African-Americans optimistic on Obama

The black unemployment rate has been under 8 percent just once in the last 37 years. And that golden year was - it figures - 2000, just before President Bush restored the gloom by underfunding or gutting program after program related to economic opportunity.

President Obama inherited a setup for failure, with the black adult male unemployment rate now 15.4 percent. The only time in the last 37 years that it was higher was during - it figures again - the first four years of Ronald Reagan, going as high as 20.3 percent. White folks got morning in America. Black folks were in mourning.

This time, we are witnessing the Amazingly Optimistic African-American. A New York Times/CBS poll this week found that 70 percent of African-Americans think the nation is going in the right direction, while only 34 percent of white Americans think so. Ninety-one percent of African-Americans approve of the way Obama is handling the economy, compared with 55 percent of white Americans.

Is this because we now have Ronald Reagan in blackface? Obama said in the primaries that Reagan "changed the trajectory of America . . . He tapped into what people were already feeling, which was, 'We want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.' " Clarifying his remarks after rivals said this was too cheerful a tribute, Obama said Reagan was a "transformative political figure because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interests to form a majority to push through their agenda, an agenda that I objected to."

It will be awhile before Obama proves transformative beyond being the first black president, but he continues to tap optimism to buy time for his agenda. Despite the divides in the poll numbers above, there are plenty of findings in the same poll to show that optimism is not just an ecstatic black thing. Sixty-two percent of white Americans approve of how Obama is handling his job, compared with 27 percent who disapprove. Sixty-six percent of white Americans are optimistic about the next four years of Obama.

With perceptions still high that he is working hard on the economy, the environment, and the wars, only 28 percent of white Americans and 12 percent of African-Americans consider him a "typical" politician.

This is almost seismic, since Obama lost the white vote en route to the White House, earning just 43 percent of it against John McCain. That may be a reason he flew to Missouri this week, a state he barely lost, to note his first 100 days in office. He knows that swaths of middle America represented by the "Show Me" state are permanent, teetering battlegrounds to get them to vote for their economic interests.

It is fascinating to consider if his legacy teeters to the positive. In a 1992 New York Times poll, 67 percent of white Americans and 75 percent of African-Americans said race relations were "generally bad." Today, a stunning 59 percent of African-Americans are in close agreement with the 65 percent of white Americans who think relations are "generally good."

That is more than generally good. Some white Americans are exploiting Obama's election to call for the end of voting rights protections. This is premature since white Americans just flashed a lingering red flag, voting in the majority for a white man to continue the disastrous policies of a white president who had a 67-percent disapproval rating among white people.

But white Americans and African-Americans appear on many levels to be on an unprecedented path toward a shared view of the nation. A shared view can lead to a shared vision, giving birth to the dynamism that closes the racial divide once and for all.

Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.