A Day Late and a Dollar Short
Robert Pierre and Jon Jeter’s terrific new book A Day Late and a Dollar Short: High Hopes and Deferred Dreams in Obama’s “Postracial” America is now out from John Wiley & Sons and The Washington Post just published a short adaptation from the book. Here’s a clip:
What does Barack Obama mean to black America? This is the running debate taking place somewhere in the country every day, and the answer so far is this: everything and nothing; epic transformation and elegiac stasis; a stark symbol of how far black people have come and a painful marker of the great distance left to travel.
The transcendent, jarring truth for blacks is that they celebrated their most triumphant moment at the worst of times. The housing market triggered the greatest loss of wealth for African Americans in history. Nearly a fifth of all black workers are out of work, a figure that rivals the nation’s unemployment at the peak of the Great Depression. In the country’s largest cities, the high school dropout rate for blacks is nearly half.
Over nine months of interviews beginning with Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, from the mountains of Appalachia to the Bay Area, blacks from all walks of life — entrepreneur, ex-offender, soldier, union leader, single parent, South African émigré, retiree, hip-hop activist and more — pondered the meaning of President Obama, and in doing so, laid bare the political identity of the nation’s most liberal voting bloc. Their stories, some of which are excerpted here, provide some insight into what Obama’s election meant to black Americans, and whether, one year later, it has brought the promised change to their lives.
It’s a fascinating piece and is well worth reading. You can check out the rest here.
