Bill Lee: “As chair of the Democratic Whip Task Force on Poverty, Income Inequality, and Opportunity, I rise to commemorate Black…”

“As chair of the Democratic Whip Task Force on Poverty, Income Inequality, and Opportunity, I rise to commemorate Black History Month and highlight the disproportionate impacts of poverty on the African American community. Sadly, our Nation has a long history of individual and institutional racism, from slavery and Jim Crow to redlining and overpolicing. This has locked many, many families out of opportunities, even with the enormous progress that we have made with our great civil rights leaders and foot soldiers whom we honored yesterday. These deplorable disparities and inequalities continue at every level of our society. For example, the African American poverty rate is 26 percent, nearly triple the poverty rate of White Americans. One in three African American children lives in poverty. The unemployment rate in the African American community is more than 8 percent, twice the unemployment rate of White Americans. The median wealth of White households is 13 times the median wealth of African American households, the widest gap since 1989. Poverty doesn't just hurt African American families. We know that communities of color are two times more likely to live in poverty and too many rural White and Native Americans have felt persistent poverty for generations. These statistics paint a clear and stark picture that Congress cannot ignore.…”