Maxine Waters: Why isn't Obama in black communities?

WASHINGTON -- A prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus ripped President Obama's bus tour for ignoring suffering African-American communities as it rolls through pastoral -- and mostly white -- heartland towns.
"We don't know why on this trip that he's in the United States now, he's not in any black community. We don't know that," fumed Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) Tuesday evening at a jobs forum in Detroit, which is suffering a 12.5 percent unemployment rate, double Iowa's 6 percent.
"We want to give him every opportunity, but our people are hurting. The unemployment is unconscionable. We don't know what the strategy is," she continued.


A new Gallup poll put Obama's approval rating for handling the economy at a dismal 26 percent, the lowest of his presidency. A whopping 71 percent of those polled gave his performance a thumbs down.
Waters' frustration came as Republicans zinged Obama for conducting his jobs tour aboard a Canadian-built bus, as The Post revealed yesterday in an exclusive story.
Obama's bus tour has taken him through rural hamlets in Minnesota, Iowa and western Illinois, with picture-perfect photo ops in front of bales of hay and river parks -- but no hard-hit urban areas, as black unemployment holds at a crushing 16 percent nationally.
Henry County, Ill., where Obama spoke yesterday, has a black population of just 2.2 percent.
The black population of Winneshiek County, Iowa, where the president made an earlier stop, is a tiny 0.6 percent.
The criticism, although coming from a lawmaker under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, points to Obama's political bind -- he needs to reconnect with disaffected independent voters in Middle America.
But Obama also can't ignore base voters who supported him in 2008 and often rely on government help.
It's the latest headache on Obama's bus tour.
As The Post reported, the outer shells for each of two shiny black buses, which cost a total of $2.2 million, were manufactured in Canada by Quebec-based Prevost.


Waters, speaking at a freewheeling forum at Detroit's Wayne County Community College, suggested members of the CBC don't pressure Mr. Obama because their constituents are proud to have an African-American president, adding that "if we go after the president too hard, you're going after us."


"The Congressional Black Caucus loves the president, too," she went on to say. "We're supportive of the president, but we're getting tired. We're getting tired. And so, what we want to do is, we want to give the president every opportunity to show what he can do and what he's prepared to lead on. We want to give him every opportunity, but our people are hurting. The unemployment is unconscionable. We don't know what the strategy is. We don't know why on this trip that he's in the United States now, he's not in any black community. We don't know that."


The unemployment rate for African-Americans as of July was 15.9 percent, and it's significantly higher in Detroit. Waters told her audience Tuesday that when you "unleash us and you tell us you're ready to have this conversation, we're ready to have the conversation."


After Waters told the audience members of congress will act "when you tell us it's all right" to have a conversation with the president about these issues, an audience-member yelled, "it's all right!" After she said she wanted to give the president "every opportunity" to show what his plan is, someone yelled, how long?