A black presidency coexisted with worsening racial inequality, exposing the limits of representation

Evidence

Who would have thought that the election of the nation’s first black president would occasion the moment for this kind of crisis in black America? It is the sort of irony we usually only find in fiction. A reversal of sorts: a black president who presides over the dismantling of a tradition, who masterfully uses the language of black struggle in the service of Wall Street, who is lauded for his celebration of black culture and his performance of black cultural cues, but whose policies leave much to be desired. This is someone who chastises black people for eating Popeye’s chicken for breakfast. … We’ve come so far as a nation that we can elect a black man to be president of the United States, but racial inequality gets worse on his watch. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 395

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader question of whether electoral representation functions as real political strategy versus performative symbolism.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does the data actually support that racial inequality ‘got worse’ during the Obama years, or is this rhetoric?