Hmmm, this discussion took a strange turn. I have a feeling the black community was pretty patient & undemanding with Obama, and basically was content just to have a black president - unlike everyone else, they didn't seem to assume they'd get any special favors (though it seems there's a fair amount that came through HUD, etc that might be labeled as such - Obama being reluctant to crow too much about actions, possibly as would create too much a target & backlash, or just his nature). Even with all the illegal mortgage foreclosure (wiping out the 90's increase in black home ownership I'd been so proud of) and the unrelenting sky-high unemployment, blacks didn't seem to complain that much.

In any case, I wasn't persuaded by the Trayvon Martin case (as we went through countless times here), and the idiot in Ferguson who'd just ripped off and shoved a Korean store owner didn't make a great community model either, but the steady evidence of excessive profiling, tasering, physical abuse, planted evidence, etc make for a rather jarring contrast to the idea that a black president might symbolize a sea change in treatment of blacks. We're not talking about college loans or minimum wage or health insurance - we're talking basic safety & survival, without which all other niceities like holding a job or raising kids safe & secure disappear. 

The jingoism shocked and scared me, and I think in a large way reflected the conditions that have given us Trump, and I trace it back to our shitting-our-pants fear post-9/11 when terror began to consume us.. I'd presumed people would be shocked by police throwing a suspect in the back of a van unsecured and driving him around until he broke his back. But then there are so many videos and stories, it just piles up. A college campus, some white guy's been assaulting people, so security shows up and does what comes natural - arrests the nearest nigger. Doesn't matter that 20 people told him he had the wrong man. It's like the worst of Southern jokes I heard growing up or something out of Blazing Saddles, except it's not a joke. The video of a sting team tackling a black basketball player in suit & tie in front of a fancy hotel. Police tasing an unconscious man on the BART platform. Tasing or shooting an epileptic. The building in Chicago they take black suspects off-the-books to "interrogate". And yet white America largely shrugs and says "blue lives matter" - cops no longer need to know how to talk to people, not even kids -  they just need to pull a taser or gun and get to work - strangling, shooting, beating, all's forgiven. A cop took a visiting Indian grandpa (obviously confused with a darkie) who didn't understand English walking around his son's neighborhood, and flipped him on his face from 3 feet up, breaking his back. A video of a cop talking to a black guy sitting on his mother's porch, telling the cop the neighbor can vouch for him - until finally the cop escalates to punching the guy & dragging him off for not giving up his phone. A black football player protests by refusing to stand for the pledge of-allegiance - and white America plays its military patriotism card - not pledging at a football game is an insult to the troops - forget death-by-chokehold - It's Rams vs. Packers night, dammit.

And then you get a cop on the stand and he sounds like Jeff Sessions trying to explain how many Russians he did or didn't meet with, or what his position on racism is. It's a dirty business, and they're almost never held accountable.

I think I was going somewhere else with this - wanted more emphasis on women this election, did think there'd be more attention to poverty, new jobs ideas etc - but it's hard to get fancy when you suck at the basics. Our war on Islam & "terruh" is largely an extension of our fear of & inability to assimilate black Americans. We already tried those internal walls - Anacostia, Algiers, East St. Louis, Compton,... Anyway, it's basic - no class of people can sit by and watch themselves be hunted down. It's not something that will wait for white folks to get their better jobs, well then again, yes, it always does, doesn't it. We waded into the problem in the 90's, came up with some good solutions & bad, but at least we tried. This past year, we just got lost in verbiage, and the problems remain. Maybe the police abuse will just give way to farcical pseudo-history, like Ben Carson dreaming of black slaves as immigrants being processed through Ellis Island.