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The Black Congressional Caucus? Now, there is a group of people with a lot to gain/lose in the Cuban embargo debate. Look at the districts they represent. What do places like Compton and Oakland have to export to Cuba? Crack cocaine and techniques for shooting cheap Lorcin 9mm pistols sideways?
These pathetic losers have been eclipsed by the first (half) American-African president (nobody in Obama's family tree ever picked cotton) and they really can't address their constituents' real problem (a dysfunctional culture that values "bling" and disregards discipline, hard work, and scholastic achievement) so they go on this show-boat junket.
When I got Isaac Hayes' Shaft sountrack album for my 11th birthday, I practically memorized the whole album. I am saddened that his song "Soulsville", which is a lament on conditions in the inner city ghetto, is still relevant today.
The fact that one of the big leaders on this delegation's trip was Bobby Rush - a former Black Panther - is sickening. First, find me a congressional district that would elect a Black Panther to congress, and I will show you a district no sane person with options would want to live in. What? Was Farrakhan not on the ballot that year? Where all the members in the Symbionese Liberation Army still in jail? Was Homey the Clown still trapped in "Chez Whitey"? Did Bobby Rush "necklace" all the other candidates?
And the hypocrisy! The Black Congressional Caucus is a sad little collection of powerless politicians. Their pathetic little constituencies are committing auto-genocide. Abandoned and shunned by the black middle class, these enclaves of dysfunctional behavior are to be pitied, but are basically like Somalia. If you try to help, and you get to close, you will realize that they don't want to help themselves, and they will rob you/hurt you out of sheer spite/envy.
Does the Black Congressional Caucus actually do anything to address their constituents' needs? No, they come up with gimmicks like "Midnight Basketball"! Is it any wonder that most immigrants can land on our shore and with hard work and discipline oupace them in a generation? Bobby Rush would never turn to his voters and say, "Forget Midnight Basketball! We need Midnight Algebra Tutorials! We need Saturday Night Study Hall!
We need to spend as much money on Stanley Kaplan SAT prep courses as we spend on gold chains/baggy pants/rims/baseball caps with the bills sewn on sideways! Our people are not poor! There are entire industries built around getting rich off of our disposable income. We are just stupid! Let's stop being stupid and make ourselves rich!"
But let us realize what is really going on here. The Caucus is addressing the needs of its real constituency: the media. They are not satisfying the needs of their own neighborhoods (black on black crime, illegitimacy, etc) but satisfying the need of the mass media for controversy and something interesting to fill a 24 hour news cycle.
The Caucus had its first taste of attention with the South African Aparthied issue. Never mind that it was much safer to be a black person in Soweto than it was to be one in Compton.... The Caucus got a lot of attention over this issue and took a zero-tolerence attitude towards tyranny. (Oh, if only they cared as much about black people suffering in Cuba as they did about black people suffering in South Africa.) Then, when South Africa "became free" (I would dare any one of you to argue that it is a better place now) the Caucus took up the cause of Haitian boat people.
This is where the Caucus learned of the existence of Cuba. Leftist in bent and eager to look for racial disparities, they were angered that Cuban boat people were welcomed to the US, while Haitian boat people were sent back. Not wanting to accept that a Cold War law allowed Cubans who arrived to the US to get instant green card status, and unable to convince Congress to overturn this law, they pressured President Clinton to adopt the "Feet Wet/Feet Dry" policy.
The Caucus has a selective sense of outrage when it comes to dictatorship. White on black tyranny? Pure evil. Black on black tyranny? A soverign democracy. Black on white tyranny? What tyranny? So the Caucus had no stake in the fight once the black boat people (Haitians) and the black and white boat people (Cubans) were treated equally. That the Cubans were fleeing a dictatorship while Haitians were fleeing the poorest economy in the hemisphere made no difference.
But the Haitian boat people kept coming, so they pressured Clinton into not just one, but two occupations. The second one lasted over 5 years! Not that the press cared. If we had a year's worth of press attention about how many casualties we took, or how much we spent keeping our troops in Haiti as we do in Afghanistan, we would have never have done the second Clinton occupation.
The Caucus went to Cuba because they don't usually get invited to the good junkets. They like the media attention. It makes them feel important. A Black Panther might have been "a somebody" forty years ago, but he is a "has been" now, and Blacks under 30 look at pictures of the big Afros, black turtle necks, and leather jackets and laugh the way they would at pictures of Superfly's wardrobe. So it is reassuring to go to Cuba and talk other "has beens" like the Castro brothers and try to feel relevant.
Going to Cuba is also a slap to the Cuban community, who could have cared less about South Africa, and opposed them on the boat people issue. There is an enmity there. The Cuban middle class, basically 10% of the population, picked up and relocated to the US after Castro declared himself a communist. Mosty white, they were able to outpace the African American community in South Florida educationally, economically, and politically. So this visit is a symbolic way of getting some payback.
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