Does the Congressional Black Caucus Really Represent
Black America? And What Should We Do
About It?
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
"True leaders never confine
their demands to the immediately possible."
The
Congressional Black Caucus ought to represent the political will of Black
America; otherwise it has no reason to exist.
But does the Caucus live up to its charge? And if not, what can we do about it?
The
short answer to the first question is "no."
A look at the report cards issued by CBC
Monitor, the groundbreaking project which grades CBC members from an
African American point of view reveals that an entire layer of black
representatives in Congress, all
males, have decisively detached themselves from their constituencies in
Black America.
In
2006 two-thirds of caucus members voted for telecom and cable bills that allow
cable and phone companies to bypass and shortchange our communities. Smaller numbers supported measures ranging
from a presidential line item veto to abolishing the estate tax on a tiny
portion of the nation's wealthiest, to making it harder for ordinary people to
mount class action suits against corporations.
An unprecedented political shift is underway, not among the broad masses
of African Americans, but among the tiny elite of elected officials who
nominally represent them.
"An unprecedented political
shift is underway, not among the broad masses of African Americans, but among
the tiny elite of elected officials."
While
black politicians drift steadily rightward, black America waits impatiently for
its elected representatives to go beyond raising the minimum wage and address
the nearly 50% rates of unemployment among inner city black males and propose
the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Black America wonders when its political leaders will begin to
offer meaningful opposition to the nation's policy of racially selective mass
imprisonment, under which African Americans, who are only one eighth the
nation's population, are fully half of those in its prisons and jails. Black America wants to how and why the
dispossession and dispersal of New Orleans - a centuries-old black city of
hundreds of thousands has been allowed to happen and to stand.
The
bright lines of black opinion on these and several other questions are
well-defined.
Racially
Selective Mass Incarceration
America's
prison population has grown six or sevenfold since the mid 1970s. With half the nation's 2.2 million prisoners
drawn from its black one eighth this is incontrovertible evidence that an
unspoken but very real national public policy of racially selective mass
imprisonment is in effect. Such broad,
and broadly destructive social policies cannot begin to be changed till they
are acknowledged, and until real political leaders have the guts to make them
into real political issues. It's time
for the cowardly and complicit silence of black political leadership, including
most of the Congressional Black Caucus on the question of mass incarceration,
to end.
Katrina: The Drowning, Dispossession and Dispersal of
Black New Orleans
Thousands
died in the man-made disasters attendant to Hurricane Katrina due to government
failures on every level, from presidential refusals to fund and maintain
levees, to the failure of federal, state and local officials to plan for
evacuation, but so far as we know only one government employee was fired, and
none have seen a day in a court of law.
The majority of pre-Katrina New Orleans residents were black and
renters. So-called reconstruction
efforts have pointedly excluded jobs, housing, schools, health care and
infrastructure that would enable them to return, to re-unite their families and
to rebuild their communities. National
Democratic party leaders, always afraid of being too closely identified in the
minds of white America with the problems of blacks can never be counted to
stand up for us if our own nominal representatives, the Congressional Black
Caucus, does not.
"Single payer national health
care is a bright line behind which black America is already arrayed."
Single
Payer Health Care
Every
advanced industrial society on the planet has some form of national health care
insurance in which health care is delivered to the population with only 1% to
3% diverted to non-health care costs.
US health care is the world's most expensive, largely because 15% to 25%
of every health care dollar goes to advertising and shareholder profit rather
than medical care. African Americans
comprise a larger proportion of the nation's forty-some million uninsured than
any other ethnic group in the country, are the most victimized by rising health
care costs, Medicaid and Medicare cuts, and receive worse care than others even
when similarly insured. Endorsement of
HR 676,
co-sponsored by Representatives John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich, is a good
step in the direction of a single payer national health care system, a bright
line behind which black America is already arrayed, waiting for our political
leaders to join us. How much longer
will we wait?
Voting
Rights, Jobs, Education
As
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. pointed out several years ago, the second amendment to
the US Constitution guarantees the right to own a gun. But the Constitution is silent on the right
to decent employment at living wage, on the right to a quality education, or
the right to vote, and have every vote counted. As long as these basic and sensible human rights are not
enshrined in the Constitution, excuses will be found to deny them.
Should
the economy work for people? Is
everyone's child worth educating? Is
every vote worth counting? These are
arguments that can only be won on their own merits, and the only way to frame a
discussion on their merits is to pose them as Constitutional Amendments.
And
the only way to win them once and for all is to write them directly into the US
Constitution.
We
know we need jobs. We know that quality
education is a human right. And we know
that our votes should be counted. Black
America's political leaders must discover the vision to pick these fights and
lead them.
"Black political figures who
don't represent their constituencies on issues of peace can't represent them on
anything else."
Peace
40
years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King declared that he "...knew that America would
never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so
long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like
some demonic destructive suction tube..."
The
current generation of America's leaders have foisted upon us a so-called
"Global War on Terror," which they expect to last decades, and requires the US,
with less than 5% of the planet's population, to spend more than all the rest
of the world combined on weapons and the military for the indefinite
future. For historical reasons, black
America tends to be more skeptical and less supportive of imperial ambitions and
imperial war than our white neighbors.
Black political figures who don't represent their constituencies on this
issue can't represent them on anything else.
They should be shunned and shamed, until such time as they can be
replaced.
WHY
DEMAND THINGS THAT CAN'T BE PASSED IN THIS SESSION OF CONGRESS?
The
words "politician," "leader," and "political
leader" are often used interchangeably.
If they are indeed the same things, we have the right to demand that
black politicians act like leaders.
True leaders never confine their demands to the immediately possible, to
those measures which can be enacted into law in this month, this year, or the
next. Leaders possess vision, and they
exercise leadership to make today's political impossibilities into tomorrow's
realities.
Everything
that Dr. King demanded in his heyday was deemed "politically impossible", and
much of his historic agenda remains unaccomplished.
We
have outlined here the bright lines, as we understand them, of street level
opinion in black America, of political stands and just demands widely held
among our people, from which too many of our nominal leaders are drifting, and
some are running away from as fast as they can. They can run. But they
can't hide.
During
this Black History month, Black Agenda Report and CBC Monitor will issue the
2007 CBC Report Card and along with thousands of our friends around the nation,
initiate a groundbreaking political action project to carry the demands of
black America directly to our nominal representatives in Congress.
Bruce Dixon can be contacted at Bruce.Dixon (at) BlackAgendaReport.com.
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