luther King III.
“Everyone here had a role in our accomplishments to date,” said White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, “We want to have [our new report] as a document to share with you and brief you on, that you can then take back to your communities and describe all that we have done so far.”
Other campaigns that the report boasts as having a disproportionately positive impact on African Americans include subsidized jobs programs, increased funding for Pell Grants, mortgage-modification plans for distressed homeowners and health care reform.
Some decry the fact that African Americans were the last major minority group to be addressed in this manner. Obama administration held such a gathering in 2009 for a White House Tribal Nations Conference and in 2010 Obama hosted a White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. And this past July the White House held a Hispanic Policy Conference. But this was the administration’s first big summit targeting the African-American community.
“This is something many of you have urged us to do, to do a better job at telling our story and explaining how these policies help the African-American community,” Danielle Gray, deputy director of the National Economic Council, told the elite gathering. “It was a good exercise for us to try to wrap it up into a more coherent vision.”
— terry shropshire
