Jason L. Riley makes several observations that strike me as noteworth in his Wall Street Journal article titled, "For Blacks, the Pyrrhic Victory of the Obama Era." He notes: [my emphases]
- When the president assumed office, unemployment was 12.7% for blacks and 7.1% for whites. Today it is 14.3% for blacks and 7% for whites, which means that the black-white employment gap has not merely persisted under Mr. Obama but widened. . .
- But the historical reality for other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. is that political success has not been necessary for economic advancement. Germans were a third of the population in colonial Pennsylvania yet studiously avoided public office. Only after Germans had risen economically did they begin to distinguish themselves in politics. The impoverished Eastern European Jews who began arriving here in large numbers in the 1880s made little impact politically until well after they had established themselves economically. . . .
- Today, Asian-Americans are the nation's best-educated and highest-earning racial group. According to a Pew study released earlier this year, 49% of Asians age 25 and older hold bachelor's degrees, compared with 31% of whites and 18% of blacks. The median household income for Asians is $66,000, which is $12,000 more than white households and double that of black households. As with other groups, political clout has not been a precondition of Asian socioeconomic advancement. . .
- The election of Barack Obama four years ago gave blacks bragging rights, but bragging rights can't close the black-white achievement gap in education or increase black labor-force participation or reduce black incarceration rates. A civil-rights leadership that encourages blacks to look to politicians to solve these problems is doing a disservice to the people they claim to represent.
Asians, for their part, can point to an out-of-wedlock birthrate of just 16%, the lowest of any major group and a significant factor in Asian success. The black illegitimacy rate last year was 72%. Might it be that having a black man in the Oval Office is less important for black advancement than having one in the home?