Congressional Black Caucus To Obama: "You've Done Too Little For Black Folks"
Congressional Black Caucus members today criticized the Obama administration for not doing enough to help African-Americans through the bleak economy. Soon after withholding their votes on a wide-ranging financial services bill, 10 CBC members said they are pressuring the White House to do more. The lawmakers, who are lining up meetings with President Barack Obama’s advisers to exert their power, did not say whether they would withhold their votes when the full House takes up financial overhaul legislation next week.
The CBC efforts underscore the deep anxiety lawmakers have as they face an economy witnessing the highest national unemployment rate in a generation. The black unemployment rate is 15.7 percent, compared to the national rate of 10.2 percent. The CBC members laid out a series of policies they would like to see enacted: efforts to reduce foreclosures, including through principal write-downs; better access to credit for black-owned auto dealerships; more aid to small and community banks that lend to blacks; and more federal money going to support ad buys in minority radio stations and newspapers.
African-American Group Challenges Cuba
A group of prominent liberal African Americans, traditionally sympathetic to Cuba's communist revolution, have for the first time condemned Cuba, demanding it stop its "callous disregard'' for black Cubans and declaring that "racism in Cuba...must be confronted.'' (hat tip: The Black Informant). Among the 60 signers were Princeton professor Cornel West, actress Ruby Dee Davis, film director Melvin Van Peebles, former South Florida congresswoman Carrie Meek, Dr. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of President Barack Obama, and Susan Taylor, former editor in chief of Essence magazine.
The declaration, issued Monday, adds powerful new voices to the chorus pushing for change on the island, where Afro-Cubans make up at least 62 percent of the 11.4 million people yet are only thinly represented in the top leadership, scientific, academic and other ranks. "This is historic,'' said Enrique Patterson, an Afro-Cuban Miami author. Although predominantly white Cuban exiles "tried to approach these people before, they lacked credibility. Now [African Americans] are listening.'' The growing number of Afro-Cuban activists complaining about racial discrimination and casting their struggle as an issue of "civil rights,'' rather than "human rights,'' has helped to draw the attention of African Americans, said Victoria Ruiz-Labrit, Miami spokesperson for the Cuba-based Citizens' Committee for Racial Integration. "The human rights issue did not make a point of the race issue, and now we have an evolution,'' she added.
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