Donald M. Payne: “Let me commend the gentleman, the Honorable Reverend Dr. Cleaver, for calling this very important special order tonight.…”

“Let me commend the gentleman, the Honorable Reverend Dr. Cleaver, for calling this very important special order tonight. He is a person that speaks the word of God, a man of the cloth, and deals with people who are anguished daily. They come before him to seek guidance and advice. I feel the same way as my colleague who has joined us recently in the United States Congress and is a tremendous addition not only to the Congressional Black Caucus but, as you can hear, to the United States House of Representatives in general. I appreciate him yielding so that we can continue to look at the depiction of what Mexico feels, or the President of Mexico feels, is just an all right thing to do. Madam Speaker, I rise today with my fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus to strongly condemn the racist stamps issued by the Mexican government, Memin Pinguin. Unfortunately, the myth is still perpetrated in Latin America that race is not an issue, that racism does not exist in the Latin American, Central and South American countries. {time} 2200 But we have seen with the recent anti-discrimination moves of Afro descendants from countries such as Brazil, which has the largest population of African descendants outside of Africa, many more than the United States of America; Colombia, where Afro descendants represent between 25 and 40 percent of that country's population; Honduras; Panama; and others, the issue of race has been deceptively mischaracterized as a nonissue.…”