In this weekend’s Nevada caucus, the first primary contest with a large percent of Mormon voters (26% of participants), Mitt Romney won handily by 50 percent of the total. But he strikingly won 90 percent of the Mormon vote.

During the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, African-Americans were criticized for blindly following Obama because of race. Similar charges are not being leveled, at least not to the same extent, against Mormon voters for Romney.

Humans are social animals and we all have reasons for hewing to identity and affinity groups, as well as calculations about whether and how supporting a particular candidate will affect us and our communities.

There is no question that anti-Mormon bias is going to be a factor among some Republican voters when it comes to Romney. But I’m also interested in whether and how the close hewing of Mormon voters to Romney as a candidate will be explored with the same persistence than the black vote for Obama did.

Public employment is undergoing some of the sharpest cuts of any sector, and black families are feeling the hit. Public-sector employment is the #1 employer of black men and #2 of black women. As the public job pool shrinks rapidly, it constitutes a major mover of African-American unemployment. I don’t see that changing anytime soon, as I discussed with the NFBPA. Public-private partnerships may expand the constituency for public employment, but in this political atmosphere negotiations are fraught. (I spoke at the convention of black public administrators shortly after the showdown in Wisconsin over public labor.)

Public-sector jobs — military, civil service, public k-12 education, public colleges and universities — were a ladder to the middle class for many black families, including my own. (Grandparents: Post Office and Social Security. Mother and siblings: Post Office, US Army, US Marines, Social Security, Baltimore City (schools and water department), Baltimore County (schools). My generation: almost all private sector, save one.)

Good jobs used to come with a promise of stability, leading to a here-until-retirement mentality. No more, not in the private sector or the public. The drop in African-American employment has helped fuel a drop in African-American support for the President. A recent Washington Post-ABC news poll saw the number drop from 83 percent “strongly favorable” to 58 percent now. The Congressional Black Caucus is running a jobs initiative that has challenged the President on his approach to jobs, specifically not addressing the African-American employment crisis as a discrete thing-in-itself. To do so could be political suicide; but to not name the problem could cause widespread African-American voter attrition, particularly around first time voters and those who voted for the first time in 2008.

New York Times columnist Charles Blow recently spoke at a Congressional Black Caucus summit on jobs. He’s also written about the global war for what people used to call “good jobs,” a battle with high stakes beyond money. Jobs have become synonymous, for many of us, with identity and personal happiness — not just in the US but across the world. There are few things people fight for as hard as their sense of self.

Obama Children’s Book Set for November 16
President Obama has written a children’s book, OF THEE I SING: A Letter to My Daughters, which Knopf Children’s will publish on November 16 with an announced 500,000-copy first printing. Illustrated by Loren Long, the book profiles 13 “groundbreaking Americans and the ideals that have shaped our nation–from the artistry of Georgia O’Keeffe, to the courage of Jackie Robinson, to the patriotism of George Washington.”

The book was both sold (as part of his deal with Crown and Knopf Children’s in 2004) and written before Obama took office in 2009. Proceeds from the sale will be donated to a scholarship fund for the children of fallen and disabled soldiers serving our nation.

I absolutely adore reading the Publisher’s Lunch newsletter. I don’t know why but it feels like a guilty pleasure to know all the insider-ness of the book business and what landmark books lie ahead. Also good for journalism leads. To sign up, if you choose, go here.

A few paragraphs from the President’s prepared remaks (full text linked here):

A free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it.That is what happened too often in the years leading up to the crisis. Some on Wall Street forgot that behind every dollar traded or leveraged, there is family looking to buy a house, pay for an education, open a business, or save for retirement. What happens here has real consequences across our country.

…….

A comprehensive plan to achieve these reforms has passed the House of Representatives. A Senate version is currently being debated, drawing on the ideas of Democrats and Republicans. Both bills represent significant improvement on the flawed rules we have in place today, despite the furious efforts of industry lobbyists to shape them to their special interests. I am sure that many of those lobbyists work for some of you. But I am here today because I want to urge you to join us, instead of fighting us in this effort. I am here because I believe that these reforms are, in the end, not only in the best interest of our country, but in the best interest of our financial sector. And I am here to explain what reform will look like, and why it matters.

