Yesterday President Obama sat down for an interview with April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks.  She asked him why were some portions of the black community losing faith in him. Ryan specifically asked “speaking of the African American community, this seems to be a shift in black leadership, as it relates to supporting you. You have the CBC that’s upset with you about targeting on the jobs front — African Americans, 15.6 percent unemployment rate, expected to go to 20 percent; mainstream America 10 percent. Then you have black actors who supported you — Danny Glover, who’s saying that you’ve not changed; your administration is the same as George W. Bush. What are your thoughts about the fact that black leadership is grumbling, and the fact that people are concerned with you being the first African American President, and they thought that there would be a little bit more compassion for black issues?” The president responded, “Well, first of all, April, I think you just engaged in a big generalization in terms of how you asked that question. If you want me to line up all the black actors, for example, who support me, and put them on one side of the room, and a couple who are grumbling on the other, I’m happy to have that. I think if you look at the polling, in terms of the attitudes of the African American community, there’s overwhelming support for what we’ve tried to do. And, so, is there grumbling? Of course there’s grumbling, because we just went through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And everybody is concerned about unemployment, everybody’s concerned about businesses not hiring, everybody’s concerned about their home values declining. And in each of these areas, African Americans have been disproportionately affected. We were some of the folks who were most affected by predatory lending. There’s a long history of us being the last hired and the first fired.” I find the president’s response to be very interesting. The fact is he has not lost all of the capital with the black community but there are more than a few voices grumbling and it would be very dangerous to simply dismiss it as the discontent of a few. Yes the president is president to all of America, but he assembled a coalition last fall that captured the black vote which was a critical part of his successful election so he needs to listen even to things he does not want to hear.  He also said  “ this notion somehow that because there wasn’t a transformation overnight that we’ve been neglectful is simply factually not accurate.” Mr. President no one expected an overnight transformation, but what we do expect is to be taken off the back burner and put on the 2010 To Do List.

*Transcript from April Ryan Interview