President Obama 2012: Young, Black, Bourgeois Voters Need Enticing
Osas Ighodaro, former Miss Black USA attends a State of the Union party to watch as President Barack Obama addresses the United States. Brian Benjamin, founder of the group "Young Professionals United for Change" organized the State of the Union viewing party at the Highland Bar to rally support behind Barack Obama for the upcoming election year in New York Tuesday Jan. 24, 2012. (Damon Dahlen, AOL)
Trymaine Lee First Posted: 01/25/2012 7:51 pm Updated: 01/26/2012 11:29 am
Harvard Law School graduate Diane Lucas and her friends caught Obama fever during the 2008 presidential campaign. They canvassed and campaigned, knocked on doors and lobbied their colleagues and social networks.
They were an army of young, educated and ambitious men and women who'd mustered every dollar and every minute they could to the cause of getting Barack Obama elected president. And there were thousands of others just like them, doing the same thing.
"He was an underdog and it required all hands on deck," said Lucas. "We knew it was going to be a fight -- that if we didn't go hard and if we didn't tell every single person we knew to vote and tell people to rock the vote and go out and do voter registration and anything else that we could do, this man would have no chance."
Obama was elected on the wings of hope and promises of change. The voices of young and old, white and black from all corners of the country were heard. But there was a special satisfaction for African-Americans like Lucas, who helped usher into office the nation's first black president. That group came out in record numbers. Fifty-five percent of eligible blacks ages 18 to 24 voted on Election Day, and 65 percent of eligible blacks of all ages voted, according to the U.S. Census.
Roughly 96 percent of them voted for Obama.
But over a rough and tumble first term chock-full of congressional standoffs and economic crises, hurt feelings and disappointments, the fever some young black professionals caught four years ago seems to have broken into mild support at best, downright apathy at worst.
"Our generation, young professionals, especially young professionals of color who were a huge part of the force that mobilized the vote and were really active in getting Obama elected in '08, now are pretty much apathetic this election and that doesn't make any sense," said Lucas, 30, now a lawyer in New York City. "It's counter-intuitive for the same people who supported Obama with such zealousness, in 2012 to be like, 'Uh, yeah, I could have had a V8.'
"That is very frustrating and scary," Lucas said.
As the election rolls closer and Republican candidates battle for their party's nomination, Lucas and other young and upwardly mobile Obama die-hards in New York City are fighting to re-energize their peer groups at dinner parties and brunches and froufrou cocktail parties in Harlem and Brooklyn -- the social orbit of fashionable, educated, ambitious young blacks -- where the Obama conversation can be stickiest.
They are diving into their massive Rolodexes and listserves and email lists and bombarding their peers with invitations to speech-watch parties, fundraisers and soirees with celebrity hosts and the hottest DJs. Some are teaming with club promoters and forming hosting committees, delivering opportunities to be politically active on a silver platter for a group with aspirant tastes -- all in the name of re-electing Obama.
"I try to make it so that its fun," said Brian Benjamin, 35, founder of Young Professionals United For Change [ http://www.yp4c.org/ ], a group that organizes young professionals of color around political and civic issues. "It's meaningful, but they know that I'm going to have events at a venue that's hot," he said. "I just don't see why things that are meaningful have to be boring or in a community rec center basement or something."
Lucas said she is reaching out to her peers through online social networking and fundraising. She and three friends recently launched elevensixtwelve.com [ http://www.elevensixtwelve.com/ ] (11-6-12, the date of the presidential election), a website with a blog that also sells Obama T-shirts, with all profits going to the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party.
"I think the main thing is making it cool again," Lucas said. "When people see that the people that they respect and that they hang out with are supporting Obama in a zealous way, it's like, 'Oh wait, maybe I need to get into it.'"
The black bourgeoisie is a tricky, finicky group to entice politically, said people who oscillate in such circles. Some are contrarians of the "just because he's black doesn't mean I have to vote for him" set. Some are politically tuned in, but turned off by what they see as Obama's political missteps.
"Young black professionals gave a lot of money last time, checks none of them probably ever thought that they would write," said Benjamin, a former investment banker who now works on affordable housing issues. "Now, the hardest difficulty is they are very committed to not getting fired, so as a result they don't, they just don't have the time and or the interest to really dig in. Many of them work as investment bankers or at some law firm, and politics really doesn't matter much to them."
