President Obama to speak to black congressional leaders

[The Northerner]

Washington (CNN) -- The economic slowdown has hit the black community particularly hard, pushing the unemployment rate among blacks up to 16.7% in August, nearly double the national average. The problem is the Congressional Black Caucus' chief concern and one many members have pushed the White House to do a better job of addressing.

As President Barack Obama prepares to speak at Saturday night's 2011 Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Phoenix Awards Dinner, he is likely to tout some of the proposals in the American Jobs Act he introduced this month. Several are aimed at tackling the problem of long-term unemployment, steps that could provide much-needed aid to the community where the jobless rate is highest.

One CBC member who has been especially critical of the president in recent months is Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat who represents California's 35th congressional district. At a CBC jobs tour town hall in Detroit in August, she said black unemployment was "unconscionable," the strategy to fix it was unclear and that the caucus was "getting tired" of waiting for one.

Earlier this month, she questioned the president's decision to focus on the Midwest during a three-day jobs bus tour in August, saying the 3 million population of Iowa, an electorally important state that is also mostly white, is roughly equal to the number of African Americans who are out of work and suggesting that the population of that key state seemed more important to the administration than the black community.

Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/24/politics/obama-cbc/