Condemning the Government of Mexico for printing and distributing blatantly racist postage stamps and urging Mexican President Vincente Fox to immediately cease printing and distributing the postage stamps and recall from circulation those postage stamps currently on the market.

Let me commend the gentleman, the Honorable Reverend Dr. Cleaver, for calling this very important special order tonight. He is a person that speaks the word of God, a man of the cloth, and deals with people who are anguished daily. They come before him to seek guidance and advice. I feel the same way as my colleague who has joined us recently in the United States Congress and is a tremendous addition not only to the Congressional Black Caucus but, as you can hear, to the United States House of Representatives in general. I appreciate him yielding so that we can continue to look at the depiction of what Mexico feels, or the President of Mexico feels, is just an all right thing to do.

Madam Speaker, I rise today with my fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus to strongly condemn the racist stamps issued by the Mexican government, Memin Pinguin. Unfortunately, the myth is still perpetrated in Latin America that race is not an issue, that racism does not exist in the Latin American, Central and South American countries.

But we have seen with the recent anti-discrimination moves of Afro descendants from countries such as Brazil, which has the largest population of African descendants outside of Africa, many more than the United States of America; Colombia, where Afro descendants represent between 25 and 40 percent of that country's population; Honduras; Panama; and others, the issue of race has been deceptively mischaracterized as a nonissue.

In Latin America they say it is class, not race; however, we tend to see at the bottom of the economic strata people of African descent and primarily those at the top those who came from Europe and stole the land from the native Latin and South Americans and brought over slaves to help build the countries. Meanwhile, those of African descent in Latin America still find themselves stuck in the lower economic social strata, suffering from debilitating discrimination or disproportionately affected by conflict and strive; and, perhaps the worst of all, their very existence is unknown to the world and sometimes even to their own countrymen and -women.

Most people assume that there are few or no black Mexicans. This assumption is false. The region known as

Costa Chica, southwest of Acapulco, is one of the two regions with a sizable black population. Veracruz, on the Gulf Coast, is another area where the black population of Mexico is significant. As a matter of fact, recently, a year or so ago, a group of Mexicans wanted to be considered as Afro-Mexicans. The Afro-Mexican population is said to be about 1 million out of 105 million, but this is far from an accurate number because the census does not include a category on race; so people cannot even identify themselves as black even if they wanted to.

With the Mexican post office issuing the offensive stamp depicting a Mexican character with dark brown skin, exaggerated features, monkey- like body language, Mexican President Vicente Fox has once again shown his insensitivity to racial offenses and his lack of concern over perpetuating dangerous stereotypes of an entire people.

This scandal comes right on the heels of Fox's comments on Mexican immigrants in the United States who take jobs, as he said, even blacks will not take. We were all very offended. We were offended, and some of our religious leaders went and met with President Fox. And he said that we should try to have an understanding. And we as Members of the Congressional Black Caucus work daily in our congressional districts to ask our constituents to understand immigrant people coming to this country as people have done for waves and waves. Of course, African Americans were brought here in chains. We had no choice. However, other Americans came to Ellis Island, and the Irish came and the Germans came and the Italians came.

So we say this country is large enough for us and for people to continue to immigrate in that we should try to work on tensions between new people coming into the community, and the Congressional Black Caucus has stood up and said that people have a right to have a better way of life. As a matter of fact, in a community outside of my congressional district in New Jersey, I have had some discussions with some Mexicans who have talked to me about the fact that they are being harassed when they wait in the mornings to be picked up for the van that takes them to the work projects they are working on and that the local town officials are harassing them to say they cannot wait here for the van, and I said that I will try to assist them if they need it to try to get that community to understand that it is unfair to harass people like that.

And then I turn around and the president of Mexico says that he is not ashamed and that this is a proud character, that they love him in Mexico? This is outrageous. It should not be.

We see that Memin, known by Mexicans as basically a silly, funny, and simple urban boy who is a prankster and a troublemaker, has been a popular comic book character for 60 years in Mexico. Those who see no offense in this character's image have been fooled into thinking that is a representation of black people and that black people are dumb and amusing and that has no relationship to racial discrimination.

