A black bourgeoisie perspective on U.S. politics
I am so relieved to hear that Bill Jefferson was left off the powerful Ways and Means Committee despite pressure from the CBC on Nancy Pelosi to re-instate him. Someone please explain to me what they think there is to gain in supporting him? Who exactly are they trying to impress???
There are a number of African-Americans who have been confirmed as chairs of key committees. This is big news, but my prediction is that all of a sudden there will be a lot of strange talk about disorganization and incompetence on the Hill, especially from conservatives or those who feel they got stiffed for a committee seat they wanted — wait for the hate.
There’s a new black blog on the block: Black Agenda Report. They’ve got a really interesting analysis of the CBC along gender lines taking a deep dive into the Sept 2006 CBCMonitor report. The BAR contention is that overall the female members are almost all great progressives and it is the men who vary along a spectrum of corporatist voting records with some progressives in the mix.
I am not sure why culturally we would produce this split. Socially, African-Americans can be conservative and certainly a black woman running for Congress is going to experience some tough knocks that might provide some perspective and a soft spot for the “little person”. Maybe it’s a nurturing thing — wanting to be there for ordinary constituents rather than big business in the district. I don’t know — those reasons all feel sexist and wrong to me. What’s your theory? Why are the female CBC members reliably progressive and the men aren’t?
Cheryl Contee aka "Jill Tubman", Baratunde Thurston aka "Jack Turner", rikyrah, Leutisha Stills aka "The Christian Progressive Liberal", B-Serious, Casey Gane-McCalla, Jonathan Pitts-Wiley aka "Marcus Toussaint," Fredric Mitchell
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