[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
H.R. 40 AND THE PATH TO RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE
CONSTITUTION, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND CIVIL
LIBERTIES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 19, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-27
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Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available http://judiciary.house.gov or www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
41-178 PDF WASHINGTON : 2021
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COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
JERROLD NADLER, New York, Chairman
ZOE LOFGREN, California DOUG COLLINS, Georgia,
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas Ranking Member
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr.,
HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr., Wisconsin
Georgia STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
KAREN BASS, California JIM JORDAN, Ohio
CEDRIC L. RICHMOND, Louisiana KEN BUCK, Colorado
HAKEEM S. JEFFRIES, New York JOHN RATCLIFFE, Texas
DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island MARTHA ROBY, Alabama
ERIC SWALWELL, California MATT GAETZ, Florida
TED LIEU, California MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington TOM McCLINTOCK, California
VAL BUTLER DEMINGS, Florida DEBBIE LESKO, Arizona
J. LUIS CORREA, California GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania, BEN CLINE, Virginia
Vice-Chair KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota
SYLVIA R. GARCIA, Texas W. GREGORY STEUBE, Florida
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
LUCY McBATH, Georgia
GREG STANTON, Arizona
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
DEBBIE MUCARSEL-POWELL, Florida
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
Perry Apelbaum, Majority Staff Director & Chief Counsel
Brendan Belair, Minority Staff Director
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, CIVIL RIGHTS,
AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee, Chair
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana,
ERIC SWALWELL, California Ranking Member
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania JIM JORDAN, Ohio
SYLVIA R. GARCIA, Texas GUY RESCHENTHALER, Pennsylvania
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas BEN CLINE, Virginia
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota
James Park, Chief Counsel
Paul Taylor, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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JUNE 19, 2019
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
The Honorable Steve Cohen, Chairman, Subcommittee on the
Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties................ 1
The Honorable Mike Johnson, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on the
Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties................ 4
The Honorable Jerrold Nadler, Chairman, Committee on the
Judiciary...................................................... 7
The Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, Subcommittee on the
Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties................ 8
WITNESSES
Cory Booker, United States Senator
Oral Testimony............................................... 21
Prepared Testimony........................................... 24
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Distinguished Writer in Residence, Arthur L.
Carter Journalism Institute of New York University
Oral Testimony............................................... 28
Prepared Testimony........................................... 31
Danny Glover, Actor and Activist
Oral Testimony............................................... 35
Prepared Testimony........................................... 37
Katrina Browne, Documentarian, Traces of the Trade
Oral Testimony............................................... 40
Prepared Testimony........................................... 42
Coleman Hughes, Writer, Quilette
Oral Testimony............................................... 49
Prepared Testimony........................................... 51
Burgess Owens, Speaker and Writer
Oral Testimony............................................... 53
Prepared Testimony........................................... 55
The Right Reverend Eugene Taylor Sutton, Episcopal Bishop of
Maryland
Oral Testimony............................................... 58
Prepared Testimony........................................... 60
Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Economist and Political Commentator
Oral Testimony............................................... 75
Prepared Testimony........................................... 78
Professor Eric J. Miller, Loyola Law School, Loyola Marymount
University
Oral Testimony............................................... 81
Prepared Testimony........................................... 83
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC. SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Item for the record submitted by the Honorable Sheila Jackson
Lee, Committee on the Judiciary................................ 11
Item for the record submitted by the Honorable Steve Cohen,
Chairman, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and
Civil Liberties, Committee on the Judiciary.................... 16
Item for the record submitted by the Honorable Louie Gohmert,
Committee on the Judiciary..................................... 119
APPENDIX
Items for the record submitted by The Honorable Steve Cohen,
Chairman, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and
Civil Liberties................................................ 141
H.R. 40 AND THE
PATH TO RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 2019
House of Representatives
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights,
and Civil Liberties
Committee on the Judiciary
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in
Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Steve Cohen
[chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Cohen, Nadler, Raskin, Jackson
Lee, Swalwell, Scanlon, Dean, Garcia, Escobar, Johnson,
Gohmert, Jordan, Reschenthaler, and Cline.