Lawyers and doctors and Wall Street types are worrying about their own financial security. Their time is money and they simply aren't enthusiastic about spending much on a president who they either think will likely beat the Republican nominee or who has lost the razzle-dazzle of 2008's historic run, some in those circles said.
"They live where they live and they're not getting shot at, so they just don't care," Benjamin said. "What we're doing is building that bridge to where they are and where they can have the most impact."
For Benjamin and his group YP4C, that often equates to the "accoutrements" the "cool crowd" have come to expect.
Just last week, Benjamin, who also serves on the president's national finance committee, helped raise thousands of dollars during Obama's Jan. 19 trip to the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem.
Some younger Obama supporters said one factor is a perhaps false sense of confidence. They say the Republican debates are showing a clear picture of what the alternative to Obama could be: Gingrich's talk of poor black kids and the "food stamp president," Romney's rich-boy arrogance, Ron Paul's relationship with a racist newsletter.
"We have to put our weight behind Obama to balance out whatever stereotypes that people have about who we are as a people," said Calcie Cooper, who co-founded the Joint Interest Group [ http://www.thejigroup.com/ ], another networking group that has worked to politicize young professionals. "That representation was lacking, and it still is. There are a million and one Barack Obamas that I know. When he came on the scene it was like see, we exist."
On Tuesday night, Benjamin's organization threw a watch party for the president's State of The Union address at a Midtown Manhattan bar. A week or so earlier, he blasted the event to his network of thousands, tapped Osas Ighodaro [ http://www.osas-online.com/ ], Miss Black USA 2010 to host, a couple of high-profile members of the Obama campaign, and built buzz by tweeting, using Facebook and teaming with Loop21 [ http://loop21.com/ ], a popular African-American website for news and politics. There were drink specials, a DJ and flat-screen televisions.
Hundreds of people who Benjamin said "do it big" pressed close to the bar and into nearly every corner. A few minutes before Obama's speech, the din of the crowd fell to a low grumble.
Looming a few feet above, in the DJ booth by the door, was Michael Blake, a 28-year-old political star who emerged as a key organizer during Obama's 2008 campaign [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/01/obama-taps-campaign-star-_n_1070717.html ]. Blake was later appointed the White House point man on African-American outreach.
Late last year, he was tapped to join the 2012 campaign team as a deputy director of Operation Vote, the outreach for blacks, Latinos, LGBTQ, Jews, the young and the elderly.
Blake's gaze during the speech seemed as much on the president as on the crowd. After the speech, as the crowd lingered on, he stepped outside into the cool January air.
"This is the epitome of what you're fighting for, to show the world and show society that as young, aspiring, thriving African-Americans, I can be successful, I can contribute, I can break the stereotypes of what people may believe about me and those around me," Blake said. "And if you want to think about how it changes the paradigm and opens up doors and opens up opportunity and has people think about you in ways they never thought about before, you have got to get excited about this.
"These are once-in-a-generation moments that we are going through right now," Blake said. "And the fact that we have an African-American man that is president and an African-American wonderful first lady and two little black girls, it is the epitome of what you are striving for. You need to fight for this and you have to realize that on the other side, you have leaders who want to take everything away. And we can't allow that to happen, if you believe that we as African-American people still have more amazing things to do."
Cop allegedly pulled gun on pregnant woman over too many grocery items
By Stephen C. Webster Friday, February 10, 2012 15:02 EST
Police in Kendall County, Illinois said Friday that they were investigating whether an off-duty officer drew his firearm and pointed it at a pregnant woman because she had more items than Walmart recommends for self-checkout lanes.
Nicole Thurmond and husband Jason were reportedly checking out recently at a Walmart store in Oswego, Illinois when a man confronted them wearing civilian clothing, not identifying himself as an officer. The couple said it was only after his gun was drawn that the man told onlookers he was a police officer.
When her husband returned from getting an item they forgot, he described the situation he encountered as “a guy in her face, yelling at her.”
Jason Thurmond, an African-American man, reportedly pushed the man away from his wife. That’s when the gun was allegedly drawn. In the ensuing moments, Thurmond claimed that the officer asked if he was on welfare.
At that point, Nicole said she turned around “because I was afraid if it did go off, at least it hits my backside and not in the front where my baby is.”
Jason Thurmond was subsequently arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery. The couple has filed a formal complaint, which sparked the inquiry.
