Washington Post
- Curtis Adams, who owns Curtis A’s barbershop here and who is also the establishment’s senior political analyst, is a close observer of President Obama. This is something of a full-time job itself at Curtis A’s, a gathering place in a black neighborhood five miles from downtown. All day every day, men (and occasionally women) come for a trim and wind up lingering to argue about jobs and the oil spill and the war in Iraq.
But mostly jobs. “If Obama was in this chair right here, I would tell him to give me a job. That’s what I would ask for,” said customer E.J. Jones one recent afternoon. Jones has worked off and on since he was let go from an Army ammunition plant in 2008.
The recession was especially rough on Kansas City’s black community, where unemployment is 15 percent, nearly three times the rate for whites. Adams pointed to the empty chairs in his shop. He’s down 75 customers a week. Of Obama, he said: “That man has a hell of a workload, and Bush left a hell of a mess. I like what he’s doing. But I can’t feel it.”