These are the same people who would describe Little Black Sambo, as we heard from the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver), as simply cute and funny. As a matter of fact, as he was, I went to a school where I was one of two black children in the kindergarten. My brother experienced the same thing 2 years before I did, and the only book read was ``Little Black Sambo.'' I was offended. I felt ashamed. I felt there was something wrong with me. The teachers would read it in the kindergarten and in the first grade. It was about 60 years ago, the same time that this same character emerged in Mexico. And I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought, why was everyone laughing at us? And this character, Little Black Sambo, is exactly the same as this character here. And I told a representative that I met with last week, a week or so ago, when he came to meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus that I was offended because it brought back those early days of racial discrimination where I had to be confronted with white children laughing at the reading of Little Black Sambo.

I heard of no other blacks in my time of coming up. The only other people of color that we read about in the fourth or fifth grade were the enslaved people that they called slaves who were shiftless and happy and had no initiative and no incentive and that Abraham Lincoln had to free them and white soldiers went to war to free them; but they never talked about Harriet Tubman and Crispus Attucks. They never talked about Frederick Douglass. They never talked about the 504 Brigade from Massachusetts that fought for slaves, enslaved people, to be free. The only person that I heard about during my entire elementary school who was black was Little Black Sambo.

President Fox should know better. He himself has talked about the opportunities he had growing up that others did not have and the poverty that he saw others suffer from. He went on to study business at the Ibero-American University in Mexico City; got a diploma in an upper management course taught by Harvard Business School professors; later became an executive of Coca-Cola, becoming the youngest president of the corporation's Latin America division before he got into politics and went to their congress. This is not an uneducated man. This is a man who knows better, and I do not subscribe to the fact that he knows no better.

It is especially surprising that President Fox would fail to understand the offensive nature of the stereotype portrayed on these stamps in view of the outcry in the recent past over negative images of Hispanics. As we heard earlier, strong protests were voiced, and rightly so, over characters created by corporate advertisers, which the Hispanic community viewed as demeaning to their heritage.

In the 1960s there was an advertisement aired on television featuring a cartoon character called Chiquita Banana, who wore a hat filled with fruit and sang with a pronounced Spanish accent. This was considered by many to be offensive and portrayed an offensive portrayal of a Hispanic woman, and it was.

In 1967 an ad created by Frito-Lay Corporation, as was mentioned earlier, portrayed a Mexican male cartoon character with a thick accent who wore a sombrero and who was called ``Frito Bandito.'' The Mexican- American Anti-Defamation League Committee called for the commercials to be pulled, condemning them as racist and accusing the company of portraying Mexicans as ``sneaky thieves.'' As a result of this pressure, the ads were taken off the air in 1970, and even though they had been successful from a commercial point of view, they were taken off. And rightly so, because they were offensive to a whole group of people. Both of them were and both of them were taken off.

More recently, Taco Bell came under fire for their ads featuring a dog named Dinky. Some viewers were insulted by the idea of an animal scampering for food and speaking Spanish. Those ads have now been discontinued.

And let me emphasize that these were commercial entities; and although they were successful, they were taken off. These stamps are an official act of the Government of Mexico.

A few years ago, a very high official of Japan on two occasions made an inappropriate remark which offended African Americans; and when the Congressional Black Caucus protested, on both of those occasions, the Prime Minister of Japan apologized. They set up a committee. They came to the Black Caucus. They started to implement programs to enhance understanding between our two cultures. They started to have some financial agreements with some of their products because they said we need to understand each other better. So the Prime Minister of Japan apologized, and rightly so. And our neighbor to the south saying that he is not going to apologize is an insult, and President Fox is totally wrong. And I am offended by that insult. Someone all the way across the sea, when they saw that they were totally wrong in Japan, they decided that the right thing to do was to make the apology; and here we have a person who is benefiting from our NAFTA, which I did not vote for, and many of the other policies that we have in this country is going to stand up and tell 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus that he is proud of this character, that he is a very popular symbol in his country, and he refuses to apologize. That is wrong.

