The Black Caucus Continued

I posted this story on Monday, where Stephen Cohen, tried to gain access into the most coveted membership in all of Congress. This membership is so elusive that to gain access, you have to maintain, for your entire life, a certain color on your skin. That's right, they don't care about legislation or where you stand on the issues, unless that issue is being black. Even then, at times, access is denied. Today I read this story. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) had this to say concerning the elusive private club of hypocrites.

“Race is something that people have no control over, and should not be a prerequisite for any organizations membership,” said Tancredo. “It is disgraceful that more than a half-century after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, an organization sanctioned by the U.S. Congress maintains a policy of racial exclusivity.
“It is utterly hypocritical for Congress to extol the virtues of a color-blind society while officially sanctioning caucuses that are based solely on race – and restrict their membership based on race,” wrote Tancredo.

"Justice John Marshall Harlan, in his dissent to the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson ‘separate but equal’ decision wrote, ‘Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,” continued Tancredo. “His words are as true today as they were when he penned them more than a century ago – and if we are serious about achieving the goal of a color-blind society, Congress should lead by example and end these divisive race-based caucuses.”

A letter copy of the letter he wrote can be found here. But wait it continues. Like I joked about at the beginning of this post, just being black, won't get you into the uh, Congressional Black Caucus. This is from Discover the Network(emphasis mine):

Republican, Rep. Gary Franks elected from Connecticut in 1990, accepted membership in the CBC but soon found that, despite paying $5,000 in dues, he was never informed of some of its meetings and was locked out of others by Democrats who wanted to keep what they discussed in those meetings secret from Republicans. In 1993, after Franks threatened to quit the Caucus, then-chairman Kweisi Mfume of Maryland persuaded him to stay by agreeing to a deal. Chairman Mfume's deal was that the "Democratic Caucus" of the CBC -- i.e., every member except Republican Franks -- would continue to exclude him from their private meetings where they voted to set policies. But these policies, Mfume promised, would then be discussed and voted on again by the full CBC, where Franks was a minority of one. When Franks was defeated for reelection in 1996, CBC member Bill Clay of Missouri wrote a six-page letter to the departing lawmaker, characterizing Franks as a "foot shuffling, head-scratching 'Amos and Andy' brand of 'Uncle Tom-ism'" and a "Negro Dr. Kevorkian, a pariah, who gleefully assists in suicidal conduct to destroy his own race." Rep. Clay described Franks as one of those "Negro wanderers" whose "goal … is to maim and kill other blacks for the gratification and entertainment of -- for lack of a more accurately descriptive word -- ultra-conservative white racists." No other member of the CBC was willing to condemn or criticize Clay's remarks

Membership into it is another thing as well.

Membership in the CBC is accorded automatically to any African-American elected to the House of Representatives, unless that member refuses membership. As of April 2006, the CBC consisted of 5 officers and 38 additional members. All 43 were Democrats, and 22 of them were also members of the radical Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives.

So what is it? Is America racist and because of this the Caucus is there to outweigh that evil, or is the other way around? Is this Caucus racist, and America, with the leaders still promoting the image of no equality between the races and THE MAN, following in the footsteps of its elected officials?