Melissa Harris-Lacewell, the Princeton professor who wrote that Slate piece that aimed to rally Negroes around Obama like Thundercats, penned another piece for the online magazine, this time asserting that black folks were mistaken about their good fortunes during the Clinton administration. The stat she uses for this is, well, weird.
But there is evidence that Clinton’s unmatched popularity among blacks confused many about the true economic impact of his presidency. In a 2005 article I co-authored in the Journal of Black Studies, I analyzed five national surveys from 1984 through 2000. The data show that nearly a third of black Americans held false understandings of black economic conditions during the Clinton years. By the time Clinton left office, many African-Americans incorrectly believed that blacks were doing better economically than whites. In the ’80s, barely 5 percent of blacks believed blacks were economically better off than whites. By 2000, nearly 30 percent of African-American respondents believed that blacks were doing better economically than whites. This belief is simply wrong.
Harris-Lacewell went on to say that the respondents who most liked Clinton were the ones who thought blacks were doing better economically than white people in the 90’s. Um, who are these people?
In light of her previous column, the implication here is that Negroes should stay out of the Bushes Clintons and vote for Obama. She also seems to be suggesting that Clinton’s policies were responsible in part for the gap in median incomes between blacks and whites, but she doesn’t come out and say that, either — which seems like a bit of a dodge.
