ABSTRACT
In the midst of the war on terrorism and the continuous media coverage of Afghanistan and Iraq, the low-level crisis situations which arose in 2003-2004 in Liberia, Sudan, and Haiti may appear to be of minimal importance and salience to the general American public. However, the resignation of Charles Taylor in Liberia, the coup/ouster of embattled former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004, and the continuing attacks in the Darfur region by the pro-government janjaweed militias in Sudan were of significant concern to the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). The CBC’s motto of “acting as the conscience of the U.S. Congress” since its inception in the early 1970s has made the CBC the focus of scholarly analyses on domestic policy issues (Bositis 1993; Singh 1998), voting patterns (Gile and Jones 1995; Pinney and Serra 1999), and how minority U.S. Congresspersons represent their respective districts (Swain 1993; Tate 2003); however, scant attention has been focused upon the CBC’s influence on foreign policy issues (Singh 1998; and Copson 2003). Historians have examined the role of African-Americans in influencing foreign policy before the CBC’s formation (Skinner 1992; Plummer 1996; Krenn 1998; Henry 2000), and political scientists have examined the role of ethnic lobbies or interest groups, such as the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, in influencing the foreign policy making process and outcomes (Said 1981; Ambrosio 2002; Uslaner 2002). However, the few analyses of the CBC’s foreign policy preferences go beyond a largely descriptive analysis. Thus, having identified a lacuna in the extant literature, this article is a first cut at articulating how the CBC sought to affect the foreign policy debate in three case studies during the 108th Congress.
