Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday charged that a handful of House members have a sense of “racial superiority.”
Rangel appeared to double down on comments he made last week that some Republicans think “slavery isn’t over.”
{mosads}Rangel, in an interview Wednesday afternoon on CNN, said that despite the country having a black president and an “explosive number” of African-American and other minority members of Congress, race remains an issue among a “handful” of Republicans.
“We all know who they are and where they’re from. So maybe ‘slavery’ was the wrong word, but racial superiority, unfortunately, is the disease that a handful of people have, and they were holding back the Republican majority in the House,” Rangel said.
“Maybe now that Republican leadership doesn’t need them, they can go along with people who want to improve the quality of life for all Americans and not those who just look like them,” he added in a reference to immigration reform.
Rangel’s initial comments about slavery took place while he was campaigning for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D).
Rangel didn’t identify any names in his comments.
“The whole world knows who they are, and certainly Americans do and certainly Speaker Boehner does,” he said.