Staff Present: David Greengrass, Senior Counsel; John Doty,
Senior Advisor; Lisette Morton, Director, Policy, Planning, and
Member Services; Madeline Strasser, Chief Clerk; Moh Sharma,
Member Services and Outreach Advisor; Susan Jensen,
Parliamentarian/Senior Counsel; Charlie Gayle, Oversight
Counsel; James Park, Chief Counsel; Keenan Keller, Senior
Counsel; Will Emmons, Professional Staff Member; Paul Taylor,
Minority Counsel; and Andrea Woodard, Minority Professional
Staff Member.
Mr. Cohen. The Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on
the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties will come
to order. I thank the officers for their help in clearing--
getting the door shut and getting folks in. Thank you so much.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the subcommittee at any time.
I welcome everyone to today's hearing on H.R. 40 and the
path to restorative justice. I will now recognize myself for an
opening statement.
Today is Juneteenth, a day that the commemorates the
announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas and more
generally throughout the former confederacy on June 19, 1865.
The news of the Emancipation Proclamation did not reach Texas
for 2 years. And so it was not until 1865 that all enslaved
people knew they were free, despite President Lincoln's
emancipation announcement. Slavery was a crime against
humanity, one which whose impacts we as a society continue to
grapple with today. This year also marks the 400th anniversary
of the first African slaves being brought to America.
Slavery was our Nation's original sin. Our Constitution
protected it, embodying it in various compromises that gave
disproportionate power to slave States. For example, the three-
fifths clause counted a slave as three-fifths of a person for
population counts. Of course, they weren't considered persons
but property. But that, in turn, gave disproportionate
representation to slave States in the House of Representatives.
The Constitution also created the Electoral College, a
system of electing the President of the United States that gave
slave States another avenue to exercise disproportionate
influence over national affairs. It is only fitting, then, that
we should hold a hearing today on H.R. 40, the Commission to
Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans
Act. My colleague, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who is in
another hearing right--no, she is here with us. Thank you--a
member of the subcommittee is the current lead sponsor of this
legislation, and I am proud to be a cosponsor with her along
with full committee chair Jerry Nadler, also a long time
cosponsor of this bill.
But the greatest credit for H.R. 40 belongs to two
individuals. First and foremost, Mr. John Conyers. Mr. Conyers
is a former colleague, a former chairman of the House Judiciary
Committee, a great American, and a great leader, one of my
mentors, one of the reasons that I have introduced this
resolution with him since 2007. He introduced it first 30 years
ago. The he reintroduced it every Congress thereafter until his
retirement.
The second individual most responsible for H.R. 40 is,
sadly, but in reality, John Wilkes Booth. His assassination of
President Abraham Lincoln led to Andrew Johnson becoming
President. And President Johnson effectively rescinded the
promise made by General William T. Sherman to former slaves
that they would each be guaranteed 40 acres of land to make a
living as a free person. A promise sometimes colloquially
referred to as 40 acres and a mule. President Lincoln would
have carried that out and had plans to do it. But because of
that dastardly day and deed of April 12, 1865, it didn't occur.
It was April 14, maybe.
Anyway, H.R. 40 would create a commission to study the
history of slavery in America, the role of the Federal and
State governments in supporting slavery and racial
discrimination. Other forms of discrimination against the
descendants of slaves and the lingering consequences of slavery
and Jim Crow on African Americans. The commission would also
make recommendations as to appropriate ways to educate the
American public about its findings and appropriate remedies in
light of its findings.
An honest reckoning with the Federal Government's role in
protecting the institution of slavery has been a leading
priority in my congressional career. In 2007, my freshman year,
less than 2 months into that term, introduced H. Res. 194, an
apology by the House of Representatives for its role in
perpetuating both slavery and its noxious offspring, Jim Crow.
The House ultimately passed this resolution by voice vote. And
I, once again, thank Chairman Conyers for getting it a vote and
getting it to the American people.
As I noted in my resolution then, it was not just slavery
itself that was wrong but also, quote, ``the visceral racism
against persons of African descent upon which,'' unquote,
American slavery depended, a racism that went on to become
entrenched in the Nation's social fabric, an evil that we must
continue to confront today.
Can we get that door closed?
Thank you, sir.