Let me just say, sort of in conclusion, that in his inaugural address,

President Fox mentioned his desire for a new, different, successful and triumphant Mexico. The issuing of Memin Pinguin does just the opposite and highlights the serious race issues that exist in Mexico today. The Congressional Black Caucus's Working Group on Afro-Latinos will take a closer look at the issues facing Afro-Mexican communities, and we will call for a census in Mexico that includes a category on race so that people can properly identify themselves and so that the black community in Mexico is no longer invisible. When one is invisible, they do not have to deal with them. So we would like to know what is the story in Mexico.

Other Latin American countries are focusing on racial discrimination and trying to combat it. President Luiz Inacio da Silva in Brazil has set up a commission to start affirmative action in higher education. The government of Colombia has started to look at the racial discrimination of Afro-Colombians. And here we have a government who is saying ``we are proud of what we are doing and we refuse to apologize.''

In April 2005, and I want everyone to listen carefully, the Department of Homeland Security announced new regulations that require Americans returning home via air and sea from countries in the Caribbean, Central and South America to have passports. Starting December 31, 2005, to get back into our country you will need a passport.

Most countries that you need passports to go to, you would have them when you go. Therefore, you have them when you come back. However, this new Homeland Security law says that by December 31, 2005, countries that required no passport before for Americans to go there, now Americans will have to have passports in order to get back into America.

However, however, Mexico got a pass. Mexico has until December 31, 2006, until this requirement goes into effect. So as a person who is very interested in the Caribbean, I cochair the Caribbean Caucus, I wanted to find out what impact will that have on some of those poor countries in the Caribbean who depend almost totally, now that the bananas have been taken away from some of those countries by the former Lome' treaties that they have, the trade organizations said no longer can there be preferences and no longer can Great Britain buy bananas from Caribbean countries as they did in the past under their Lome' treaties with former colonies. Now they do not even have banana trade.

Now Mexico is getting an advantage. So while Caribbean countries such as Aruba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Bermuda and others will be impacted by this rule, they will have to change 1 year earlier, just 6 months from now, they stand to lose as much as $2.6 billion in visitor export earnings and could see the loss of more than 188,000 travel tourism jobs, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

Mexico will benefit from an extra year. A family who may just find out late in the day, a month or weeks earlier, that they need a passport to get back into the country, they will decide that they may go to Mexico because you do not need a passport coming back to the country from Mexico.

Why does Mexico get an extra year? American tourists, who realize they can travel to Mexico without a passport, will likely choose that country over Caribbean nations where they need a passport, those countries that I mentioned. The island nations were drastically hit hard by Hurricane Ivan last year and last week Hurricane Dennis wreaked havoc in the Caribbean. If any country needs the tourism dollars right now, the Caribbean nations most certainly do.

As a person concerned about the Caribbean, I will personally request that Homeland Security equalize the passport requirement so that Caribbean nations will be on the same level playing field with Mexico. If Mexico gets until December 31, 2006, a year-and-a-half from now, I am going to request that the Caribbean countries get the same December 31, 2006; or if Homeland Security feels that they must remain at December of 2005, this year, then they should make Mexico also have the same requirements in December 31, 2005, that poor Caribbean countries have.

I know one thing: If these are the stamps on letters that people are going to send from Cancun, African Americans sending a postcard back to Norton, New Jersey, where I live, saying ``having a great time,'' and this is the stamp, this is going to cause havoc in our Post Office. This is going to cause havoc.

I think that until the president of Mexico understands the damage that he is doing, then perhaps the Caribbean has always been a great place for me, and maybe that is where we need to spend our dollar, where African Americans are not taken for as a joke.

Evidently a dollar in Mexico spent by an African American is not the same as a dollar from anyone else. If this stamp goes out, then our dollars should stay in our pockets.

Who does he think he is, saying that this makes him proud? I will spend not another dollar down there until these things are removed.

So my demand is that the president of Mexico voids these stamps before they are issued and do not allow a single one to be printed. If they are already printed, they should not to be distributed, and they should be destroyed. We should not see one single stamp go anywhere in Mexico, or, even worse, have it find its way here to the United States.

