Gary Younge: First, Obama’s second-term cabinet will probably have fewer black members than his first and those of either George W Bush or Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, there are the same number of black governors and Congressmen and one less elected senator than in 2008. “For all of the euphoria about the election of Barack Obama in black America, his election has not had coat-tails,” said talk-show host Tavis Smiley. Second, African Americans, as a group, are far worse off now than when Obama was elected and the wealth gap between whites and blacks has grown since the recession. Between 2007 and 2010 black families’ wealth decreased by 31%; for white families it was 11%. “[Theracial wealth gap] was already dismal,” Darrick Hamilton, a New School professor, told the New York Times. “It got even worse.” You can argue about the degree to which the relationship between Obama’s presidency and that reality is causal. But you can’t contest that it is factual. Obama’s meteoric rise has coincided with black America’s precipitous economic descent. […] It isn’t that black Americans are entitled to special consideration because the president is black. Quite the opposite. They should demand of him what they would and have done of any president – greater equality and social justice. Only more so, because they gave him a greater percentage of their votes than any other group or to any other president. The “talented tenth” is barely worthy of the adjective unless it makes space for these debates or its progress is in some way related to the remaining 90%. More here.