Images of Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy are popular in the homes of African-Americans. In 2007, the image of Barack Obama and his family was added after his announcement as a candidate for the presidency. This was a visual indication of the excitement of living during a momentous moment of Black history. And it represented a shift to a new reality for people of color. Ta-Nehisi Coates framed it this way in The Atlantic: “This particular Black family, the Obamas, represented the best of Black people, the ultimate credit to the race, incomparable in elegance and bearing.”
Sen. Obama won the presidency with the support of African-Americans—along with a wide multi-ethnic majority of voters. In 2012, the Center for American Progress pointed out that “President Obama and his progressive allies successfully stitched together a new coalition in American politics, not by gravitating toward the right or downplaying the party’s diversity in favor of white voters. Rather, they did it by uniting disparate constituencies—including an important segment of the white working class—behind a populist, progressive vision of middle-class economics and social advancement for all people.”
African-Americans and other segments of the coalition that supported President Obama were no strangers to the realities of hunger and poverty, and many looked to the new president to alleviate those ills from American society and abroad. So how did President Obama further the goal of ending hunger and poverty?
In the new book Mr. President: Interfaith Perspectives on the Historic Presidency of Barack Obama, Rev. David Beckmann, the president of Bread for the World, provides the following response:
The Obama stimulus package of 2009 helped keep the Great Recession from becoming a Depression. Two-thirds of this spending was focused on low-income people.
SNAP (also known as food stamps), school lunches, tax credits, and other programs were expanded and food security was kept from rising further.
The Affordable Care Act was passed that extended health insurance to 13 million more people.
Low-income programs over years of tumultuous negotiations with Congress, and the cuts to federal anti-poverty programs were, in the end, minimal.
The U.S. economy gradually recovered, and in 2015 the extent of poverty and food insecurity in America finally started to drop as well.
At President Obama’s first G8 Summit, he launched an international drive to help small-hold farmers in hungry countries increase their production and incomes.
President Obama doubled U.S. funding for agriculture and nutrition in Africa and other hard-hit parts of the developing world.
By 2015, President Obama’s Feed the Future program was investing in nine million farm families and reaching 18 million children with nutrition assistance.
President Obama spoke out strongly in favor of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and agreed that they should apply to all countries—including the United States. The Sustainable Development Goals start with the goals of ending extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.
It is our hope and prayer that the new presidential and congressional leadership will build on this legacy to end hunger and poverty for all.
Rev. Dr. Angelique Walker-Smith is senior associate for Pan-African and Orthodox church engagement at Bread for the World.
