by GLEN FORD and PATRICE JOHNSON
“Chicago’s Bobby Rush brings up the third spot on the ass-end of the Black Caucus.”
Although the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) continues to call itself the “conscience of the Congress,” the 46-member body lost its political cohesion at least ten years ago, when the awesome weight of corporate money definitively cracked the broadly progressive consensus that had previously dominated Black Democratic discourse. The 2005 defection to the Right of ten CBC members on bankruptcy and estate tax legislation prompted a group of Black activists in Washington, DC to launch a scorecard that would track the Black Caucus’s legislative behavior. The CBC Monitor issued its first Report Card in September, 2005, with the assistance of The Black Commentator. In 2006, The Black Commentator’s writers and editors founded Black Agenda Report, and continued to publish annual CBC Report Cards. After a hiatus of several years, BAR has resumed scoring the Congressional Black Caucus on crucial legislation.
We are sad to report that the rot in the CBC has grown deeper in the Age of Obama. A decade ago, 23 Black lawmakers – a clear majority – scored 90 or 100 percent in the first CBC Report Card. This year, only 12 Black Caucus members managed to score 80 or 90 percent. Not a single CBC member achieved a 100 percent score, due to their acquiescence to a unanimous U.S. House resolution, in July, 2014, affirming Israel’s right to “defend itself” even as the apartheid state was in the process of killing 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the vast majority of them civilians, including hundreds of children. Every CBC member lost ten points for going along with what Bruce Dixon described as their “cowardly, hypocritical and subservient” endorsement of Israel’s crimes in Gaza. That shameful vote is listed as #5 in the Report Card’s “Key.”
Seven members manage to score 90 percent, making them the
Not-So-Glittering Stars of the Black Caucus:
John Conyers Jr. (MI)
Donna Edwards (MD)
Keith Ellison (MN)
Barbara Lee (CA)
John Lewis (GA)
Robert Scott (VA)
Maxine Waters (CA)
Black Agenda Report for more