'We’re saying it’s our responsibility too. We represent areas that expect us to represent,' Waters says. Waters to Obama: Pay attention to us

President Barack Obama needs to pay more attention to black Americans to keep them “on board,” Rep. Maxine Waters said Thursday.

After voicing criticism earlier this week about the president’s inattention to black Americans, the California Democrat said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that she and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus are “not just frustrated with the president — communities are hurting.”


“It’s not personal. We’re not even pointing fingers,” she said. “We’re saying it’s our responsibility too. We represent areas that expect us to represent. That’s why they sent us to Congress. And so that’s what we’re doing.”

At a town hall in Detroit on Tuesday, Waters said that members of the CBC are “getting tired” of continuing to support the president even as the economy continues to flounder, with the effects of a long-term recession magnified in many African-American communities.

The president visited predominantly white communities in Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois on his bus tour this week, Waters also noted at the town hall, saying: “We don’t know why on this trip that he’s in the United States now, he’s not in any black community…we don’t know that.”

On Thursday, mentioning the tour on MSNBC, Waters picked up a newspaper. “Take a look at this headline in The Wall Street Journal: ‘Obama aims to keep white voters on board.’ Well we want to be on board, too.”

Waters also tried to explain her Tuesday remarks, which had cable news and the blogosphere alight on Wednesday. “The economy, the loss of jobs, the pain is real. We’re talking about indisputable facts,” she said. “We’ve got to be in the discussion. We want to be part of the solution. We cannot continue to go on watching everybody talk about what the solutions are without us being included in it.”

Supporters ask her and other members of the CBC if they’re meeting with Obama to discuss unemployment, but Waters said that they “have not been privy to which way the president is going and why he’s doing it” on jobs and the economy.

“It’s time for us to step up and note that our communities are not being dealt with and to make sure that this administration understands that we cannot continue to go on this way,” she said. “Whatever the plan is that’s going to be unveiled in September, we intend to be a part of that. We have ideas. We want to include those in the plan that the president unveils. Here we are.”