My resolution emphasized that, while slavery was our
Nation's original sin, the underlying sin of anti-Black racism
did not end with the Civil War and the 13th Amendment. And
Congress' inaction and acquiescence in the face of such racism
was a big reason why. Racism became only further entrenched
after slavery's end as reflected in societal attitudes and in
Jim Crow laws, a system of State racial segregation laws that
created separate and unequal societies for Whites and African
Americans, one that was enforced through both official means
and through lynchings, violence, intimidation, and
disenfranchisement.
And not until 100 years after the end of slavery did
Congress, under pressure from Dr. Martin Luther King, John
Lewis, and other great civil rights leaders in the civil rights
movement finally carry out its duty to end Jim Crow by passing
the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
that still exists to some extent; and other core civil rights
statutes that are fulfilling the Constitution's guarantees of
equal protection for all.
Today, our Nation continues to struggle with the legacy of
the anti-Black racism that undergirded slavery and Jim Crow. We
see this in statistics that paint a bleak picture. According to
the Census Bureau, 21.2 percent of African Americans lived in
poverty in 2017 compared to 8.7 percent of non-Hispanic Whites
who live in poverty. That is over two times as many. The Census
Bureau also reported in 2015 that the net worth of African
American households was only about $13,000, which was less than
10 percent, less than 10 percent of the nearly $140,000 net
worth of non-Hispanic White households.
Limited access to wealth, building resources and
opportunities have led to this dark disparity. For instance,
African Americans continue to face discrimination in the
workplace. They have limited access to educational
opportunities. According to the National Education Association,
the high school education rate, graduation rate for African
Americans was 67 percent compared to the nationwide average of
81 percent. African Americans also continue to face racial
segregation in housing and discrimination in the availability
of quality healthcare service and most other major facets of
life.
Enacting H.R. 40 would be an important step in finding
effective long-term solutions to these problems once they can
trace their origins to our Nation's shameful history of slavery
and anti-Black racism.
As the distinguished professor Charles Ogletree of Harvard
Law School once noted, the concept of reparations does not
necessarily mean payments to individuals but rather a focus on
the poorest of the poor, including efforts, quote, ``to address
comprehensively the problems of those who have not
substantially benefited from integration or affirmative
action,'' unquote.
I hope our hearing today can lead to fruitful conversations
with the aim of achieving that goal. I thank our witnesses for
being here today and look forward to their testimony.
It is now my pleasure to recognize the ranking member of
the subcommittee, the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Johnson,
for his opening statement.
Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me start today by saying I maintain the utmost respect
for my colleagues on the other side, and I know their beliefs
on this issue are sincerely held.
I want to thank all our witnesses for being here today, for
your good-faith testimony, and your scholarship. We have all
read through it in detail and made many notes. I will use my
brief time here to just focus on an overview of what H.R. 40 is
and why we are here.
What we are going to discuss here today centers upon a
regrettable and shameful portion of American history. Slavery
in America and elsewhere was a horrific injustice, the
perpetuation of which was antithetically opposed to the
founding ideals expressed in our Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution, including its Bill of Rights. Of course,
the evil institution of slavery was legally abolished over 150
years ago on December 6, 1865, with the ratification of the
13th Amendment following the end of the tragic Civil War.
The bill today, H.R. 40, would, quote, establish a
commission to study and develop reparation proposals for
African Americans. There are serious questions about this from
all sides of the political spectrum, and they are honest and
sincere questions that we want to address.
But putting aside the injustice of monetary reparations
from current taxpayers for the sins of a small subset of
Americans from many generations ago--let me finish--the fair
distribution of reparations would be nearly impossible once one
considers the complexity of the American struggle to abolish
slavery.
Just consider this. Okay? There are tens of millions of
today's non-African Americans who are descended from people who
arrived in the country, of course, after slavery ended, and,
therefore, they can't be held responsible for its legacy. More
tens of millions are descended from people in both the North
and South who didn't own slaves or who were descended from
White people who fought in the Civil War on the Union side.
Indeed, only a small percentage of the total American
population were slave owners.
For the aforementioned reasons and many others, such an
approach has been widely unpopular, at least in our recent
history. In the 1970s, civil rights organizations openly
rejected the idea of reparations, which the NAACP's assistant
director himself called, quote, ``an illogical diversionary and
paltry way out for guilt-ridden Whites,'' unquote. Bayard
Rustin, who organized the 1963 march on Washington and was one
of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s closest advisers described the
concept as, quote, ``a ridiculous idea,'' unquote. Barack Obama
opposed reparations when he ran for President in 2008, and
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders did as well 8 years later.
