America certainly needs a discussion about race relations.  But do we need the Congressional Black Caucus to be our teachers?

It's clear that the black Americans who serve in Congress on the Democratic side are not interested in a conversation about race – unless it's conducted using their assumptions, and with white Americans agreeing with and acknowledging their grievances.  This is not a conversation.  This is a lecture – the same lecture we've been getting for decades from blacks willing to excuse all manner of thuggery and brutality from members of their race while refusing to acknowledge the cultural failings that have destroyed the black family.

And what's a "conversation" about race these days without suggesting that reparations for slavery are in order?

National Journal:

Late Monday night, after the House took its final votes, members of the Congressional Black Caucus took the floor to speak for about one hour about race in the wake of a grand jury's decision last week not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the August shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

"Hands up, don't shoot," Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York began.

Charles Rangel, the longtime New York Democrat, followed Jeffries and CBC Chairwoman Marcia Fudge of Ohio to deride America's "cancer" and those who don't acknowledge it. "Like anything else you love, if there's an illness, if there's a problem, you would want to know: What can you do to cure it? How can you make it all that our country can be?" Rangel said. "How can we say that we have a cancer until we recognize that we do, then we don't really love the country? How can we be able to say that white and black in this country are equal and that those who work hard and live by the rules have the same opportunities as each other, when we know that we have this cancer?"

Rangel went on to address the idea of reparations for slavery, suggesting that it goes beyond money. "Some people may talk about payment for restitution for past crimes committed against human beings," he said. "But that restitution could be the ability to say that we're going to make certain that people of color in this country would be able to have access to the same type of education, live where they want to live, compete against anybody for the job, and not feeling that they're inferior because people have been taught that just because they have a different complexion that they are superior."

Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas said that the American jury system needs reform. "I would hope we would look to legislative fixes with our colleagues to make America better. The Congressional Black Caucus will not be silenced," she said. "America is better than this, a country that we love.... We must fix it, and we must fix it now."

Note the paranoia from Rep. Lee.  How can you believe that anyone is trying "silence" the CBC?  Sheesh.

It's nothing we haven't heard before, including the notion that reparations aren't about money – until they are.  Rangel makes clear that the way to achieve all that he believes must be changed is by doling out a lot of cash.

White people don't have a lot to be proud of when it comes to race relations, but these race hustlers in Congress aren't the people to lecture us about understanding and tolerance.