The Congressional Black Caucus was formed in 1971 to advocate on behalf of black Americans and hold lawmakers and the President of the United States accountable for policies adversely impacting blacks. The CBC is often referred to as the “conscience of the Congress.”
Considering the caucus’ history, it’s shocking CBC Chairman Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver admitted to the Root the CBC has been reluctant to criticize President Obama because he’s black. Never mind black unemployment under Obama for the past three years has been nearly double the national average and hit a record high of 16% in 2011. Black unemployment hasn’t been that high since 1984. I guess Cleaver also isn’t concerned black wealth has also plummeted under Obama. According to Pew Research Center, the average black family’s wealth is about $5,600 compared with $113,000 for whites.
According to Cleaver, “pride” about the president’s blackness trumps any concerns over current 14% black unemployment for members of the CBC. Cleaver said “if we had a white president we'd be marching around the White House.”
As the CBC celebrates their annual
Legislative Conference this week in DC, it’s more than insulting that Rep. Cleaver can chuckle about the CBC giving Obama a pass on accountability for his failed agenda with blacks and all Americans. Cleaver’s glib reaction is particularly disturbing when you consider in 1970 the Democratic Select Committee, which later became the CBC, was outraged by President Richard Nixon’s refusal to meet with them. Nixon’s snub appeared to be the impetus for group’s name change a year later.
In 1971, the CBC boycotted Nixon’s State of the Union because he refused to meet with them and sent him a list of 60 policy recommendations, the link to which has been conspicuously removed from the CBC website. At least a year ago or two ago it was there. Perhaps Cleaver removed it because he didn’t want people asking why the CBC isn’t treating Obama with the same outrage.
After all, Obama refused to meet with the CBC until a full year in office even though 95% of blacks voted for him in 2008. That doesn’t seem to be the appropriate way to thank your most loyal voting bloc. Adding insult to injury, Obama spoke at last year’s CBC’s annual legislative conference and told blacks they were lazy and needed to look for jobs.
"Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes. "Shake it off. Stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin.”
Cleaver joked with the Root when asked what he would do if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency in 2008 and the jobless numbers for blacks were this bad. “As much as I love Sen. Clinton I would have been all over her on 14 percent unemployment for African Americans. I would have said, "My sister, I love you, but this has got to go."
Apparently being America’s first black president has its benefits. It means the raging high unemployment and diminished wealth for blacks under Obama’s presidency ain't nothing but a thing to members of the CBC. The conscience of the Congress seems to have lost its way and sold his soul down the river in the name of giving deference to a brother named Barack Obama.
FNC's Dave Briggs hosts this lively debate between Angela McGlowan (Fox Political Strategist) and Tara Dowdell (Democratic Strategist), as they both weigh in with their perspectives as to the results of a recent NBC poll that indicates Mitt Romney has basically 0% support from the African American voters.
Support for same sex marriage is now in the Democratic Party preliminary platform. Once approved by the full platform committee and voted on at the convention, same sex marriage will have the formal support of the Democratic Party.
But as Democrats institutionalize their support for same sex marriage, their relationship with the Party’s most loyal constituency, black Americans, becomes increasingly uneasy.
A new survey just released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows 65 percent of Democrats supporting same sex marriage compared to just 40 percent of blacks.
A group of 3,700 plus black pastors, the Coalition of African-American Pastors, under the leadership of Rev. William Owens, has moved to formally oppose the Democratic Party and President Obama on this issue.
The group is spearheading a “Mandate for Marriage” campaign to gather 100,000 signatures on a petition declaring support for traditional marriage and calling “on President Obama to repudiate his assertion that gay marriage is a civil right.”
These black pastors are not in the business of politics nor are they policy wonks. They are driven by commitment to Biblical truths and the direct challenge to and rejection of these truths by social acceptance of homosexual behavior and same sex marriage.
They don’t see Biblical truths as academic points divorced from the practical realities of life. They see them as the rules that sustain life. And they see the crises spreading in their communities and in our nation as acceptance of these truths fall by the wayside.
HIV/AIDS is devastating black America. Reading the grim statistics from the Center for Disease Control makes clear that this plague is driven, first and foremost, by homosexual behavior.
According to the CDC, “In 2009, African Americans comprised 14% of the US population but accounted for 44% of all new HIV infections….black men accounted for 70% of the estimated new HIV infections among all blacks…black men who have sex with men represented an estimated 73% of new inflections among black men…”
Research abounds showing the importance of intact traditional family life in the education success of children and of overall economic health.
In recent testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution noted that individuals who follow three rules – complete high school, work full time, and wait until 21 and get married before having a baby – have a 2 percent chance of winding up in poverty and a 72 percent chance of being in the middle class.
Since the 1960s, American family life in general has deteriorated with the departure from traditional values and the concomitant growth in government and the welfare state.
But deterioration of black family life has been the most pronounced.
In 2008, according to a Pew Research Center report, 32 percent of black adults were married, compared to 61 percent in 1960.
These black pastors understand that collapse of family, out of wedlock births, single parent households, promiscuity, drugs and crime are the crises undermining black physical and economic health today. And they understand that a society that accepts as valid alternative lifestyles which undermine life sustaining Biblical truths is a society that will inevitably promote and advance this deadly behavior.
And they understand that the weakest communities are the most vulnerable - which means their own communities.
This Coalition of African-American pastors is showing, very much in the spirit of the civil rights movement, that the political choices facing blacks are not limited to deciding which political train to get on. They are jumping up front to influence where the train is going.
It’s high time for blacks to serve up some black tea to the Democratic Party, like the Tea Partiers are doing with Republicans, and move to change the values and direction of the party they have loyally supported but that’s no longer representing their interests.
The Congressional Black Caucus was formed in 1971 to advocate on behalf of black Americans and hold lawmakers and the President of the United States accountable for policies adversely impacting blacks. The CBC is often referred to as the “conscience of the Congress.”
