Does Obama Deserve Another Four Years?

My mother passed away the year Obama was nominated for president. I know that she would have felt such pride in pulling the lever for him in the voting booth. She was 101 at the time of her passing. She had lived through Jim Crow and would have understood the significance of a black man becoming President of the United States of America.  My mother would have believed that Obama would make a difference if not in her life, at least in the lives of those who came after her.  But she would have been disappointed.  

This time around, Obama will get 94% of the African American vote even though you cannot get 94% of any group to agree on whether the earth evolves around the sun.  Obama will get this vote because he is black.  But, can anyone name one thing that Obama has done to benefit black folks? The drop out rate of black kids in inner-city schools is the highest it has ever been. The incarceration rate of black men is off the chart.  The number of black unwed mothers has skyrocketed.  More blacks are unemployed and their slide into poverty is unparallel.  Yet, all we have demanded of Obama is he stay black. 

Last month the teachers in Chicago went on strike for higher wages (the average pay for a Chicago teacher is $76,000.00 a year, the highest in the country).  The teachers also wanted to  maintain the status quo, meaning no performance evaluations, no time added to their school day, and no system of merit pay. The majority of the students attending the Chicago public schools are Black and Hispanic. The majority of them are poor. Over 55% of these kids never complete high school.  Here was a chance for Obama to take a public stand on behalf of the children, but he kept quiet during the strike because he did not want to offend the union. The Mayor, Obama’s former chief of staff,  brought the strike to a speedy conclusion because he was involved in Obama’s reelection effort.  In the end, Obama was safe but there was no meaningful improvement to the quality of education for the kids. 

Blacks want school choice yet Obama and the Black Caucus have done absolutely nothing in furtherance of securing for these kids any hope of attending the same public or private schools enjoyed by whites.  Obama has had two opportunities to appoint judges to the Supreme Court, yet he failed to appoint an African American even though blacks have been shafted by the judicial system since the Dred Scott decision.  Obama has been more interested in waging a war against the Arizona law which he incorrectly states allows the police to stop an individual who is doing nothing but  driving while Hispanic yet he has been silent on the decade long practice of police stopping individuals who are driving while black. 

Obama is now locked in a lawsuit with Catholic and Evangelical churches over birth control. During the Democrat Convention, he pranced a white law student out onto the stage to advocate a woman’s right to have her birth control pills paid for by her employer or her school. This $9.00 a month benefit was more important than attempting to do anything to halt the rate of teen pregnancies amongst black females who are guaranteed to spend their lives in poverty, while the law student will be spending her life on Wall Street.

I would guess that many Chicago parents voted for Obama because they believed he would do something to improve the education system. I am sure that many black folks voted for Obama because they believed he would do something to stop racial discrimination in America.  African Americans probably think Obama shares their values and understands their experience.  But this was not true in 2008 and it is not true today.   Folks, we deserve better.

Were my mother alive today, I would hope that she would understand why I am voting for Mitt Romney.