When Lucille Richmond cast her ballot for Barack Obama three years ago, she, like many African-Americans, embraced the historic opportunity to help elect the nation’s first black president.

But waiting in line at the county employment security commission last week, the 52-year-old grandmother - who lost two food preparation jobs and is searching for full-time work - can’t muster the will to support Obama for a second term.

“I don’t see what he’s done,’’ said Richmond, a Democrat. “I’m not even going to waste my time and vote.’’

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Obama’s defenders say there is a disconnect between the president’s genuine efforts on behalf of urban and disadvantaged populations and perceptions in the community. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a black think tank in Washington, said the president’s initiatives such as health care reform, the stimulus package that kept many public workers in their jobs, the extension of unemployment benefits, and grants to historically black colleges as well as increase in Pell grants benefited many African-Americans.

“If I were to criticize the Obama administration, it has a very good record with regards to African-Americans but it does not boast about it,’’ said David Bositis, senior political analyst.

Read more at The Boston Globe.

Of all the unlikely developments in American politics over the last two decades, the most astonishing is this: liberals suddenly love Ronald Reagan. They have taken to celebrating certain virtues they claim Reagan possessed—virtues they believe are absent from the conservative body politic today—while looking back with nostalgia at the supposed civility of the political struggles of the 1980s.

"There's something there I miss today," mused the former Democratic staffer and longtime talk-show host Chris Matthews in January about the relationship between Reagan and House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, the most powerful Democrat in Washington during Reagan's first term. Matthews dreamily evoked a time when Reagan and O'Neill had drinks together, swapped Irish stories, slapped backs, and, they say, cut deals with a minimum of personal rancor—as opposed to the ugly relations between the two parties today.

Even more notable is the fact that Reagan has become a model for presidential governance for . . . Barack Obama. Time, having proclaimed Obama to be the second coming of FDR in January 2009, abandoned that image in favor of declaring an Obama "bromance" with Reagan in January 2011. The White House's press office revealed that Obama had read Lou Cannon's biography of Reagan over the 2010 Christmas holidays, a choice that might once have seemed as incongruous as John F. Kennedy reading up on Calvin Coolidge. Obama even wrote an homage to Reagan for USA Today in February at the time of Reagan's centennial birthday. "Reagan recognized the American people's hunger for accountability and change," the president said, thereby conferring on Reagan two of his most cherished political slogans.

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Eddie Williams, head of what the Washington Post described as "the respected black think tank, the Joint Center for Political Studies," reacted to Reagan's election thus: "When you consider that in the climate we're in—rising violence, the Ku Klux Klan—it is exceedingly frightening." (This was not far removed from Fidel Castro's opinion about Reagan, offered right before the election: "We sometimes have the feeling that we are living in the time preceding the election of Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany.") In the Nation, Alan Wolfe​ wrote that "the United States has embarked on a course so deeply reactionary, so negative and mean-spirited, so chauvinistic and self-deceptive that our times may soon rival the McCarthy era."

Read more at the American Enterprise Institute.

Herman Cain's assertion that blacks' overwhelming support of the Democratic Party was evidence of their having been "brainwashed" was the latest salvo in an intra-racial war of words over the state of black politics.

From President Barack Obama's recent run-ins with BET News and the Congressional Black Caucus, to attendees at a caucus conference questioning the racial consciousness of Cain and Republican Rep. Allen West because of their association with the tea party, many observers on both sides of the political aisle are trying to figure out what to make of all of the infighting.

Is there such a thing as a uniform black political agenda? Are conservatism and black cultural pride incompatible? Do blacks really behave as political lemmings, and could they benefit from embracing the Republican agenda?

Read more at the Indianapolis Recorder.

As the debate over jobs turns into the latest political tug-of-war, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri walks a careful but candid line.

As chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, he has been at odds with President Barack Obama over the administration's response to soaring unemployment in the African-American community.

Nearing 17 percent, joblessness among blacks is at a three-decade high and almost twice the overall unemployment rate. The black caucus wants the president to do more.

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"He is a not a fire-breather, that's not his style, and I don't think he is, or for that matter, the caucus is genuinely angry at Obama," said David Bositis, an expert on voting rights and black politics at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. "I think they know that Obama is doing everything he can."

Read more at thestate.com or New Haven Register..

It was formerly available at The Miami Herald, macon.com, and kansascity.com.

