Does The Black Caucus Have A Point?

The con­gres­sion­al black cau­cus took the ini­tia­tive to do some­thing about the job­less­ness in America , and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the black com­mu­ni­ty. We com­mend senior con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Lewis of Georgia for his lead­er­ship and unflinch­ing efforts toward the uplift­ing of all Americans and par­tic­u­lar African-Americans. 

The ini­tia­tive was in the form of a job fair in Atlanta Georgia on Thursday August 18^th which saw thou­sands of job seek­ers turn­ing up hop­ing to get a job.( ABC news saw it this way).Thousands of unem­ployed wait­ed overnight, camp­ing out in their busi­ness suits and office heels and brav­ing the tor­ment­ing heat in Atlanta to stand in line for a job fair Thursday. Authorities treat­ed 20 peo­ple for heat exhaus­tion as they strug­gled to keep the line mov­ing and get peo­ple moved inside.(abc news​.com)

The con­gres­sion­al black cau­cus says it intends to do it again spon­sor­ing one in Los Angeles California and in Miami Florida. The Job fair made the news in oth­er ways, as some mem­bers of the black cau­cus took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to voice their dis­con­tent at the lack of jobs in the econ­o­my. Front and cen­ter was California rep­re­sen­ta­tive Maxine Walters who seemed rather frus­trat­ed with the President , whilst at the same time insist­ing that she sup­ports him.

At the heart of Walter’s dis­con­tent is the fact that the pres­i­dent took a three-day bust trip to ally the fears of rur­al folks in Iowa , Minnesota , and Illinois , but did not vis­it any urban cen­ters that are tra­di­tion­al homes to black Americans.

This leads us to look at the pres­i­den­t’s style of leadership.

From the onset, can­di­date Obama was forced to sep­a­rate him­self from the shack­les of being char­ac­ter­ized as a black can­di­date for the pres­i­den­cy, Obama under­stood that if he was pigeon-holed as a black can­di­date his chances of win­ning the White House was slim­mer than that of a snow-ball in hell.

Whether Obama did this as a shrewd tac­ti­cal polit­i­cal move or because he had to relate to the oth­er half of him, that is his moth­er’s side, is irrel­e­vant. Anyone look­ing at his can­di­da­cy had to see it as the best strat­e­gy if he was to pull off some­thing most peo­ple thought they would nev­er see in their life­time, a black man in the White House.

Bill Clinton for­mer Democratic President char­ac­ter­ized Obama’s can­di­da­cy as a quote “fairy tale’. President Clinton spent a lot of ener­gy try­ing to walk back those com­ments. We in the black com­mu­ni­ty knew exact­ly what he meant, I how­ev­er under­stood why he said it, I would have done the same in his place, if my wife was run­ning, and it would not be racial.

It just was nev­er done before.

In order for Obama to pull off the impos­si­ble, he had to posi­tion him­self as a race neu­tral being, he could ill-afford to be char­ac­ter­ized as anoth­er angry black left-wing rad­i­cal. Labels that were hung around the necks of pre­vi­ous can­di­dates like Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. In essence Obama had to dis­avow his black side in order to appease white Americans.

A white America that have always been wary and afraid of black men. A fear born out of guilt maybe, but fear nontheless. 

This how­ev­er drew the ire of black stal­warts like Jesse Jackson who had done the grunge work to make it pos­si­ble for a can­di­date Obama .

The good­ly Reverend alleged­ly had some choice exple­tives for Obama, for dar­ing to chas­tise black Americans on tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for their own actions, in a black church no less.

Something too many of my African American broth­ers and sis­ters do not nesces­sar­i­ly take kind­ly to. But which is made no less true because of their denial.

Bill Clinton was forced to take on the black com­mu­ni­ty in the face of a scathing attack from right wing repub­li­cans who saw rap music as the poten­tial death of America. 

Clinton went on to diss, rap­per sis­ter Soulja, about the con­tent of her lyrics, Clinton knew how­ev­er that blacks had nowhere else to go but the Democratic par­ty. where were blacks going to go ? To a par­ty that is as lil­ly white as the Colorado Mountains IN win­ter. Blacks have long been per­sona non gra­ta (not wel­come) in the Republican par­ty , so he could afford to take that gam­ble in order to counter bal­ance the vapid assault com­ing from the right , from attack­ers who were up in arms about rap lyrics.