In addition to all this, here in the Judiciary Committee,
we have an obligation to acknowledge that any monetary
reparations that might be recommended by the commission created
by H.R. 40 would almost certainly be unconstitutional on their
face. The reason for that--listen. Wait a minute. The reason
for that is a legal question. See, the legal question is the
Federal Government can't constitutionally provide compensation
today to a specific racial group because other members of that
group, maybe several generations ago, were discriminated
against and treated inhumanely. According to the U.S. Supreme
Court, they would refer to that as an unconstitutional racial
preference. See, the holding of the 1995 case, Richmond v. J.A.
Croson Co. is that racial set-asides and other entitlements are
only constitutionally permissible to remedy the present effects
of the government's own widespread and recent discrimination.
And the Federal Government is not allowed to provide race-based
remedies that are, quote, ageless in their reaching of the pass
and timeless in their ability to affect the future, unquote.
Now, listen. I get it. I have read the scholarship. I know
that some proponents of this legislation believe that the very
discussion of reparations itself would be cathartic for our
Nation. But we have to ask: If discussions can result in
justice today, they certainly probably won't provide consensus.
Instead, many people of good conscious believe they will
distract from the many persistent causes of current racial
disparities. They certainly exist. The despicable racism of
America's past is part of that, as Mr. Coates, for example, has
documented in a very compelling way. But so are other social
and culture dynamics, which are themselves often negatively
influenced by well-intended government policies.
Let us be clear today: Racism violates the most fundamental
principles of our great Nation, and it breaks the heart of our
just and loving God. The central idea of America, what has been
called as our foundational creed, is that we boldly declare the
self-evident truths that all men created equal and that we are
thus endowed by our creator with the same inalienable rights.
Because each of us is made in the image of God, every single
person has inestimable dignity and value. And our value is not
related in any way to the color of our skin, what neighborhood
we live in, our intelligence, or our abilities. Our value is
inherent because it is given to us by our Creator.
Many of my colleagues in this committee may not be aware
that, in addition to our four children still at home, my wife,
Kelly, and I actually have a much older son who happens to be
African American. We took custody of Michael and made him part
of our family 22 years ago when we were just newlyweds and
Michael was just 14 and out on the streets and nowhere to go
and on a very dangerous path. Michael is grown now. He has his
own young family. He turns 36 years old next week. And he is a
loving dad to four precious children of his own. God has been
good to us, and he is a success story.
I mention that today for one reason: I personally know the
challenge that he has faced early in his life. I have walked
with him through discrimination that he has had to endure over
the years and the hurdles he sometimes faced. I know all this
because I was with him.
I asked Michael this weekend what he thinks about the idea
of reparations. In a very thoughtful way, he explained his
opposition. And it reminded me of something that Harvard
history professor Stephan Thernstrom has previously testified
in this very committee. And he said this quote as I am
wrapping: Finally, I would urge the members of this
subcommittee and the House of Representatives as a whole to
ponder carefully the message that will be conveyed by the
passage of this bill, H.R. 40. When you are behind in a foot
race, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., said in 1963, the
only way to get ahead is to run faster than the man in front of
you. So, when your White roommate says he is tired and goes to
sleep, you stay up and burn the midnight oil. Dr. King's words
reflect and important tradition of self-reliance, I am still
quoting, that has had eloquent advocates in the African
American community. Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington,
W.E.B DuBois, and many others. All of them were saying in their
in their different ways that African Americans were not
powerless to better their lives until America owned up to its
historical sins and offered them a generous financial
settlement. The point is as important today as ever.
That is what he wrote to this committee the last time--or
one of the last times this was debated.
Those great leaders encourage people to take control of and
responsibility for their own lives because that gives every
human being a greater sense of meaning, purpose, and
satisfaction. And I know everybody in this room probably agrees
with that idea, that principle.
The premise of H.R. 40 and similar legislation, however
willing they may be, risks communicating the opposite message.
Would it propagate a world view that says external forces from
a century and a half ago are directing the fate of Black
Americans today? I mean, it is an honest question some people
ask. I think people who wholeheartedly agree that our Nation is
still in the process of healing from its reprehensible sins of
the past can ask that question.
