For impoverished blacks, a sense of pride, doubt

Unsure Obama will make their needs a priority

David Browner and Nancy Sandy talked with Steven Gray (not pictured) as they ate dinner at Shepherd's Table in Silver Spring, Md., last week. (Leslie E. Kossoff for The Boston Globe)

WASHINGTON - When Eddie Burns, an unemployed musician, describes what the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama means to him as an African-American, he answers in superlatives: historic, amazing, unbelievable. The future president, Burns proudly declares, "has encouraged people to dream."

But as a client of Shepherd's Table, a suburban Washington charity that provides meals and services for the poor, Burns can't imagine that Obama's presidency - hailed around the globe - will change the lives of poor black people like him. Obama, he said, has to handle two overseas wars and a failing economy, and certainly would not have time to help the destitute.

"I doubt it, no. I don't think so," said Burns, who has been out of work for about three years. "For the lower class, no way."

As the nation prepares to celebrate Obama's stunning rise to the presidency, Burns and other African-Americans are taking great pride in the fact that the nation's next commander in chief looks like them. After a few months of uncertainty - believing he was unelectable in a political system dominated by whites - black people fully embraced Obama in the Democratic primaries, and swept him into office with more than 80 percent of their vote.

While his election has boosted the pride of black people across class divides, it has been a particular triumph for people like Obama: the black professional class, which struggled at times to find its place in majority-white institutions, but which now is breaking through to the top rungs.

Yet for African-Americans nationwide who sink below the poverty line - at 24 percent, nearly twice the national average - Obama's election is a point of pride, but not real hopefulness.

Though Republicans said he wanted to use tax hikes to redistribute America's wealth to the poor, the bulk of Obama's campaign rhetoric focused on middle-income issues, and his plan to stabilize the staggering US economy is squarely aimed at rebuilding the middle class. That, along with his personal profile of a successful, Ivy League-educated family man, puts him in a different universe from most black people struggling to get by in troubled urban neighborhoods like Washington's Anacostia District, less than 5 miles southeast of the White House.

Among the poor, "there's truly a general feeling of hope - and that this won't make a difference," said Jacki Coyle, executive director of Shepherd's Table, noting that much of her majority-black clientele shows their solidarity with the president-elect by arriving for meals decked out in Obama hats or T-shirts.

In an informal, show-of-hands poll of about 50 clients last week, Coyle said, nearly all of them raised their hands to say they are elated about Obama's inauguration and feel hopeful about his presidency. But when she asked them if they think Obama can improve their lives, only a few raised their hands.

"Folks said, 'He's one person - he can't do it by himself.' 'It will take many people to affect change.' 'He means well, but I don't think he can do anything,' " Coyle said. "There's a feeling that this is an African-American president, and that this is good, and that he is going to pay attention to us. But there's this feeling that nobody believes the change is going to happen tomorrow. There's a real feeling that change takes time."

Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city's nonvoting delegate to Congress, said the dichotomy between hope and anxiety among the district's residents, 56 percent of whom are African-American, is impossible to overlook. Hope is the predominant trait, she said, but anxiety lurks just beneath the surface.

"There is a lot of joy in the air at a time when you would expect people to be completely down in the dumps, with the economy not only in deep recession but in a recession no one believes is cyclical, with no end in sight, and yet you see people talk about Obama as if it was the last party the nation would ever have," said Holmes Norton, who represents a city in which roughly 1 of every 5 residents live in poverty, according to the US Census. Amid such optimism, she said, "the unemployment rolls go up every day, 1 in 10 people are on food stamps."

Obama's election "has not displaced the misery, but his notion of hope could not be better timed and better placed," Holmes Norton said. Dr. Eliot Sorel, a psychiatrist and professor at George Washington University in downtown Washington, said hope "is the pervasive mood" in the city, a high level of optimism he hasn't seen in 30 years as a Washington resident. Though "the danger exists of the expectations not being filled" with Obama in the White House, he said, hope is an important aspect of recovery: with it, a person can become confident enough to take the next step toward self-improvement.

There are signs that the Obama administration can provide hope for the black underclass: the new president cut his political teeth as a community organizer in the housing projects of Chicago's South Side, he has addressed poverty in his campaign speeches, and has presented an economic stimulus package to Congress that includes programs to give poor African-Americans and others a leg up to a better life.

But most poverty specialists believe that, like other administrations, Obama's agenda for poor minorities will take a back seat to more urgent priorities like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more influential constituencies like the middle class.

Amy Glasmeier, a Pennsylvania State University geography professor who specializes in communities and poverty, said the black underclass was largely forgotten or ignored under President Bush and a Republican-dominated Congress. Though Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, Bush was still in office, and poor African-Americans fell further behind when the economy crashed last year, she said, deepening the misery in urban neighborhoods with few jobs and little economic development.

"There was nothing there to begin with," Glasmeier said. "When everyone else moves forward, they'll still be stuck in the mud."

Because Obama has vowed to address poverty, Glasmeier said, poor black people should be cautiously optimistic. His staff will include specialists who know the issue "inside and out," she said, but nothing will change "unless there are sympathetic ears in the Obama administration - and someone who will actually say, 'We can't leave poor people out.' "

Michael Kranish of the Globe staff contributed to this report.