Throughout the elec­tion cam­paign Obama was forced repeat­ed­ly to show his non black­ness, but was even­tu­al­ly cor­nered by a new wave of repub­li­can swift boaters in the Jeremiah Wright débâ­cle. Candidate Obama was forced to deliv­er a major Policy speech on race, the speech of his life, well writ­ten , well deliv­ered , and one that prob­a­bly cement­ed into the minds of white inde­pen­dent vot­ers that Obama was not a wide-eyed lib­er­al in black skin. despite this mon­u­men­tal speech the Jeremiah Wright affair dogged Obama through­out the pri­maries to their con­clu­sions and through­out the General elec­tions cam­paign. Democratic oppo­nent Hillary Clinton was all to hap­py to cap­i­tal­ize on the cir­cus-like mad­ness sur­round­ing this non issue. For the first time a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date was being held respon­si­ble for some­thing some­one else had said.

Obama’s lead­er­ship style and his stat­ed way of doing busi­ness after get­ting elect­ed, was one of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, reach­ing across the aisle to repub­li­cans in order to get things done. He was inspired by Lincoln and his strat­e­gy of putting his for­mer rivals into his cab­i­net. Biden as vice President,Hillary Clinton at the State Department pret­ty much saw Obama’s objec­tives met.

What Obama seem­ing­ly did not bar­gain for , and to this day do not com­pre­hend, at least as far as some folks I have spo­ken to are con­cerned, is the unadul­ter­at­ed ven­emous hatred repub­li­cans have for him. The President we assume is some­how shield­ed from the putrid bile that is spewed from the lips of every lit­tle repub­li­can ‚irre­spec­tive of stature.

The dis­re­spect is pal­pa­ble as it fol­lowed the pres­i­dent into the con­gress, whilst deliv­er­ing the state of the Union address one repub­li­can con­gress­man shout­ed out at the pres­i­dent “you lie”, most repub­li­cans sanc­tioned the infa­mous you lie com­ment, even though it was unprece­dent­ed , dis­grace­ful crass, and boor­ish. No oth­er sit­ting pres­i­dent as far as our research revealed, deliv­er­ing a state of the union address, have ever been treat­ed with such dis­re­spect and utter contempt.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D‑Md., said “I have nev­er in my 29 years heard an out­burst of that nature with ref­er­ence to a pres­i­dent of the United States speak­ing as a guest of the House and Senate.”

The hatred and the utter humil­i­ta­tion at see­ing a black man as President stand­ing there lec­tur­ing a room-full of most­ly old white men was too much for Joe Wilson of South Carolina.

So gut wrench­ing it was for them that Wilson arguably lost con­trol of his entire being, and was unable to stop him­self from shout­ing out at the President, ‘you lie”.

The troll lat­er apol­o­gised to Rham Emanuel, then Chief of staff to the pres­i­dent. To their cred­it some Republicans found his behav­ior dis­re­spect­ful and told him so ‚this includ­ed Senator John Mccain, of Arizona, and rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jerry lewis of California

This was not con­fined to the ill-man­nered con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive , a sit­ting mem­ber of the Supreme Court Samuel Alito , a recent Bush appointee vis­i­bly shook his head in dis­agree­ment whilst mouthing some­thing , as the pres­i­dent spoke to what he dis­agreed with, regard­ing a Supreme Court deci­sion. Political his­to­ri­ans are still hard pressed to find a sin­gle instance where any of the dis­re­spect shown to pres­i­dent Obama was ever shown to any oth­er American pres­i­dent. One can under­stand the intem­per­ate out­burst from an uncul­tured , uncouth Congressman, one would how­ev­er expect a supreme court jus­tice to under­stand protocol.

President Obama’s style of lead­er­ship has drawn howls of con­dem­na­tion from both the right and left. The chal­lenges he faces are unique, and as such hard to gauge, is the grid­lock in Washington just the way things gets done in the Nation’s cap­i­tal, or is it because we have a black president?

There have been a stat­ed desire from the peo­ple on the right to see the pres­i­dent fail ! I am strug­gling to see how the pres­i­dent could fail with no con­se­quence to the coun­try? I try to see the pos­si­bil­i­ty of this, based on the claims the pres­i­den­t’s ene­mies make, that they are patriots.

