On Martha’s Vineyard, black elites ponder the past year

US President Barack Obama (2nd L) and First Lady Michelle Obama (2nd R) walk from Marine One upon arrival on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, August 7, 2015. The Obama family is starting a 2-week vacation. AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama walk from Marine One upon arrival at their vacation in Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

Articolo tratto da Politico By Sarah Wheaton

As Obama vacations on the island, an upper-class gathering grapples with a year of unrest.

EDGARTOWN, Mass. – For America’s black elite, this year’s seasonal sojourn to Martha’s Vineyard turned into a soul-searching retreat.

The shooting of a young, unarmed black man in Ferguson, Mo., last year did little to disrupt the annual idyll of upper-class blacks on this island 1,200 miles away. Photos showed President Barack Obama dancing at a soiree for political power couple Vernon and Ann Jordan as Ferguson burned. The next afternoon he delivered an anodyne statement urging calm without mentioning race.

Obama returned this year for his sixth summer in office on Martha’s Vineyard, the island off the Massachusetts coast that has been a vacation destination for upwardly mobile African Americans for more than a century. But this year, many of the black doctors, lawyers, executives, professors and politicians who gather here to enjoy the sunshine, surf and cultural events are grappling with the realization that there may not be quite as much to celebrate as they once hoped.

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