For blacks, Obama is “2 steps forward, 6 back.”

“The Democratic Party has run nearly every inner city in this country for 50 years, and run them into financial ruin. They’ve ruined the schools. They’ve driven out the jobs. They’ve tolerated a level of crime no American should consider acceptable.”

—Donald Trump

Delroy Murdock

Conservative black commentator Delroy Murdock, source of the above Trump quote, said Trump told his suburban Milwaukee audience last week that violent crime was up 17% in America’s 50 biggest cities in 2015, homicides climbed 50% in Washington, D.C. this year, and in Baltimore, murders are up 60%.

To Murdock, “Obama’s value to blacks is almost purely symbolic. It’s quite literally two steps forward, six steps back.”

Murdock’s “two steps forward, six steps back:”

• The unemployment rate has improved. According to the latest data, joblessness for black Americans has slid from 12.7% at Obama’s first inauguration to 8.4% in July — down 33.9%.

• The unemployment rate for blacks from ages 16 to 19 declined over that interval, from 35.3% to 25.7% — down 27.2%.

• But, the overall labor force participation rate for black Americans has slipped from 63.2% to 61.2%— down 3.2%.

• This metric also slumped for black teenagers, from 29.6% to 27.7% — down 6.4%.

• The percentage of black Americans in poverty has grown under Obama, the Census Bureau reports, from 25.8% in 2009 to 26.2% in 2014 — up 1.6%.

• Real median income among black households during Obama, the Census says, slid from $35,954 to $35,398 — down 1.5%.

• The number of blacks on Food Stamps soared under Obama — from 7,393,000 in 2009 to 11,699,000 in 2014 — up 58.2%.

• Also, from Obama’s arrival through last June 30, the percentage of black Americans who own homes plunged from 46.1 to 41.7%, the Census reports — down 9.5%.