This video is from NBC Chicago, broadcast Friday, Feb. 10, 2012.
This report analyzes the demographic and economic characteristics of newlyweds who marry spouses of a different race or ethnicity, and compares the traits of those who “marry out” with those who “marry in.” The newlywed pairs are grouped by the race and ethnicity of the husband and wife, and are compared in terms of earnings, education, age of spouse, region of residence and other characteristics. This report is primarily based on the Pew Research Center’s analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) in 2008-2010 and on findings from three of the Center’s own nationwide telephone surveys that explore public attitudes toward intermarriage. For more information about data sources and methodology, see Appendix 1.
Key findings:
• The increasing popularity of intermarriage. About 15% of all new marriages in the United States in 2010 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another, more than double the share in 1980 (6.7%). Among all newlyweds in 2010, 9% of whites, 17% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics and 28% of Asians married out. Looking at all married couples in 2010, regardless of when they married, the share of intermarriages reached an all-time high of 8.4%. In 1980, that share was just 3.2%.
• Gender patterns in intermarriage vary widely. About 24% of all black male newlyweds in 2010 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. Among Asians, the gender pattern runs the other way. About 36% of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race in 2010, compared with just 17% of Asian male newlyweds. Intermarriage rates among white and Hispanic newlyweds do not vary by gender.
• At first glance, recent newlyweds who “married out” and those who “married in” have similar characteristics. In 2008-2010, the median combined annual earnings of both groups are similar—$56,711 for newlyweds who married out versus $55,000 for those who married in. In about one-in-five marriages of each group, both the husband and wife are college graduates. Spouses in the two groups also marry at similar ages (with a two- to three-year age gap between husband and wife), and an equal share are marrying for the first time.
• However, these overall similarities mask sharp differences that emerge when the analysis looks in more detail at pairings by race and ethnicity. Some of these differences appear to reflect the overall characteristics of different groups in society at large, and some may be a result of a selection process. For example, white/Asian newlyweds of 2008 through 2010 have significantly higher median combined annual earnings ($70,952) than do any other pairing, including both white/white ($60,000) and Asian/Asian ($62,000). When it comes to educational characteristics, more than half of white newlyweds who marry Asians have a college degree, compared with roughly a third of white newlyweds who married whites. Among Hispanics and blacks, newlyweds who married whites tend to have higher educational attainment than do those who married within their own racial or ethnic group.
• Intermarriage and earnings. Couples formed between an Asian husband and a white wife topped the median earning list among all newlyweds in 2008-2010 ($71,800). During this period, white male newlyweds who married Asian, Hispanic or black spouses had higher combined earnings than did white male newlyweds who married a white spouse. As for white female newlyweds, those who married a Hispanic or black husband had somewhat lower combined earnings than those who “married in,” while those who married an Asian husband had significantly higher combined earnings.
• Regional differences. Intermarriage in the United States tilts West. About one-in-five (22%) of all newlyweds in Western states married someone of a different race or ethnicity between 2008 and 2010, compared with 14% in the South, 13% in the Northeast and 11% in the Midwest. At the state level, more than four-in-ten (42%) newlyweds in Hawaii between 2008 and 2010 were intermarried; the other states with an intermarriage rate of 20% or more are all west of the Mississippi River. (For rates of intermarriage as well as intra-marriage in all 50 states, see Appendix 2.)
• Is more intermarriage good for society? More than four-in-ten Americans (43%) say that more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society, while 11% say it has been a change for the worse and 44% say it has made no difference. Minorities, younger adults, the college-educated, those who describe themselves as liberal and those who live in the Northeast or the West are more disposed than others to see intermarriage in a positive light.
• Public’s acceptance of intermarriage. More than one-third of Americans (35%) say that a member of their immediate family or a close relative is currently married to someone of a different race. Also, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) say it “would be fine” with them if a member of their own family were to marry someone outside their own racial or ethnic group. In 1986, the public was divided about this. Nearly three-in-ten Americans (28%) said people of different races marrying each other was not acceptable for anyone, and an additional 37% said this may be acceptable for others, but not for themselves. Only one-third of the public (33%) viewed intermarriage as acceptable for everyone.
• Divorce. Several studies using government data have found that overall divorce rates are higher for couples who married out than for those who married in – but here, too, the patterns vary by the racial and gender characteristics of the couples. These findings are based on scholarly analysis of government data on marriage and divorce collected over the past two decades.
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