First, the bill being considered in the Senate would create what we did not have before: a way to protect the financial system, the broader economy, and American taxpayers in the event that a large financial firm begins to fail. If an ordinary local bank approaches insolvency, we have a process through the FDIC that insures depositors and maintains confidence in the banking system. And it works. Customers and taxpayers are protected and the owners and management lose their equity. But we don’t have any kind of process designed to contain the failure of a Lehman Brothers or any of the largest and most interconnected financial firms in our country.

That’s why, when this crisis began, crucial decisions about what would happen to some of the world’s biggest companies – companies employing tens of thousands of people and holding hundreds of billions of dollars in assets – had to take place in hurried discussions in the middle of the night. That’s why, to save the entire economy from an even worse catastrophe, we had to deploy taxpayer dollars. And although much of that money has now been paid back – and my administration has proposed a fee to be paid by large financial firms to recover the rest – the American people should never have been put in that position in the first place.

It is for this reason that we need a system to shut these firms down with the least amount of collateral damage to innocent people and businesses. And from the start, I’ve insisted that the financial industry – and not taxpayers – shoulder the costs in the event that a large financial company should falter. The goal is to make certain that taxpayers are never again on the hook because a firm is deemed “too big to fail.”

Now, there is a legitimate debate taking place about how best to ensure taxpayers are held harmless in this process. But what is not legitimate is to suggest that we’re enabling or encouraging future taxpayer bailouts, as some have claimed. That may make for a good sound bite, but it’s not factually accurate. In fact, the system as it stands is what led to a series of massive, costly taxpayer bailouts. Only with reform can we avoid a similar outcome in the future. A vote for reform is a vote to put a stop to taxpayer-funded bailouts. That’s the truth.

……

And these changes have the added benefit of creating incentives within the industry to ensure that no one company can ever threaten to bring down the whole economy. To that end, the bill would also enact what’s known as the Volcker Rule: which places some limits on the size of banks and the kinds of risks that banking institutions can take. This will not only safeguard our system against crises; this will also make our system stronger and more competitive by instilling confidence here at home and across the globe. Markets depend on that confidence. Part of what led to the turmoil of the past two years was that, in the absence of clear rules and sound practices, people did not trust that our system was one in which it was safe to invest or lend. As we’ve seen, that harms all of us. By enacting these reforms, we’ll help ensure that our financial system – and our economy – continues to be the envy of the world.

Second, reform would bring new transparency to many financial markets. As you know, part of what led to this crisis was firms like AIG and others making huge and risky bets – using derivatives and other complicated financial instruments – in ways that defied accountability, or even common sense. In fact, many practices were so opaque and complex that few within these companies – let alone those charged with oversight – were fully aware of the massive wagers being made. That’s what led Warren Buffett to describe derivatives that were bought and sold with little oversight as “financial weapons of mass destruction.” And that’s why reform will rein in excess and help ensure that these kinds of transactions take place in the light of day.

……
Third, this plan would enact the strongest consumer financial protections ever. This is absolutely necessary. Because this financial crisis wasn’t just the result of decisions made in the executive suites on Wall Street; it was also the result of decisions made around kitchen tables across America, by folks taking on mortgages and credit cards and auto loans. And while it’s true that many Americans took on financial obligations they knew – or should have known – they could not afford, millions of others were, frankly, duped. They were misled by deceptive terms and conditions, buried deep in the fine print.

I hate the term “Post Racial.” It’s weasely. You might as well say that you’re post-reality.

To wit: a new report released today by Congress, revealing that 22% of Americans who have been unemployed for a year or more are African-American. The black population is 11.5 percent of the labor force.

I suspect, given the way unemployment figures are counted, that the figures are actually much starker.

The level of African-American joblessness is a profound opportunity. It’s an opportunity for us to restructure the ways we think about social mobility, business ethics, and the impact of employment on issues from mental health to child-rearing. It’s a profound opportunity for us to look at how the demographic least likely to vote for President Obama share many of the same economic issues as African-Americans. I’m talking about white Southerners in economically challenged states like Mississippi and Alabama. (Those states ranked 50 and 42 in per capita income, and ranked the lowest on the percentage of white voters who chose Obama, 11 and 10 percent respectively.) It’s a profound opportunity for us to challenge categories like “African-American” and “white Southerner,” and figure out how we can develop language about groups and constituencies that is not too broad, but does not ignore reality.

