Obama’s 2012 reelection linked to better mental health among educated black men, study suggests

A new study by Rice University sociologists finds that since Barack Obama was re-elected as US president in 2012, the mental health of college-educated black men has improved significantly, while the mental health of black men who did not attend college has worsened.

“Four More Years! Or So What? The Impact of Barack Obama’s 2012 Reelection on the Mental Health of Black Adults,” is published in Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race.

Lead researcher Tony Brown, a distinguished professor of sociology at Rice University, said he and his co-authors were interested in looking more closely at research examining the health effects of President Obama’s 2008 election – which showed a positive effect on black men’s mental health – to see whether anything has changed.

Brown and his co-authors looked at the mental health of black adults 30 days before and 30 days after the 2012 election. Data for the study came from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a national survey of 400,000 U.S. adults that assesses a range of health aspects.

The researchers concluded that Obama’s 2012 reelection led to significant changes in black men’s mental health, similar to the findings in their study after his 2008 election. However, this time not all men saw any health benefits.

After President Obama’s reelection, college-educated black men saw a decrease in bad mental days per month of nearly three days, while non-college-educated black men saw an increase of more than one day per month.

“Our analysis suggests that less-educated black men were very disappointed with President Obama, or at least felt that he had not performed as well as they expected or delivered on certain campaign promises, such as better jobs and access to health care,” Brown said.

“I also suspect that he has alienated some black men, and possibly many black women, by downplaying the inequalities and overt racism that black men face, and that this is contributing to the deterioration of their mental health.”

Quintin Gorman Jr., a doctoral student at Rice University and co-first author of the study, said “relative deprivation theory” may explain the change in mental health benefits between 2008 and 2012. This sociological theory describes situations in which individuals may feel deprived of certain resources when they compare themselves to others, and this sense of deprivation can lead to poorer health outcomes.

Brown said this gulf between more and less educated black men was something Obama himself highlighted many times during his presidency, most notably in his commencement speech at Morehouse College, a historically black school in Atlanta.

“In this particular situation, he spoke in very glowing terms about the men who had just graduated and even encouraged them to ‘pull up their pants’ and not act like low-income black men,” Brown said.

“The rhetoric used by President Obama suggests that people with a college education are worthy of respect, and we believe this type of communication during the Obama era is just one example that may explain why less-educated black men feel this way and why their mental health has deteriorated.”

Black women, like those in 2008, have not seen any mental health benefits from Obama’s reelection. Brown couldn’t pinpoint specific reasons why, but said there are a few possible explanations.

“Our hypothesis is that black women were concerned about the death threats against President Obama and were concerned about him in the same way they would be concerned about their husbands, fathers or sons,” Brown said.

“They may also have been concerned about how President Obama would address discrimination against black men and women, and may have wondered whether any progress would be made on racial issues, especially since so little has changed since 2008.”

Brown also said black women may be concerned that Obama’s reelection could lead to racial backlash in the years to come and send the country back to a racist “status quo.”

The researchers said they hope their study will encourage Black people to get more involved in politics and vote for candidates who will stand up for their rights and address broader inequalities, and they hope it will encourage health scholars to rethink the social determinants of health to take into account larger sociopolitical changes like elections.