When Race Trumps Principles

The Congressional Black Caucus is in a terrible bind. What do you do at the beginning of a new Great Depression, when congressional Republicans are the evil crackers they've always been and your First Black President, a Democrat, is Herbert Hoover?

For those who skipped that 1930s US history class, the original Herbert Hoover was a Republican, and president at the beginning of the Great Depression, while depressions are what we nowadays call “recessions” with “jobless recoveries.” That Hoover's solution to record joblessness and widespread hunger was to cut federal spending to the bone, to deny the need for social security or unemployment compensation, and to hold wages down by keeping unions practically illegal.
~ from CBC: Impotent, Irrelevant, and Tied to the President in 2012, Even If Obama is the Black Herbert Hoover by Bruce A. Dixon ~

Dixon, Managing Editor of the Black Agenda Report, highlights a serious problem for black leaders. On the one hand, they want to support America's first black president. On the other hand, it's hard to support him when he acts like a white Wall Street big shot.

Since taking office, Obama has gone out of his way to steer clear of racial issues. In doing so, he has made life much worse for the 90+ percent of black voters who supported him. So, the Congressional Black Caucus certainly finds itself in a bind.

If they criticize the president and his policies, he will put them at an even greater arm's length from playing a meaningful role in the drafting of future policies. If they go along with Obama's Wall Street agenda, the plight of black families will grow ever worse. More importantly, if they were to choose to stand against him, many will decry this stance to say they are turning their backs on their own race -- even though that is precisely what the president is doing right now.

I certainly wouldn't want to be in their precarious position. They will be damned if they do and damned if they don't.