To-do list for African Americans before Obama leaves office

As a black American who witnessed one of my proudest political moments when President Obama was elected seven years ago, the reality that he will soon be leaving the Oval Office is beginning to sink in. It's not a good feeling.

From the Republicans' scrabble in Iowa and New Hampshire to wondering whether Hilary Clinton will survive her email scandal and how long Sen. Bernie Sanders' political flame will burn before it flickers out all represent a sobering adumbration: Obama's exit from the White House nears.

In the wake of this, many African Americans are experiencing presidential preseparation anxiety — acute symptoms of political uneasiness about the shape of post-Obama America. We ask poignant questions: Will an American president use Twitter again? Will the next commander-in-chief possess the political imagination to open relations with countries like Cuba? Will the next president imitate Marvin Gaye at a press conference or do the Lipala at a party in Kenya?

One thing is sure, despite all of the challenges from a gridlocked, partisan, and quasi-racist Congress, Obama got things done.

Refloating a tanking banking industry was his first solid move. Obamacare came next. As reported in Forbes Magazine late last year, the Obama administration can boast that the health plan has saved nearly 50,000 lives and $12 billion since its enactment.

But black and progressive Americans also say that more can be done before Obama leaves office in January 2017.

They argue that the president should have been more forceful about advancing a black agenda, especially because African Americans were the most loyal voting bloc for him in 2008 and 2012, voting at 95 percent and 93 percent respectively. They wonder if there is time for addressing the big problems still plaguing blacks.

Indeed, there is time and Obama should pursue three major policy initiatives that can impact the plight of blacks for decades beyond his presidency.

First, Obama should use federal funds to endow historically black colleges and universities (HBCU). Two generations after the successes of the civil rights movement, black colleges now suffer financially from the lack of enrollment and support from the black middle class whose children have been lured away by the Ivy Leagues and mainstream white colleges.

Since slavery, HBCUs were the choice of the black middle class and elite African American families. Howard, Lincoln, and Tuskegee Universities were supported predominantly by black families — a legacy that has dramatically abated since the 1960s.

By endowing the nation's top 50 HBCUs at $1 billion each, a new generation of black students — especially the poor who live in the inner cities — can matriculate from local communities to underused black colleges with full scholarships. There is precedent for this. As part of Obama's 2009 economic stimulus legislation, nearly $2 billion was set aside for HBCUs.

Nothing will move millions of black Americans from poverty to the middle class faster than a college education.

Second, Obama should also move more aggressively toward saving black men. The presidents My Brother's Keeper project is a good start. Rightly, the president has acknowledged that boys of color are in trouble and is steering $50 million in public and private sector funds to helping black and Latino boys.

But a problem remains. A current generation of black men lives in crisis. They suffer in the civic shadows of the nation. They live in what Harvard sociologist Orlando Wilson has called a "social death." Poignantly, the New York Times noted earlier this year that more than 1 million black men are absent from American society due to incarceration, disease, or early death by violence.

An emergency plan — consisting of job programs and social inclusion policies — must address the plight of alienated black men.

Third, Obama must make it a priority to pursue a renewed Voting Rights Act. Voter ID laws, redistricting, disenfranchisement of former prisoners, and the elimination of early voting in some states will impact the black electorate for generations, according to a report by the public policy organization Demos. A restored Voting Rights Act is needed for future black involvement in the nation's electoral process.

Obama will be remembered for great feats in office. He should also ensure that a strengthened black community is part of his lasting legacy.

Kevin C. Peterson is a senior fellow at the Center for Collaborative Leadership at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.  newdemocracycoalition@gmail.com