Well, that’s a lot of opportunity. There’s a lot of work to do.

President Obama gave a lengthy interview to Brett Baier of Fox News Channel. It was fractious. Baier interrupted the President so often that he apologized afterwards. As a postscript, Baier asked the President a question that was emailed in about Tiger Woods… and the President answered. In the end, the interview was probably not a game changer for President Obama or for Fox News… Fox will not convince potential viewers that it is a neutral network; the POTUS will likely not win over a lot of stalwart Fox viewers.

Link to Fox News Channel full transcript of interview with the President on healthcare.

It’s a line from China Mieville’s speculative fiction novel The Scar, but it could easily describe today’s politics.

President Obama has been described as a socialist and tool of banks and big business; a “racist…who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture” and someone who “hasn’t done much for their [i.e., African-Americans'] bottom line” because “so-called black leaders are much more interested in invitations to the White House…than in raising any kind of ruckus that might benefit people in real trouble.

Underlying much of the recent rhetoric is the race issue…yeah, that one, the one the President doesn’t seem to want to talk about. Some of the President’s opponents have not only asserted that he is a “racist,” but even proclaimed, ludicrously but persistently, that he is not an American citizen. (Others have brought guns to Presidential rallies, something worth mentioning only to banish the obvious thought.) In the State of the Union, the President was happy to talk about jobs (23 mentions), the economy (15 mentions), and energy (15 mentions). He did not utter the words “race,” or “racial,” and the only time he mentioned the word “Black” was in the phrase “Black Tuesday,” referring to the stock market crash of 1929.

In the Presidential race of 2008, President Obama did not truly address race head-on until the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy forced his hand… and then he delivered what is widely considered to be a brilliant, landmark speech. There has not been a corresponding moment yet in this Presidency. If there is one, it might (might) come if African-Americans urge the President to be accountable on economic equality. There has been one White House meeting on race, during the white-out of the Washington “snowpocalypse.” The players for the off-the-record event were the President, Ben Jealous of the NAACP, Marc Morial of the National Urban League, and Reverend Al Sharpton of the National Action Network. (Ninety-seven year old Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women couldn’t make it because of the precipitation.)

The three invitees who were able to pass the clotted roads came out of the White House and faced the press (with, between them, one umbrella and one hat for shelter) and delivered soundbites as the snowflakes turned their dark garments pale. The event vibrated with the unspoken. Rev. Sharpton said: “We do not seek any special kind of edict … from the president because he’s African-American. We expect to be included in the process.” Yet among many African-American political junkies, the conversation was: why were these three organizations deemed to be the messengers representing black interests in the economy? Why not invite some black economists, for one? Economist Dr. Julianne Malveaux, the President of Bennett College, has been writing a series of columns deconstructing the truth behind the unemployment numbers. As she writes, having done some data analysis of the Labor Department’s own figures:

Our unemployment rate is not 9.7 percent, as the overall rate is. It is not the 16.7 percent that is officially reported. According to my own calculations, the black unemployment rate is at least 28.7 percent. Would such a rate be acceptable if “all” Americans were experiencing it?

That brings us to the Black President Trap, the one which has been lying, with serrated teeth, under the brush since before the President was elected. On the one hand, if the President is seen as appealing to African-American interests, he risks alienating white (and non-white, non-black) voters. On the other hand, if he fails to deal with the economic realities of African-Americans, he could set the stage for buyer’s remorse that prompts some people to sit out voting in the next Presidential election.

Let’s go back to the 2008 election and look at the numbers. The popular vote does not determine the Presidency, but it gives us one good metric of voting patterns. So, in 2008, then-Senator Obama got 69.5 million votes; Senator McCain 59.9 million votes. The electoral vote tally was 365 to 173.

What’s interesting is who voted in 2008 versus 2004. As the report by Project Vote put it:

Americans of color in 2008 increased by 21 percent from 2004, based on a review of exit polling and preliminary administrative data. Votes cast by Americans ages 18-29 increased by 9 percent. Votes cast by whites in 2008 declined slightly compared to 2004.

