Congressional Black Caucus

Floor Speech

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Mr. VEASEY. Thank you, Congressman Jeffries. I appreciate you letting me talk about this very important topic because we need to talk more about equality and have a conversation on race and injustice in this country.

I really liked a lot what Representative Clarke, your colleague from New York, said when she talked about the over-enforcement of African American males, particularly when it comes to stop and frisk, and other Members that talked a lot about the verdict in the Trayvon Martin trial that really did discourage a lot of people that were really starting to gain hope in our criminal justice system and thought that things were getting better.

I'm concerned about what is going on right now with voting. Because in my own State of Texas, there's been so many laws that have been enacted, laws that have attempted to be enacted that would scale back many of the gains that African Americans have made when it comes to exercising our suffrage--discriminatory practices that I didn't grow up with when I was a young man but that many people that were before me had to deal with and thought that we had made the progress.

And so at some other point in time I do want to continue to talk about this. Because whether it's Trayvon Martin, whether it's over-enforcement of African Americans and the disproportionate number of African Americans that end up as part of the criminal justice system, or protecting our Voting Rights Act, we need to talk about it more because I, too, believe that we can do better as a country and a Nation.

I want to thank you for holding this hour and also everybody in the Black caucus that talked about this very important topic this evening.

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