There is no doubt that prejudice exists in our society,
just as it has in every society since the fall of man in the
garden. It exists in many communities and between many
different races and types of people, sadly. And it is not
reserved to just one race or class or ethnicity against
another. We all know that. All of it is despicable. And every
single instance of it is un-American.
The honest question we have today, and that is what we are
here to discuss, is, what do we do about it?
All of us are here to listen to the thoughtful discussion
today. I hope we will do it respectfully and with civility. We
approach it in good faith. I promise you, every Member of
Congress does. And I look forward to hearing from all of our
witnesses.
Thank you again. I yield back.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.
And I want to apologize. I might have--we are not supposed
to, in the audience, respond or speak out or applaud or cheer.
And I am probably wrong for having encouraged and allowed what
I think was a proper reference for Mr. Conyers. But if you'd
not allow my error to be compounded, try to keep cool.
And I'd now like to recognize the chairman of the full
committee, Mr. Nadler.
Chairman Nadler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this
important hearing.
This year, we mark the 400th anniversary of the first
enslaved Africans arriving at the colony of Jamestown,
Virginia. Today's hearing on H.R. 40 and the path to
restorative justice gives us the opportunity to reflect on the
shameful legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in this country and to
examine how we can best move forward as a Nation. For nearly
three decades, the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee,
John Conyers of Michigan, introduced H.R. 40, which would
establish a commission to study reparations proposals for
African Americans. Our colleague, the gentlewoman from Texas,
Ms. Jackson Lee, has taken up sponsorship of this legislation.
And I am pleased to be a cosponsor as I was a cosponsor for
many years when it was sponsored by Mr. Conyers.
H.R. 40 is intended to begin an national conversation about
how to confront the brutal mistreatment of African Americans
during chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the enduring
structure of racism that remains endemic to our society today.
Even long after slavery was abolished, segregation and
subjugation of African Americans was a defining part of this
Nation's policies that shaped its values and its institutions.
Today, we live with racial disparities in access to
education, healthcare, housing, insurance, employment, and
other social goods that are directly attributable to the
damaging legacy of slavery and government-sponsored racial
discrimination in the century following slavery's end. It is
important to recognize that H.R. 40 makes no conclusion about
how to properly atone for and to make recompense for the legacy
of slavery and Jim Crow and their lingering consequences.
Instead, it sets forth a process by which a diverse group of
experts and stakeholders can study the complex issues involved
and make recommendations to us.
Most serious reparations models that have been proposed to
date have focused on restorative community-based programs of
employment, healthcare, housing, and education initiatives--
righting wrongs that cannot be fixed with checks alone.
This moment of national reckoning comes at a time when our
Nation must find constructive ways to confront a rising tide of
racial and ethnic division. In April, this committee held a
hearing on hate crimes and the rise of White nationalism in
order to begin framing a Federal response. Hate crimes, white
supremacy, the legacy of slavery, the legacy of Jim Crow all
hold back our country's longstanding efforts to carry out what
the Preamble to our Constitution says it is designed to do: to
form a more perfect union.
Reparations in the context of H.R. 40 are ultimately about
respect and reconciliation and the hope that one day all
Americans can walk together toward a more just future.
I hope that the commission established by H.R. 40 can help
us better comprehended our own history and bring us closer to
racial understanding and advancement and justice. Today's
hearing gives the subcommittee an important opportunity to hear
from witnesses directly involved in shaping the discourse on
healing our society and creating a path to restorative justice.
I am pleased that we have such a distinguished panel of
witnesses whose testimony will assist us greatly in
understanding the scope of our inquiry. The discussion of
reparations is a journey in which the road traveled may be
almost as important as the exact destination. I am pleased that
the subcommittee is beginning this process today, and I look
forward to hearing from our witnesses.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Nadler.
I would like to ask for unanimous consent that
Representative Karen Bass be allowed to sit on the dais. She is
a member of the committee but not the subcommittee.
Without objection. Welcome, Ms. Bass.
Mr. Green was just here, from Houston. I think he is coming
back.
And now I'd like to recognize the gentlelady from Texas for
an opening statement, Ms. Sheila Jackson Lee.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And
thank you to Chairman Nadler for an identity of H.R. 40 as a
legitimate legislative action that should receive the full
hearing of this committee, should, in fact, have a markup, go
to the floor of the House, go to the United States Senate, and
be signed by the President of the United States of America.