Far more African-Americans voted in this election (16.4 million) than the overall margin of victory (9.6 million)… closer than not to a two-to-one ratio. An estimated ninety-six percent of those black voters voted for Obama. A dispirited African-American electorate could seriously mess a black President’s re-election bid up.

When former Vice President Dick Cheney chortles that “President Obama is going to be a one-term President,” the first scenario that comes to my mind that could achieve that is an absence of black voters at the polls in 2012. Given the lack of credibility of the modern Republican Party in addressing African-American interests or speaking, tonally, to African-American sensibilities (and I think here of the delegates at the 1996 RNC booing General Colin Powell when he dared bring up affirmative action), I cannot envision widespread voting against President Obama if, as anticipated, he runs for re-election. I say “I cannot envision” because things regularly happen in politics that I cannot envision.

What I can envision is an America where, after years of persistent unemployment and a degradation of the quality of life in African-American communities, a lot of potential black voters in 2012 just stay home. Black voters staying home plus an uptick in non-black Americans voting Republican could produce a one-term presidency.

So, what to do? Well, the only defense against an impossible barrage of attacks from different vectors is to attack from different vectors. But the Obama administration has been caught in triage mode, trying to stanch the bleeding from wars and the economy and proposing but not yet executing new initiatives like healthcare. The administration needs to simultaneously act broadly, yet with a clarity of ethics and purpose.

Well, as my one of my friends likes to remind me, blogs are not books. So my next piece will tackle how to spring the “Black President Trap” without getting caught in it…

He is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know, he’s gone a long way to become a leader of this country, and past so much history, in just a year or two. I mean, it’s something we don’t even think about.

What are we to make of that?

Well, the Associated Press did a smart piece (featuring one of my Twitter friends, @profblmkelley) on whether black folks want to give up blackness. (Short answer: no.)

That’s one way of deconstructing Matthews’ statements. What it called up for me was the fundamental question of payback. Andrew Hacker, the author of books including 1992′s Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal, wrote about race and voters in the New York Review of Books shortly before the 2008 election:

Resentment of perceived black privilege is also involved, as we have seen with respect to affirmative action, and even fear of some kind of racial payback. Over half of a largely white sample told a Rasmussen poll that they feel Obama continues to share at least some of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s positions on America.

The fear of black payback goes back as far as fear of slave rebellions. In modern politics, it means that some voters fear that black politicians will favor black interests, just as white politicians have often favored white interests. In fact, if you look at the history of American government, there has been a far greater transfer of black wealth to white Americans and skewing of public funds towards non-blacks than the reverse.

Instead of a payback mentality, the Obama Administration seems to deliberately be hands-off on dealing with problems facing black America. Last month, there was a spat between the Congressional Black Caucus and the Administration over whether the administration was doing enough for African-Americans. (According to economist Dr. Julianne Malveaux, the real non-employment rate among African-Americans may be 27%.) This is a struggle to keep an eye on, because it begs the question: is the only way to be a post-racial President to ignore the specific structural inequities of race, and if so, at what cost to the nation?

A year ago today, I was in NPR’s Los Angeles studios, providing commentary for the network’s election night special. I’d worked a double shift, first as the host of the African-American focused show News and Notes, then rolling on into the coverage of returns and looks at ballot initiatives like California’s Proposition 8. After Barack Obama was announced the winner of the U.S. Preidency and we wrapped up the special, I drove down Jefferson Avenue in Los Angeles… and almost got carjacked. I’ve rarely spoken about the incident, but it’s time for me to examine its resonance as I look back on the last year of American life, of black American life, and of journalism.

Before I go into what I learned that night, let me give you some backstory on my job as a radio host. “News and Notes” was not just a show hosted by me, a black woman; or intended for an all-black audience (our listernership was very mixed). Rather, “News and Notes” had an explicit mission of reporting on the African-American and African-Diaspora communities. The show was born out of the need to replace the Tavis Smiley show, once he left the network with a very public critique of NPR, diversity, and marking to multicultural audiences. Ed Gordon hosted the new show, “News and Notes,” for a time, and then I took the host seat.

