6656: WTF CBC.

From The New York Daily News…

Will someone save the Congressional Black Caucus?

By Josh Greenman

With a former member of the Congressional Black Caucus leading the nation, the CBC could be wielding historic influence. It would be welcome: The raging recession is hitting blacks especially hard, and two issues of supreme importance to African-Americans, education and health care, are taking center stage.

What a shame, then, that the group has become something of a sideshow of late.

Look at how the Black Caucus has made headlines this month. First, by making a high-profile visit to Cuba. Then, by taking Obama to task for sitting out a UN conference, the followup to a 2001 gathering that declared Zionism to be racist.

Now there’s nothing wrong with visiting Cuba and nothing sacrosanct about America’s economic embargo. But you can rationally question U.S. Cuba policy without cozying up to Castro. The CBC did the latter — failing to meet with a single dissident on an island with a record of making dissidents disappear and handing El Jefe his best press in years.

“[Fidel Castro] looked directly into my eyes, and then he asked: ‘How can we help President Obama?’” said Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.), unintentionally recalling George Bush’s comically naive assessment of Vladimir Putin. “He really wants President Obama to succeed.”

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) did Richardson one better. “It was almost like listening to an old friend,” said Rush. “In my household, I told Castro, he is known as the ultimate survivor.”

The human rights record in Castro’s Cuba is not open to legitimate political debate. In its 2008 world report, the left-leaning human rights group Human Rights Watch said, “Cuba remains the one country in Latin American that represses nearly all forms of political dissent. … The repressive machinery built over almost five decades of Fidel Castro’s rule remains intact and continues to systematically deny people their basic rights.” That verdict is echoed by right-leaning Freedom House.

Fortunately, prominent black journalists were among those who called the caucus on its blindness. Said Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, who has made 10 reporting trips to the island: “The Congressional Black Caucus delegation that visited Havana last week was naive not to notice — or disingenuous not to acknowledge — that Cuba is hardly the paradise of racial harmony and equality it pretends to be.” Said Clarence Page: “I was disappointed to see the black-caucus delegation lavish praise on the Castro brothers for their hospitality, yet ask for nothing on behalf of freedom and human rights.”

As though there just aren’t enough critical domestic problems to keep them busy, the Black Caucus this week found a second international debate to bumble into: The UN’s “conference against racism,” due to start on Monday.

Though advertised as marshaling nations to fight prejudice, in truth the conference is an excuse to grind all kinds of axes against America and Israel — while ignoring blatant bias throughout the Muslim world.

It’s the sequel to the misbegotten 2001 gathering in Durban, South Africa, that vilified Israel and so offended the U.S. delegation that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell walked out. At Durban II, Iran, Libya and Cuba will run the show. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust-denier, will have a platform. So will many others who think Israel is the world’s one inherently racist nation.

Last month, the Obama administration made a last-ditch try to change the conference’s direction. It didn’t work. Durban II’s core document still affirms in full the language agreed upon at the first conference. So, it’s a no go.

Prominent members of the Black Caucus still want us there. “U.S. participation in the conference is critical for both symbolic and political reasons,” said a letter signed by the heads of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. “Reduced global participation would mark a significant setback to efforts to overcome racial inequality around the world.”

In a country that’s had an unhealthy dose of black-Jewish tension over the years, would it be too much to ask for a little more sensitivity about participation at a confab that, to many Jewish organizations, has anti-Semitic undertones?

These diversions might be understandable if the CBC were just a standard-issue liberal caucus. But it’s supposed to be relentlessly focused on improving the lives of black Americans — who have much more pressing concerns here at home.

A little more sustained attention to immigration reform, for instance, would be welcome. Or health care. Or public education. African-American students still lag years behind their white counterparts, and Obama is intent on attacking that outrageous status quo. Yet not one member of the CBC is among those supporting the Education Equality Project, the Al Sharpton-Joel Klein coalition that has earned the backing of forward-thinking black mayors including Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, Cory Booker of Newark, Kevin Johnson of Sacramento and Adrian Fenty of Washington.

Of course, it’s important to say clearly that the caucus is no monolith. With 42 members, the quality of its membership ranges as widely as that of any random group of congressmen you could select. It counts among its members James Clyburn (D-S.C.), a very wise legislator who’s now House majority whip; Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), a force to be reckoned with; Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a civil rights hero, and Artur Davis, a candidate for governor of Alabama who is one of Congress’ rising stars.

But right now as a group — as a potentially instrumental bloc of U.S. representatives — the good work of the many is getting drowned out by high-profile missteps of the few. Let’s hope black congressmen who care about the CBC’s future right the ship and make clear that their caucus can be a player in the mainstream and a partner to Obama, not a jester on the margins.