Interesting fact of the day

Gateway Pundit had a post on Al Sharpton today, who is blasting GOP candidates for actually reaching out to black American voters.  One of his links was on the under reporting of the number of Americans on food stamps, and another link was a piece on the effect of the Obama presidency on black Americans.  Putting those two together, I came to an amazing conclusion--

The number of black Americans on food stamps today is higher than the number of blacks held as slaves just prior to the Civil War.

According the the 1860 census, there were about 3.9 million slaves held in America.  That's an incredible number, especially considering there were only 31.4 million people living in the country.

But in 2008, America finally elected its first black president.  Many people naturally assumed that a black president would improve the overall quality of life for black Americans.  But in 2011, 44 million Americans are living on food stamps under the Obama administration.  The latest census figures peg the percentage of black Americans at 12.5 percent, so when you do the math that means there are likely 5.5 million black Americans on food stamps.  And that is assuming that black Americans are receiving food stamps at the same rate as the population as a whole-a dubious notion but one that I don't have any facts to disprove.

So, more African Americans are living on food stamps under the Obama administration than were held as slaves by the South before the Civil War.  I guess that's an improvement, trading slavery for dependence on government to put food on your table, but far from the Hope and Change most black Americans were looking for when they marked the ballot for Obama in 2008.