That host seat was never very comfortable. The network threatened to cancel its African-American interest show more than once. We had done groundbreaking coverage of the South Carolina primary – which I would argue was a tipping point where then-Senator Obama fully gained the support of civil-rights generation black Americans, many of whom had initially supported Senator Clinton. Yet the summer before the 2008 election, I remember speaking by cellphone to the acting CEO of NPR as I looked out over downtown Chicago, where I was staying for the Unity Conference for journalists of color. He’d read the blistering internal memo I sent urging management not to cancel the show because it would erode their credibility with the audience and undermine the network’s newsgathering capacity on the election. In the end, the show was given a reprieve, but it was finite.

Our staff was cut and online media resources that had been offered to The Bryant Park Project – another show that was eventually cancelled – were withheld from us, although part of our charter was digital innovation and we had highly skilled digital staffers. I know you know what I’m talking about. Millions of us have done the job death march… when you know your job is dead, but you have to keep going anyway. In the waning months of our show, as excitement about the election built, we had to do the Thriller zombie shuffle every day. The stress of imminent cancellation made those of us there election night in the near-deserted studio a tense and terse lot. While people across the country texted and tweeted reports of ebullience in neighborhoods when Barack Obama was declared the winner of the election, I was in the studio with one engineer. I wanted, as someone who values firsthand reporting, to get the view from the crowd and see what was happening on the street.

After the election special wrapped, I headed towards an area that was supposed to have a spontaneous gathering– the mostly black neighborhood torn by the pros and cons of gentrification, Leimert Park. As I sat at one light waiting to make a turn at a desolate intersection, a man draped in a comforter was crossing in the middle of the street I was about to turn onto; another man, dressed conventionally in jeans and a shirt, was following behind him. Both were African-American. In my exhaustion, naivete, or hopefulness (or all three), I imagined the man in the comforter was a mentally ill relative who the man in jeans was trying to stop and help. The light changed. I turned the corner slowly. As I did, the man in jeans turned away from the man in the comforter and lunged for the handle of my car door. In that slowed-down time, I looked back at him and saw a bulge that looked like a gun at his waistband under his shirt. I don’t know if he had a gun, or if my brain searched for patterns in the confusion. I do know he intended to open the car door. I suspect I would have been left at the side of the road, or worse, pushed into the passenger seat. I was lucky. His aim was off. I sped up, drove on, locked the car door, and returned home. So much for seeing history in the making. Or maybe I just had.

As I drove off into the night, part of me wanted to turn around, find the guy, and yell at him. “[Expletive deleted] don’t you know we just elected a black man as President? Why don’t you act right for once?” If I were invincible, I would have pulled some Sistagirl rank and read him the riot act, then tried to find out why he was so destructive and irresponsible. But the danger of the situation made it unthinkable for me to pursue the story in that way at that time.

Flash forward one year. Thousands of journalists have lost their jobs; hundreds of thousands of black people have lost jobs, homes, or both. The recession has officially ended, but economist Nouriel Roubini’s prediction of an L-shaped jobless recovery seems manifest. These days I am working in public radio in New York; writing my next book; and planning a new radio program. I drive the car that was nearly jacked on a dark Los Angeles street to Brooklyn and the Bronx to do my reporting. I still wish I knew more about that man who approached me. But when I see his face, as I do every now and then in my quiet moments, it renews my commitment to understand who has benefited how, and who has lost what, in the last year of American life.

Two decades ago, one of my journalism mentors introduced me to the concept and question, “Is it good for the Jews?” That question — “Is it good for [my identity]?” — is a hallmark of American political discourse. Sometimes we say it outright; other times we keep our musings to ourselves. Of course, every person has multiple social identities. Right now, at the first anniversary of the election of Barack Obama, I’m taking a hard look at what’s been going on with black folks and with journalists. These are bracing times for both communities. But from our struggles come the seeds of revolutionary thinking.

We have a President who is also a Nobel Prize winner and a First Lady who can double dutch and garden for food. President and First Lady Obama are re-defining blackness at a critical time. But Princeton professor Melissa Harris Lacewell wrote an article for the Nation analyzing Gallup polls which show “two consistent trends in President Obama’s ratings: overall decline and a widening racial gap between black and white Americans.” Economist Julianne Malveaux writes that whether black Americans are better off warrants an “ambiguous yes,” mainly for the promise of future policy changes. But a for right now, Malveaux writes:

In terms of the labor market we are emphatically not better off. The unemployment rate was 8.1 percent when President Obama was sworn in on January 20. It is 9.8 percent now. African Americans had official unemployment rates of 13.4 percent last January. Now the rate is 15.4. Those are only the official rates. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that it estimates overall unemployment as high as 17 percent. Using the same formula, the African American unemployment rate is 26.7 percent, a Depression-era rate. If you are a renter who is also jobless, you probably have not seen any positive impact of the public policy that president Obama is attempting. Are you better off than you were a year ago? It depends on where you stand on the economic totem pole

.

