Barack Obama, Social Security and the final irrelevance of the Black Misleadership Class.

AuthorDixon, Bruce A.

In the US that existed before Social Security, elders with dwindling assets and little savings unable to work simply went hungry, or were a financial drain upon younger members of their families until they died. This is the real world that corporate Democrats and Republicans intend to bring back.

It took Democrat Bill Clinton to impose draconian cuts in welfare and end college courses for prisoners in the nineties. And today, only a black Democratic president can sufficiently disarm Democrats, only a black Democrat can demobilize the black polity completely enough for the raid on "entitlements" to be successful.

For the current crop of black leaders, the only legitimate "black" issues are voting rights (but not for the incarcerated or formerly incarcerated), minority contracting, and funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and various "civil rights" museums and memorials. But in the real world where most African American families live, proposals to raise the retirement age and cut Medicaid or Medicare are dire economic threats.

The president, as Glen Ford warns, is about to triangulate himself between the extreme pro-corporate demands of his own "deficit commission" and voters, in order to inflict a fatal wound on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Many among the current Congressional Black Caucus are utterly unprepared to stand against the corporate onslaught to gut Social Security because it is backed by the same forces who have made their political careers possible, and spearheaded by a black Democrat in the White House. The NAACP and similar advocacy organizations too have neutered themselves with a generation of corporate financing and the "reward" of regular meetings with White House officials.

In the real world, very few elders and, percentage-wise, even fewer black elders will be able to lead anything like a dignified life off retirement savings and 401(k) plans. If real black leadership existed right now, it would stand up for lowering, not raising, the retirement age. Besides obligating millions who are physically unable to seek or sustain employment far into their seventh decade, raising the retirement age will add millions of unemployed elders to the work force, where they will compete with their own children and grandchildren for scarce employment opportunities.

If black America had a real voice you'd hear it on the radio and TV explaining that lowering the retirement age would open up millions of...

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