Trayvon Martin is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the failures of the Obama Presidency

A jury of 6 - none of them African-American - has found not guilty George Zimmerman, the killer of Trayvon Martin, a young unarmed black walking home after dark in a gated community carrying only a packet of sweets. Obama asks America to reflect on this. There is hardly a riot in African-America and less attention paid, according to Pew polling, to the matter than to other high-profile 'racial' issues in the 1990s. 

Black poverty increases year after year, especially since 2007; unemployment runs at twice the white average among African-Americans; the wealth gap between black and white expnads year on year. Obama's presidency proclaims it's colour blind. Recall his words at his post-election victory speech in November 2012: no matter who or what you are, black or white, young or old, etc..., you can make it in America if you really want to...

The Guantanamo Bay detention facility remains open; inmates on hunger strike against the conditions of their detention and the failure of the American state to bring charges agianst them in a court of law are being force-fed. President Obama has solved that now: "targetted" assassination via drone warfare, repeating the old myth of 'precision warfare'. But there will be no need to bring charges against the dead; they, and their near-neighbours, have already been found guilty and their execution ordered by the candidate who proclaimed in 2008 that US values were violated in the 'dark halls of Guantanamo'.

The pursuit of Edward Snowden - who has bravely blown the whistle on massive, illegal and unconstitutional surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) of ordinary people's emails, skype and other online communications. Everyone is a suspect. Instead of condemning the NSA's activities, most commentators have called for Snowden's prosecution under the Espionage Act. Snowden is currently a non-citizen stuck in limbo, stripped of his US passport, pusued by the 'land of the free'.

Bradley Manning's trial for leaking to Wikileaks a massive number of confidential war logs and State Department cables, showing illegal activities, corruption, collusion in evading international law, backing violent regimes with human rights' abuse records, is ongoing. He faces life in jail.

African-Americans voted in record proportions for Barack Obama. They daren't speak ill of him - he's "one of their own". They empathise with him because of the racist backlash against Obama. But, in so doing, and seeing things in racial terms alone, African Americans and racist whites are missing something more fundamental: that Obama's the voice of the establishment and governs accordingly.