Of all the places that race operates in America, the church-sphere may be the most segregated, but journalism may be the most fractious. (I think of this just having read a galley copy of the memoirs of Gerald M. Boyd, the New York Times managing editor who was fired after younger black journalist Jayson Blair was revealed as a fraud. Boyd, who wrote the memoir as he was dying of cancer, asserts that he was unfairly painted as an apologist for Blair. The description of the Blair-era debates over the value of diversity echo ones I’ve had in my own newsrooms.) One of the gulfs that separates black and white journalists in a newsroom is often the sense of distance from a story. Most of the black reporters I know have family members or close friends who have faced a job loss; a home foreclosure; or a steep decline in the quality of living in their neighborhood because of other peoples’ troubles. One of the sad debates that still goes on in newsrooms today is whether black (and non-white) reporters can be “objective” about their communities. I have always argued that in order to be fair, you cannot claim a false sense of objectivity. You have to look at your lived experiences, analyze how they may have prejudiced you, and fight against those prejudices.


Doing an inventory of your own prejudices and lived experiences can make you a more compassionate reporter; change how you approach people when asking them to tell their stories; and how much you rely on outside experts versus people with lived experience. Journalism has become, over the years, a white-collar profession when it once was a blue-collar profession. One of my friends, the award-winning journalist Jennifer Gonnerman (author of “Life on the Outside,”) believes that journalism may once again become a working (wo)man’s profession, now that so much of the money is gone. I’m not sure that will happen, but I do know that being a journalist these days requires the skills of an accountant, a diplomat, a marketer, a computer tech… and yes, still those of a journalist.

What are those skills that a journalist must have? There are different ways to do the job, but I know I always have to mix a top-down knowledge (from statistics or study) with a bottom-up knowledge of seeing events unfold and talking to people on background. Although I do plenty of studio or telephone interviews, I take calculated risks to get rewards in the form of firsthand information. I’ve spent three days in the same clothes to cover Katrina; visited Klansmen; even walked into the treacherous halls of Congress.

On election night 2008, the risk came to me in the form of a failed attack. The reward, bitter at the time, was perspective that while for some people everything had changed, for others, nothing had. The man who came to scoop me out of my car was no more empowered at midnight in Los Angeles than he was before the Senator from Illinois was announced as President-Elect. I have no idea if he even knew the results of the election.

Right now, at the end of Obama Year One, I’m sure many people are evaluating whether their community did well. Was the last year good for the bankers, the homeowners, the small business owners, Detroiters, Washingtonians, farmers, the Amish, Muslims, the WASPS, the Jews? Was last year a good year for “your people,” however you define them?

The more that we can evaluate who has gained and lost what in this period, and then discuss and share that knowledge, the more we can approach the next three years with skepticism but not cynicism, inquiry but not inquisition, and, yes, with hope. Hope is not the same thing as naivete. Hope can drive away from danger and imagine a safer world, but not without hard work to make it so. Part of that work must include reporting, investigation, and journalism. We are still grasping for the best market model for media, but in the uncertain meantime, we continue to report on our communities and our world.

One year has passed since a new President was elected. For most of us, Presidential and even Congressional politics are not the biggest determinants of our happiness and success. Every day we make a choice: to face the uncertainty of the future with innovation, or to pretend we can use old models to succeed. For my people – and that includes “the journalists” and “the blacks,” as well as women and Americans at large – this has been one rough year. But I see, not only survival but innovation. More people are gardening for food and for joy; creating neighborhood festivals; learning how to fix their own homes and avoid predatory home improvement schemes; and researching what businesses really deserve their patronage. We are less flush and less frivolous. But we are finding the joy in the struggle, and that is a beautiful thing to see… and to be.