CNN’s star anchor, Anderson Cooper, took his time ripping the Congressional Black Caucus and its foundation piece by piece for flagrant fraud and abuse of scholarships that were intended for disadvantaged minorities.
As well he should have. Oftentimes while African Americans decry institutional and historical racism from Caucasians, they fail to realize time and time again that the people who abuse and misuse African Americans better and more often than others are other African Americans.
There are two things very wrong with the CBCF scholarship program: first, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that the Congressional Black Caucus spends considerably more money on fundraising parties and receptions than on scholarships — which is supposed to be the flagship program of their organization.
Secondly, a couple of congressional representatives — Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas; and Sanford Bishop, D-Ga. — knowingly and blatantly diverted the scholarship money from the people it was supposed to help, disadvantaged urbanites, to their own family members and friends outside of their districts.
Johnson tried to deny it, but like an insect trying to extricate itself from a spider’s web, she only succeeded in further entangling herself. Johnson said initially that she didn’t know the rules of the scholarship program, which is not plausible deniability, because no one believed that excuse. But then Cooper on his show, “360 with Anderson Cooper” exposed her lie because he says on the show that Johnson wrote two letters specifically requesting the money be sent to her grandchildren, not to the university. And the CBCF brain trust sent the money. After that road dead-ended, Johnson started enunciating the rules better than she originally had let on, which let everyone know that she knew exactly what she was doing when she did it.
Johnson refused to apologize for her behavior, yet she has since given all the money back and has hunkered down behind the walls of her office. People who believe they are innocent will not give back that which was given to them.
How many black children were robbed of legitimate shots at fulfilling their collegiate aspirations because Johnson and Bishop and the CBCF robbed them of their rightful opportunity?
The CBCF leadership promised this past spring to respond to what they said was reckless reporting by the Wall Street Journal. The summer has passed us by and it is now fall and they have yet to do so. –terry shropshire