As a result of a controversial new redistricting map, first-term Rep. Hansen Clarke has announced plans to run in a redrawn district that was for decades represented by Rep. John Conyers, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

According to David Bositis, a political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Clarke, who ousted long-serving Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick in 2010, probably has a better chance of winning the now-whiter district than Conyers because the elder statesman may be too vocally liberal and “out there” for its new voters. Conyers told BET.com earlier this month that he was considering running in the 13th district that Clarke currently represents, but has not yet announced a decision.

Read more at BET.

A year ago, Colorado's African-American community braced for the unimaginable: a legislature without a single black lawmaker for the first time in nearly six decades.

Denver's first black mayor, Wellington Webb, was among those who fretted about whether African-Americans would have a voice when the legislature convened in 2011.

But much has changed in the past 12 months.

Two blacks serve in the Colorado General Assembly.

Two blacks are now on the Denver City Council.

And Denver, with a black population of only 10 percent, just elected its second black mayor, Michael Hancock.

A year ago, it was Hancock, a city councilman at the time, who was upbeat despite worries from some in the black community.

"African-American candidates, no matter where they live, can appeal to voters because their issues are the same: education, job security, the economy," he said.

He soared past the white front-runner in the mayoral race, which came as no surprise to David Bositis​, a Beltway political analyst.

"When you're talking about a place like Colorado, its record in many respects is extraordinary," said Bositis, with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C. "The state has a long history of white voters supporting the candidate they believe is best."

Read more at The Denver Post.

Most of us grow into our identities as easily as acorns do into oaks - rarely questioning, resisting or protesting those events that do not appear to affect us directly. It is the difficult decisions, the ones that have consequences, challenge orthodoxies, bear risk and threaten status, that take real courage.

One would think such courage would easily find a political home. The Left, after all, made great strides through the sixties and early seventies thanks to the advances of civil rights, gay rights, feminism and anticolonialism, and still nominally supports its historical contributions. But by the early nineties, much of the Left had come to regard the politics of identity as an obstacle to further progress rather than an opportunity for it.

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The only arena in which identity has been explicitly and consciously embraced in recent years has been marketing. At the Republican convention that nominated George Bush as its presidential candidate in 2000, the leadership felt the need to transform the party's image, which many Americans regarded as backward-looking, narrow and elitist. To counter that impression, the three cochairs for the convention were an African-American, a Latino and a white single mother. The headline speaker on the first day was Colin Powell. The primetime news slot the next day went to Condoleezza Rice. On the opening night, the pledge of allegiance was delivered by a blind mountaineer while a black woman sang "The Star-Spangled Banner." On one later night of the convention, the entertainment featured Harold Melvin (black) and Jon Secada (Cuban). The convention was closed by Chaka Khan.

But while the emphasis in presentation was on race and ethnicity, the message was not directed at minority voters (whom the Republican party would effectively disenfranchise in order eventually to "win" the election). "What the Republicans are doing is aimed more at white Americans," said David Bositis, a political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. "Moderates do not want someone who's negative on race. It says something very significant about America as a whole." Race had simply become a signifier of the Republican desire not to appear mean-spirited.

Read more at Truthout.

In a sweeping work that traces the idea of race for more than three centuries, Audrey Smedley shows that “race” is a cultural invention that has been used variously and opportunistically since the eighteenth century. Race, in its origin, was not a product of science but of a folk ideology reflecting a new form of social stratification and a rationalization for inequality among the peoples of North America. New coauthor Brian Smedley joins Audrey Smedley in updating this renowned and groundbreaking book.

This analysis provides a brief review of the potential role of black voters and candidates in the 2010 Midterms. In particular, it examines some past midterm elections where a strong black turnout had a very material effect on various election outcomes. Black voters are strategically situated in 2010 to have a major impact provided an effort is made to get them to polls on November 2.

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This publication is a brief review of some of the available evidence on what transpired on November 2, 2010, when the Democrats lost their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and at least 19 state legislative chambers, maintained control in the U.S. Senate, and lost several important gubernatorial elections. The black vote was critical to the outcome of some closely contested elections, but not enough in many more. In particular, this review will focus on the behavior and significance of African-American voters in the 2010 midterm elections; and the changing numbers and profile of black candidates for both federal and statewide office, as well as their performance at the polls.

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