[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 5996-5997]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




    IMPACTS OF PERSISTENT POVERTY IN THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Emmer of Minnesota). The Chair 
recognizes the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise first to send my thoughts and prayers to 
the family of Freddie Gray and the entire city of Baltimore. Today, 
another family is grieving another young life needlessly cut short; 
and, again, a community is searching for answers in the face of tragedy 
and injustice.
  My own community knows this all too well. On New Year's Day 2009, 
Oscar Grant, a bright young man, was murdered on the Fruitvale Bay Area 
Rapid Transit platform in Oakland. Our community took to the streets 
demanding justice.
  Freddie Gray, Oscar Grant, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, and Trayvon Martin 
and the list goes on, all lives cut short. Today, their stories compel 
us to come to the House floor to join millions of Americans around our 
Nation in saying that, like all lives, Black lives also do matter.
  Make no mistake, the issues rocking many communities are not a new 
phenomenon. These tragedies, yes, are a part of a dark legacy of 
injustice born in the sufferings of the Middle Passage, nurtured 
through slavery, and codified in Jim Crow.
  On April 14, 1967, at Stanford University, Dr. King described these 
issues in his ``Two Americas'' speech. He said, ``There are literally 
two Americas. One America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity 
and honey of opportunity. Tragically and unfortunately, there is 
another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that 
constantly transforms the ebulliency of hope into the fatigue of 
despair.''
  The ugly fact is that two Americas still exist nearly five decades 
later. An African American male is killed by a security officer, police 
officer, or a self-proclaimed vigilante every 28 hours in the United 
States. One in three Black men will be arrested in their lifetime, a 
reason why men from communities of color, unfortunately, make up more 
than 70 percent of the United States prison population.
  Sadly, our laws have made having a criminal justice record a lifetime 
barrier to the ``honey of opportunity'' Dr. King described. A formerly 
incarcerated individual who has paid his or her dues to society and is 
out of jail is still denied access to Pell grants, closing off the 
opportunity for higher education and a better job. Ten States enforce 
lifetime bans on receiving food assistance, SNAP benefits, for drug-
related felonies--only drug-related felonies.
  Mr. Speaker, these limitations are components of a system that 
continues to punish someone for life for having made a mistake. This 
system maintains cyclical and systemic barriers that keep generations 
of African Americans from building pathways out of poverty.
  Recently, the Joint Economic Committee, under the leadership of 
Ranking Member Carolyn B. Maloney, released a report with the 
Congressional Black Caucus on the economic state of Black America, 
which Congressman Butterfield laid out the bleak finding. I hope 
Members recognize this is a wake-up call.
  Children in African American households are nearly twice as likely to 
be raised in the bottom 20 percent of income distribution as children 
in White households; and, while African American students represent 18 
percent of the overall preschool enrollment, they account for 42 
percent of preschool student expulsion--these are kids ages 2 to 5 
years old--expulsions. These children don't even get a start, let alone 
a head start.
  The link between the economic inequality and our broken criminal 
justice system and education is crystal clear, and Congress must do 
more to break down these systemic barriers.
  Our friend and our colleague, our chair of the Congressional Black 
Caucus, said in his inaugural speech when he was sworn in, ``America is 
not working for many African Americans, and we, as the Congressional 
Black Caucus, have an obligation to fight harder and smarter to help 
repair the damage.''
  Mr. Speaker, we must come together as never before to address the 
systemic, structural, and rampant racial bias endemic in our 
institutions and criminal justice system.
  We have introduced the Half in Ten Act, H.R. 258, to create a 
national strategy to cut poverty in half in 10 years. By coordinating 
and empowering all Federal agencies, we can lift 22 million Americans 
out of poverty and into

[[Page 5997]]

the middle class, but that is only one step. We must bring serious 
structural reforms to our broken criminal justice system.
  I am proud to be a cosponsor of the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement 
Act, H.R. 1232, because war weapons don't belong on Main Street. We 
also need to pass the Police Accountability Act, H.R. 1102, and the 
Grand Jury Reform Act, H.R. 429, to ensure accountability and that 
deadly force cases are actually heard by a judge.
  We also need to stop the racial profiling that disproportionally 
affects African Americans. We need to pass the End Racial Profiling 
Act, H.R. 1933, because racial profiling has no place in a 21st century 
police force.
  It is also time to pass ``ban the box'' for Federal contractors and 
agencies. I am proud to be working with our colleagues on the Senate 
side, Senators Booker and Brown, to do just that.
  We can't stop with the criminal justice system. We have got to create 
job training, workforce training, and economic opportunities for people 
of color in marginalized communities who have been, unfortunately, 
impacted by generations of endemic barriers rooted in discrimination.

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