Congresswoman Donna Christensen addresses a group of scholars at the second annual International Colloquium on Black Males in Education held at the University of Virgin Islands in St. Thomas last week. (Photo Credit: Clifford White)
“Many people think that being Black and being a woman is the biggest obstacle that I face in Congress,” said Christensen, who is a trained medical doctor and has represented the Virgin Islands territory on Capitol Hill since 1996. “But representing the territory has been the biggest problem because many of my colleagues in Congress don’t see the territory as being entitled to the same rights the states are entitled to.”
Christensen is working around the clock to push through an energy bill that would help provide relief to the Islands where energy costs are 500 percent higher than the national average, a financial impediment that is “unsustainable and crippling to the economy and the health and safety of the community.”
But like Washington, D.C.’s Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, Christensen is a non-voting member of Congress who is forced to establish strategic alliances with congressional members on both sides of the aisle to help her secure federal funding for the Islands, including money for the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI) — a land-grant historically Black college and university founded in 1962.
“I really have to work and develop relationships,” she said, adding that members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) have been her biggest allies in helping to keep the issues of the Islands at the forefront of the nation’s legislative agenda. “I’m really fortunate to have the CBC because it forms my delegation and supports me on everything I want to do for the Virgin Islands.”
An assistant minority whip in the Democratic Caucus, Christensen chairs the CBC’s Health Braintrust, which oversees and advocates for minority health issues nationally and internationally. She has recently turned her attention to the plight of Black boys, working collaboratively with U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla. and other CBC members to help curtail the high school and college dropout rate of so many young African-American men across the U.S. and in the Islands.
Last week, Christensen spoke to a group of scholars who gathered at UVI in St. Thomas for the second annual international colloquium on Black males in education, sponsored by Wisconsin’s Equity and Inclusion (WEI) Laboratory and headed by Dr. Jerlando F.L. Jackson, the Vilas distinguished professor of higher education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. WEI is largely focused on highlighting successful program outcomes that offer solutions aimed at solving the series of problems that confront Black males in education.