Once again, let me thank the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver) for bringing this issue to the front, as has the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson), who called a meeting several weeks ago, and the Congressional Black Caucus in general. I know that we will keep the pressure on. If the government of Mexico feels that there is no regard for African Americans, like I said, then I think we need to look at where the dollar is being spent, and I think we need to look at a level playing field so that Caribbean countries will be able to have the same kind of passport requirements that Mexico has. I do not see where they deserve any special treatment so far as I am concerned.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.

Madam Speaker, I have introduced H. Res. 347, a resolution that condemns Mexico for printing and distributing blatantly racist postage stamps; and I am, along with many others, urging Mexican President Vicente Fox to immediately cease printing and distributing the postage stamps and recall from circulation those postage stamps currently on the market.

Madam Speaker, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans have fought for decades to eliminate and erase racial stereotypes and depictions that dominated all forms of media in the early 20th century. On June 29, 2005, the government of Mexico issued a series of five postage stamps commemorating and celebrating Memin Pinguin, a comic book character created in the 1940s who was depicted as a dark-skinned Jim Crow era cartoon. And while this character is depicted as a black child with dark skin and greatly exaggerated lips, similar Jim Crow memorabilia referred to when I was a boy as Pickaninny and his mother Mammy were all over this country. Due to a rise in sensitivity, those things have pretty much been removed from sight. But this particular comic book series is interesting because it is now current. Memin Pinguin is a character who is taunted by white colleagues for his appearance, his speech and mannerisms. The Mexican postal service has authorized the issuance of 750,000 of the stamps which may be used in the Mexican domestic market and the international market. Civil rights organizations such as the National Council of La Raza, I am proud to say; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, I am proud to say; the National Urban League; and the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition have denounced the racist postage stamp series.

I would also say, Madam Speaker, that the Hispanic Caucus of our Congress has also condemned these stamps. This insult comes on the heels of Mexican President Vicente Fox's quote last month as saying the Mexican citizens in this country will work on jobs that even blacks don't want. Ultimately, he apologized for making that statement, but, Madam Speaker, he is sticking by the stamps, even though the President of the United States of America, George Bush, has also condemned the stamps.

This resolution is aimed at getting the people of Mexico, if not the president, to demand that this kind of thing be stopped. Ancestors of Mexican blacks entered that country centuries ago through the Caribbean port city of

Veracruz, and they were slave laborers. They worked in the sugar fields of Mexico. Today, the population of blacks living in Mexico is about 1 million; that is 1 million out of 105 million people. And so they have a small population. But no person of color can appreciate what they have done. Madam Speaker, the stamps are insulting hopefully to all people of good will but certainly to people of color. Memin Pinguin is depicted as a part man, part monkey or chimpanzee. This character is presented as some stupid half-animal, half-human person out of the jungles, and it is very difficult for me to find this amusing in any way. It is this kind of cultural terrorism that has done damage to the psyche of little children of color for decades and decades. There is not a single parent who should feel good about their child growing up looking at this kind of image of themselves, because this damages their somebody-ness.

Madam Speaker, there are five stamps in this series, and each one, if you look at them as they have been released, becomes progressively more insulting, until the last stamp has Memin standing in front of his mother, Aunt Jemima, with a towel in her hand. And she too is looked at, at least projected as a half-woman, half-ape. With her towel in her hand, she is half bending, and this kind of insult to people of color seems to happen in Mexico with increased intensity. Mexican President Fox stated that the stamp is an image in a comic book, and he said that he has watched this character since infancy, he says, and I quote, It is cherished here in Mexico; the other minorities or the Afro-Americans or Latins, I would suggest to them first, read the magazine.

Madam Speaker, I do not need to read the magazine. In my city, in Kansas City, some of the Native Americans spoke to me during my term as mayor, saying that the tomahawk chop used at the Chiefs football games was insulting to them. I had done the tomahawk chop at the games when the Chiefs scored and did it without any regard to anybody or anything. But I did not realize that it was insulting to some of the Native Americans, and eventually, I said to them, if it is insulting to you, I will stop doing it. I will encourage others with whom I come in contact to stop doing it. The one thing I did not say to him is, you should not be upset. If I have a toothache, I do not want a dentist to tell me you should not hurt. If I hurt, I hurt. And if people respect me, if people have any sensitivity at all, they will say, he hurts, therefore, I will not contribute further to his pain.