On his ascen­den­cy to the pres­i­den­cy , Mister Obama had a Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate. Democrats had an almost carte blanche to enact their agen­da, and could legit­i­mate­ly claim a man­date. They could have legit­i­mate­ly argued that elec­tions have con­se­quence. What they did was to quib­ble amongst them­selves, split­ting into dif­fer­ent groups , blue dogs, lib­er­als, and Regan democ­rats, the lat­ter being an oxy­moron if I ever did see one. Whilst democ­rats quib­ble an omi­nous cloud was form­ing on the polit­i­cal hori­zon in the form of the now pow­er­ful tea party.

The tea par­ty, large­ly a group of racist hyp­ocrites, had no trou­ble with the expen­di­tures of Reagan, Bush and Bush , repub­li­can pres­i­dents who ran up the nation­al debt and oper­at­ed with unbal­anced bud­gets . Suddenly saw the destruc­tion of America, and their quote way of life under threat from pres­i­dent Obama. They could not argue that the pres­i­dent was unqual­i­fied to be pres­i­dent because of his age, so they cast asper­sions on the true place of his birth. The United States Constitution requires only that a can­di­date be born in the United States, and be of or above the age of 35 years.

They cre­at­ed what almost amount­ed to a nation­al cri­sis argu­ing (1) Falsely that Obama was not born in the United States. (2) They argued false­ly that the pres­i­dent was a mus­lim, a  false­hood that even if true would not have pre­clud­ed an American from law­ful­ly seek­ing the pres­i­den­cy under the constitution.

Conversely Obama’s oppo­nent , war hero, Senator John McCain of Arizona was not born in the United States, report­ed­ly born some­where in the Panama canal zone. Tea par­ty activists had no prob­lem with sen­a­tor McCain’s lack of main­land birth. Tea par­ty sup­port­ers and their cronies had no com­punc­tion about show­ing their ran­cid hatred for the pres­i­dent , and cer­tain­ly have not been restrained in their use of deroga­to­ry and dis­gust­ing­ly demean­ing car­i­ca­tures in their depic­tion of Mister Obama.

Throughout all of these attacks on the pres­i­dent, the con­gres­sion­al black cau­cus has been mute. Where have the lead­er­ship of that group been ? The tea par­ty has gal­va­nized their sup­port­ers into a unyeild­ing , uncom­pro­mis­ing , group of right-wing zealots. that have pri­maried tra­di­tion­al repub­li­can sen­ate and house can­di­dates , forc­ing some out, and forc­ing oth­ers far to the right of their own con­vic­tions in order to stay alive politically.

The ide­o­log­i­cal right-wing puri­ty test have cre­at­ed what is now hap­pen­ing in Washington. This includes the non­sen­si­cal man­u­fac­tured debate about the debt ceil­ing , which before Obama was a mere for­mal­i­ty. The atten­dant down­grade of America’s AAA rat­ings from Standard and Poors, gave Republicans what they want­ed, the abil­i­ty to tag this pres­i­dent with the infamy of hav­ing been the first American President to see this hap­pen on his watch . Arguing it was a result of his fail­ures, when in fact it was of their doing.

The black cau­cus did not estab­lish them­selves as they most cer­tain­ly could, by strik­ing an alliance with the his­pan­ic cau­cus , giv­ing the his­pan­ic cau­cus their com­mitt­ment that they would sup­port them on immi­gra­tion , and ask­ing them to join them into push­ing back hard against the right-wing reac­tionar­ies in the tea par­ty. Instead they sat on their rear ends expect­ing things to hap­pen, well things hap­pened , the tea par­ty got all they want­ed , they have blocked the pres­i­den­t’s agen­da to the point the coun­try is arguably close to a sec­ond reces­sion, the pres­i­den­t’s approval num­bers on the econ­o­my is under 40% despite his suc­cess in elim­i­nat­ing Osama Bin Laden.

This ought to be a les­son to the black cau­cus , whether there is a black pres­i­dent or not the strug­gle con­tin­ues and despite the pow­er of the pres­i­den­cy, this  pres­i­dent will not be able to do what oth­er pres­i­dents did as a mat­ter of course. It’s not the office, it’s the man. This is still America.

mike beck­les:

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