This is an action of legislative commitment, and this is not a
symbolic action, though I am gratified that we are having this
hearing on Juneteenth. And for those of us who understand
Juneteenth, 2 years after the proclamation--Emancipation
Proclamation--there were those Africans who did not have
freedom until 1865.
So let me begin and indicate to my friends who have
expressed a variety of assessments of H.R. 40 and say that
America is a place it welcomes the diversity of thought. We
even welcome the diversity of thought among the multicolored
chocolate people that are African Americans, descendants of
African slaves.
Let me be very clear. It is only this group--even though
they attempted to enslave Native Americans, it is only this
group that can singularly--singularly--claim to have been
slaves under the auspices, the institution, and leadership of
the United States Government.
And so H.R. 40 is in fact--is, in fact--the response of the
United States of America long overdue. Slavery is original sin.
Slavery has never received an apology. This commission will be
compromised of members selected by the President of the United
States, the Speaker of the House, the leader, and, of course,
those who have been entrenched in this process.
I spoke to John Conyers yesterday. I am honored to have
been given the opportunity to lead this bill. John Conyers said
to move on and to lead on and for us to take this forward.
Thank you, Congressman John Conyers, for all that you have
done.
So let me share with you just a sense of what we face. Let
me, first of all, say the number of Africans who died in Middle
Passage, over 2 million. Number of enslaved who died during
slavery first, second, and third generation, over 2.5 million.
The transatlantic slave trade was the largest movement of
people in history. Between 10 and 15 million Africans were
forcibly transported across the Atlantic between 1500 and 1900.
At least 2 million Africans, 10 to 15 percent, died in the
infamous Middle Passage, as I said. Another 15 to 30 percent
died during the march to or confinement along the coast.
Altogether, for every hundred slaves who reached the New World,
another 40 died in Africa or during the Middle Passage.
Who has a history like that? Reparations and the idea of
this commission should be welcomed by all Americans for we are
not asking one American to give one payment. What we are saying
is the only way that slavery ended was a governmental action of
the 13th Amendment, governmental action, and Reconstruction
failed after 12 years because it was imploded by governmental
people. And after Reconstruction, a reign of terror that had
never been seen, the hanging fruit, the lynching, the
oppression of voting, the tearing away of land, and the amazing
concept of the continuing de jure and de facto impact of
slavery today.
One million African Americans are incarcerated. That is a
continuing impact. The Black employment rate is 6.6 percent, in
spite of what has been said currently, more than double the
national unemployment rate. Thirty-one percent of Black
children live in poverty compared to 11 percent of White
children. The national average is 18 percent, which suggests
the percentage of Black children living in poverty is more than
150 percent. Even in spite of the glorious overcoming of the
talent that is part of our community, the scraping together of
making sure our children received education, the putting
together something out of nothing, we still have been impacted.
And only 57 percent of Black students have access to full range
of math and science classes today. Black children were
vaccinated at rates lower than White children. Educational
mobility has been limited. Black children represent 19 percent
of the Nation's preschool population, yet 47 percent of those
receiving more than one-out-of-school suspension. Black
students are 2.3 times as likely to receive a referral to law
enforcement. And we know the criminal justice system.
So I conclude by these words: Black people in America are
the descendants of Africans kidnapped and transported to the
United States with the explicit complicity of the U.S.
Government and every arm of the United States lawmaking and law
enforcement infrastructure. The dehumanizing and atrocities of
slavery were not isolated occurrences but mandated by Federal
laws that were codified and enshrined in the Constitution. The
role of the Federal Government in supporting the institution of
slavery and subsequent discrimination directed against Blacks
is an injustice that must be formally acknowledged and
addressed.
I am not here in anger or anguish. I am not in any way
seeking to encourage hostilities. There are diverse opinions in
this room, and I understand it, appreciate it, respect it,
admire it, and love it. I am a product of my history. I am
clearly a child that has walked this path. No, I did not pick
cotton. But I will say that those who picked cotton created the
very basic wealth of this Nation, for cotton was king. There
was no other product.
And so I ask my fellow colleagues that this is simply a
constructive discussion that will lead to the practical
responses.
