Bridging the Divide: A Call to Action By the Congressional Black Caucus to Eliminate Racial Health Disparities

Floor Speech

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Mr. JEFFRIES. Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend, the distinguished gentlewoman from Ohio, and our phenomenal anchor for this CBC Special Order hour today and throughout the second session of the 114th Congress. It has been an honor and a privilege to work closely with her. She has done such a phenomenal job, not just on behalf of the people she represents in the great city of Columbus, Ohio, but all throughout the Nation in her various roles, and certainly in her leadership in the Congressional Black Caucus.

It is with a heavy heart that I stand on the floor of the House of Representatives today and, with great sadness, acknowledge the pain and the suffering and extend my condolences to those who have suffered this great tragedy in Orlando, Florida, the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States of America.

It is a complicated shooting. We understand that it most likely is an act of terror, a hate crime of unspeakable proportions. There are indications that the shooter may have some degree of mental illness and a history of domestic abuse. The shooter appeared to have been, in some measure, on the FBI's radar.

But you can add all those things up and there is still something that is missing that we here in Congress have the capacity to deal with, and that is the fact that one individual was able to purchase a weapon of mass destruction--which should be reserved for war, not the hunting of human beings in this great democratic Republic--and inflict death on 49 individuals and maim in ways that are inhumane to more than 50 others.

Martin Luther King, Jr., once said: ``In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.''

During the 114th Congress, there have been more than 100 mass shootings. We often come to the floor of the House of Representatives and the Speaker or one of his designees stands at the rostrum and asks us, as Members of the House, to stand in a moment of silence. And then we go on with business as usual, having done nothing about the tremendous gun violence problem that we have in America.

The rest of the world is looking around and saying: What are they doing in the United States of America? Five percent of the world's population, 50 percent of the world's guns. It is estimated that there are more than 300 million guns circulating throughout this great land. The FBI and local law enforcement can't tell you where the overwhelming majority of them are because of legislative silence and malpractice.

This is an issue, of course, that has great impact on the African American community. Homicides are the leading cause of death through guns of younger African American men. So we in the CBC view it as a public health crisis certainly for our community. I think it is one that all Americans should view as a health crisis for the entire country.

But the thing that is also troubling--and we will have time to deal with this tragedy--is hopefully we will be able to take some commonsense steps in the right direction, including making sure that individuals who are on the terrorist watch list can't purchase weapons of mass destruction. How complicated is that to do?

But the thing that is striking for many of us in the African American community is that, when you look at some of the leading causes of death--heart disease being number one, and then, of course, diabetes and childhood obesity being problematic, certain forms of cancer, HIV/ AIDS infection--many of these illnesses, these ailments that plague the neighborhoods that I represent in central Brooklyn, in Bedford- Stuyvesant, in East New York, in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, in Canarsie, and in the west end of Coney Island, are preventable, preventable by better exercise, preventable by dealing with some of the environmental racism that many low-income communities of color have been subjected to, resulting in incredibly high rates of asthma and other forms of respiratory illness, preventable by better diet.

Senator Booker recently said to many of us--and this has stuck with me--that more African Americans in the United States of America die as a result of drive-throughs, not drive-bys. That is because the diet, the access to healthy food, is limited. The food deserts within which many African Americans, particularly at the lowest socioeconomic level, are forced to reside in are scandalous.

So we in the Congressional Black Caucus believe that we have to deal with these issues in a more meaningful, comprehensive fashion.

I am thankful that back at home in the west end of Coney Island, Coney Island Cathedral, one of the most important religious institutions in Brooklyn, is actively engaged in a public health campaign to deal with diabetes and heart disease and many of the other ailments that result from a poor diet that exists, a lack of access to healthy food in the Black community. It is a campaign that we want to take across the Nation.

We are thankful for the work that has been done by the Congressional Black Caucus and by President Obama through his leadership of the Affordable Care Act. We now know that over 20 million previously uninsured Americans now have access to quality, affordable health care--disproportionately African American.

That is a positive step in the right direction. But instead of trying to dismantle this monumental step forward, as House Republicans have attempted to do more than 60 times over the last few years, they have a clinical obsession with a law that has been declared constitutional-- not once, but twice--by the United States Supreme Court.

Let's figure out ways to come together as a nation, despite our racial, religious, and ethnic differences, to deal with the disparities that exist in the African American community and beyond. And let us come together as a Congress and as a nation to deal with the scourge of hate, in its most recent form, directed at the LGBT community down in Orlando in such a horrific and invidious fashion.

We are better than this. We can do much better here in the United States Congress. The Congressional Black Caucus is here to lead the way on issues, worked in partnership hand in hand with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, if they are just willing to meet us some of the way, to deal with the issues of health disparities in the African American community and deal with the scourge of gun violence that takes our young boys and girls in shocking numbers and also impacts people all across the country.

I thank the distinguished gentlewoman for her leadership and for once again yielding to me and anchoring this Special Order in such a phenomenal way.

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