Congressional Black Caucus 2020 National Black Leadership Summit

We gather today in the year of the 155th anniversary of the 15th Amendment, the 100th anniversary of women suffer age and the 65th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. It’s also a moment where contempt for those victories permeates the body politic in too many corners of this very powerful city.

In August of 2016, Donald Trump stood before an overwhelmingly white crowd at a campaign rally in suburban Michigan and implored Black voters to support him, asking “What the hell do you have to lose?”

Shortly after his inauguration, he wasted no time in showing us what we had lost.

First, the Justice Department abruptly switched sides in a major Texas voting rights case, from supporting those victimized by racially-motivated voter suppression laws, to backing the oppressors.

Then, the department moved to abandon consent decrees with law enforcement agencies with a history of civil rights violations and discriminatory practices.

These were the opening salvos in the Trump administration’s assault on civil rights and economic justice - an administration with the worst record on diversity, inclusion, or equality of opportunity of any modern presidency.

The last three years have resembles a histrionic reality show, where we scramble to react to the latest tweetstorm. But while this drama plays out on the national stage, behind the scenes real and lasting damage is being wrought.

My job here this morning is to make the reality of this damage as clear as I can.

Donald Trump is quick to brag about the Black unemployment rate hitting its lowest level in history during his administration. But here’s the fact:

Black unemployment fell far more dramatically under President Obama - more than 54%, from a recession high of 16.8% in March 2010 to 7.8% in January 2017.

During Trump’s term, Black unemployment has fallen by less than half of that, about 25%, to to 5.9% last month.

The Black unemployment rate remains almost twice as high as the rate for whites.

Donald Trump thinks he doesn’t get enough credit for the First Step Act, the modest criminal justice reform measure that he signed. But here’s the fact:  the groundwork for First Step Act was laid in the Obama years. Hakeem Jeffries, the sponsor of the legislation, persevered, and advocates such as myself and Van Jones who wanted more sweeping reforms decided to supported even though it didn’t do everything we wanted. We didn’t want people in prison being held hostage to partisanship, waiting behind bars for a new administration that would sign a better bill.

Under Donald Trump’s Department of Education, the  Office for Civil Rights has abdicating its federal role of civil rights enforcement in education. Here’s the fact:

The department has scuttled more than 1,200 civil rights investigations that were inherited from the Obama administration and were open for at least six months. These cases were closed without any corrective action or findings of wrongdoing, with the department often citing insufficient evidence. 

The Trump administration continues to promote school privatization though vouchers - a failed experiment that has left students stranded in low-performing schools while transferring millions of taxpayer dollars into private, for-profit institutions.

President Trump’s nominees to the federal judiciary are the least racially and ethnically diverse of any presidential administration over the past three decades. Almost 80% are male, and almost 90% are white.

President Trump’s Cabinet has had smaller percentages of women and non-whites than the first Cabinets of former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush.

The Trump administration’s relentless assault in the Affordable Care Act has led to the first increase in the rate of uninsured since the Act’s passage in 2009.

New work requirements for Medicaid are leaving people without insurance without any subsequent boost in employment. In Arkansas, lack of awareness and confusion about the reporting requirements resulted in thousands losing coverage even though more than 95% of the target population appeared to meet the requirements or qualify for an exemption.

Over the next ten years, changes to the way the poverty level is calculated will cut 250,000 seniors and people with disabilities from Medicare’s Part D Low-Income Subsidy Program and more than 300,000 children will lose comprehensive coverage through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.  

Now, the Administration’s economic regulators want to bring a wrecking ball to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 — the anti-redlining law — by allowing projects like luxury high rises that force low and moderate income families out of their neighborhoods to be counted as CRA projects — another outrage to undermine the work of civil rights advocates and the Congressional Black Caucus. We must resist, refuse and reject this effort to turn back the clock.

In 1976 my predecessor at the National Urban League was outraged by President Ford’s State of the Union Address and

Senator Edmund Muskie’s rebuttal, neither of which made the slightest mention of the crisis then facing communities of color.

Vernon Jordan’s response was the State of Black America, which told the truth about the way federal policies were leaving African Americans behind.

Tonight we’ll hear another State of the Union address. And we’re certainly no more likely than we were in 1976 to hear the truth about how the Administration is failing Black America. So I’m here to tell you.

In 2017, the threat to civil rights and economic justice already was clear when we issued that year’s State of Black America report, entitled “Protect our Progress.” 

In 2018, with “Powering the Digital Revolution,” we turned our attention to the Digital Divide, highlighting vast disparities in opportunity in the new digital economy.

And our most recent report highlighted the extent to which Russian interference to deceive, manipulate and exploit Black voters - more than any other group - and how those efforts aligned with a domestic campaign of racially-motivated voter suppression laws.

As long as the occupant of the White House refuses to tell the truth about the State of Black America, the National Urban League will keep fighting to give you the facts.

By Marc H. Morial
Panel: The Fight For Justice
February 4, 2020
Washington, D.C