This, Madam Speaker, is hurtful. It is damaging, and the more it continues, the more young kids are going to be hurt. My hope, even my prayer, is that the day will soon pass when this kind of thing will be something we talk about in the ugly and distant past, something that we do not have to worry about dealing with now. This is 2005. This is the kind of thing that many African-Americans experienced living in the South when they had lawn jockeys out on the greenery in front of large plantations. No one would have thought just a short while ago that, in 2005, this kind of thing would still be around, this kind of thing would still stare us in the face to insult us and to do further damage to our children. To date, 750,000 of these stamps have been purchased. That racial stereotype will now appear on letters going both inside Mexico and around the world. This is a total lack of respect for people of color.

I am also pleased that the Congressional Black Caucus has released a statement. The chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, U.S. Representative Melvin Watt from North Carolina, released the following statement: The members of the Congressional Black Caucus find the stamps insensitive, racist and an insult to people everywhere, and we call on President Vicente Fox to recall the stamps immediately and to issue an apology to all people of African descent. The stamps are offensive and perpetuate a negative stereotype of people of Africa. Again, we call on President Fox to repudiate the issuance of these stamps and to announce his commitment to address the problem of racism, yes, even in Mexico.

Madam Speaker, growing up, I had to deal with this on a daily basis. Bug-eyed, big-lipped, half-human, half-chimpanzee hybrids were portrayed all around us, and there was nothing we could do except to take it. It was an insult for me to grow up having a teacher read Little Black Sambo. The only book with people who looked like me when I was growing up was Little Black Sambo, and the only thing he did of substance was to eat a lot of pancakes. I hope people understand that they are hurting other human creatures. This should not take place in the 21st century.

As President Fox is justifying what has been done, I would like to remind him that, not long ago, in fact, it was in 1969, there was a Frito Bandito cartoon character that hit the airwaves here in the United States. And he was used to advertise some corn chips. But Frito Bandito was pulled off the air when Mexicans protested, when they came to the conclusion that this was an insult portraying all of them as some little shady Mexican character who was actually a thief, bandito. But the good news is that the Frito Lay corn chip company did pull the ad. And so there is at least a precedent for pulling back when people find out they are hurting other people.

Madam Speaker, my request again is for all the Members of this great body to join in being a sponsor of this resolution to help denounce something that is wrong, to show that all the people of this Nation, black, white and brown, are united in their attempt to eliminate stereotypes. It would be a powerful, powerful move by this Congress if all of us joined forces to condemn this.

I am also pleased to say, Madam Speaker, that there are a number of Republicans who have also come in along with a number of Democrats and, as I have said earlier, the President of the United States has condemned this, the minority leader and the minority whip are also condemning what they consider to be something that is degrading and demeaning, not just to people of color but to the people of the world.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne).

Madam Speaker, I would like to express appreciation to the gentleman from New Jersey for his very eloquent and passionate words concerning something that I am angry about.

Madam Speaker, I have grandsons who are growing up now in this country who I do not want to be negatively impressed by these kinds of stereotypes. I do not want my children or my children's children or anyone's children to be subjected to this kind of insult. This is outrageous.

Madam Speaker, this is not just a caricature. For many people around the world it is a belief, and those of us who are sensitive and those of us who are impacted would like to erase this as a belief.

Some day, caricatures like this will not matter. We will have dealt finally with this bogeyman race. But this is not that day.

Some day, Little Black Sambo will not matter. We will look back and laugh at it. But today is not that day.

A recent appointee to the D.C. Circuit has said that using the ``N'' word, even in a workplace when discrimination is also an issue, is protected speech. I think that is very dangerous. Now, some day, using the ``N'' word will not matter. But today is not that day.

Some day, the president of Mexico will be outraged that something like this ever took place. But this is not that day.

Some day, a call for racial sensitivity in this body will not be needed. But today is not that day.

Some day, the country of Mexico will have a President who respects the citizens of the entire world. But, sadly, Madam Speaker, today is not that day.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.