Obama has overseen the reversal of decades of economic and political progress in black America, the opposite of the hope at his election-Mead

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Sept/Oct. 2012, "The Last Compromise," Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest

"Many hoped that the election of the first African-American President of the United States meant a decisive turn in the long and troubled history of race relations in the United States. And indeed President Obama’s election was a signal success for the American racial settlement of the 1970s. But at the moment of its greatest success, that settlement—call it the Compromise of 1977—was beginning to unravel, as evidenced by the fact that President Obama’s nearly four years in office to date have witnessed decades of economic progress and rising political power

• in black America shifting into reverse."

Cover from The American Interest, Sept./Oct. 2012

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