Academic

Conversations with Professor Guy Uriel Charles (Minnesota): What Can We Expect From Obama?

By Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Dear Angela:

Now that black people have made Barack Obama the presumptive and (and soon to be eventual) nominee of the Democratic Party, what should we expect as our public policy benefits?  Though some might dare dispute this, the fact of the matter is that black voters are the primary voting bloc responsible for Senator Obama?s all-but-official nomination.

Blacks voted for him in 9-1 margins in most of the primaries with significant black populations.  While your present domicile, Iowa, gave him hope, black voters in South Carolina and North Carolina gave him life.So, now that we have delivered, what should we expect?  What does he have to say about the fact that Black people have the highest rate of infant mortality in the country?  What is he going to say about the fact that black people have the highest rate of poverty in the country?  What is he going say about the dramatic disparity between black and white incarceration rates, which some criminologists have calculated to be between 7 and 8 to 1?  When is he going to give a race speech to outline how he plans to tackle the fact that blacks have twice the unemployment rate as whites?  Now that we have delivered, when will he?

Guy

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Full post as published by BlackProf on May 08, 2008 (boomark / email).