And if I might, Mr. Chairman, put this article in the
record from The New York Times dated June 17th: Downtown Boom,
Kansas City, Missouri, and just a few blocks away, devastation
in the Black community. Two cities mostly in every--I ask
unanimous consent, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Cohen. Without objection.
[The information follows:]
MS. JACKSON LEE FOR THE OFFICIAL RECORD
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Ms. Jackson Lee. Two cities. I also ask unanimous consent
to put a statement of support from John Legend.
Mr. Cohen. Without objection.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Two cities, Mr. Chairman. And so let me
just conclude by saying I hope that we come in peace. I know
that we will hear from Senator Booker. I thank him, and I thank
a number of others who have done this, including the heads of
states, scholars, and activists in the Caribbean of playing a
leading role in the global reparation movement. Many have been
inspired by their work. I am delighted to see that professor
Sir Hilary Beckles, vice chancellor of the University of West
Indies and chairman of CARICOM Reparations Commission, has
traveled all the way from Jamaica to be here. Thank you.
I am particularly glad that we are coming together as
brothers and sisters and passing out accolades. I want to
certainly acknowledge NCOBRA for its steadfast leadership on
this issue over the years and playing an instrumental in
garnering sponsors of H.R. 40. We are also delighted that
several members of the National African American Reparations
Commission are present and want to thank them for working
closely with the dean, Congressman John Conyers, in reforming
H.R. 40 into a bill to study reparations. I am delighted to
have reintroduced it with its modification and carry it forward
to its next level. Thank you, Dr. Ron Daniels. We thank you for
your leadership. Look forward to working with you and the
National African American Reparations Commission as we educate
the Nation on the importance of enacting H.R. 40. And I'd like
to thank Reverend Al Sharpton, National Action Networks
convention, because he asked 15 Presidential candidates what
their position was, and we now have raised this to a national
level.
I just simply ask, why not, and why not now? If not all of
us, then who? God bless us as we pursue the final justice for
those who lived in slavery for 250 years in the United States
of America. Please support H.R. 40 to its passage and signature
by the President of the United States.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for your generosity and kindness. I
yield back.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Ms. Lee.
I would also like to ask that H. Res. 194, which was an
apology for slavery that the House passed in the 110th
Congress, a resolution apologizing for the enslavement and
racial segregation of African Americans, be introduced for the
record. Without objection, it should be done.
Thank you.
[The information follows:]
MR. COHEN FOR THE OFFICIAL RECORD
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Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Cohen. And I would----
Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Jackson Lee. I just want to--you did acknowledge Ms.
Bass. I just want to indicate that Ms. Bass is the chairwoman
of the Congressional Black Caucus, and we are delighted that
she is here in many roles. But we thank her for being here.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding.
Mr. Cohen. H. Res. 194 was intended to start this dialogue
and have a national dialogue. Unfortunately, the Senate did
pass an apology, but Mr. Brownback included a sentence that
said it would have no effect upon reparations. Despite Mr.
Hilary Shelton and Wade Henderson's insistence that they should
still pass together and we could have a dialogue, we passed
different resolutions. But the Senate did pass an apology as
well, and I think it was the 111th Congress. And that was
because of the good work of Senator Tom Harkin.
I would like to introduce into the record the testimony
from William Darity, Jr., a professor of public policy on
African American studies and economics at Duke University.
Without objection, so done.
And now I would like to come to the first panel. And we
would like to welcome as our--to the first panel Senator Cory
Booker.
Senator Booker, your written statement will be entered into
the record. I would ask you to summarize your statement to 5
minutes.
Senator Booker represents the State of New Jersey in the
United States Senate. October 16, 2013, he won a special
election, and on November 4, 2014, he was reelected to a full
6-year term. He sits on the Senate Judiciary, Foreign
Relations, Small Business, and Entrepreneurship, and the
Environment and the Public Works Committees. He is the sponsor
of S. 1083, the Senate companion to H.R. 40. He received his
J.D. from Yale Law School and his undergraduate degree from
Stanford University where they also play football. He was a
Rhodes scholar at Oxford University earning an honor's degree
in history.
Senator Booker, welcome. And you are recognized for 5
minutes.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. CORY BOOKER, A UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY
Senator Booker. Thank you very much.
Chairman Nadler, chairman Cohen, Ranking Member Collins,
and Ranking Member Johnson. I am glad that my written testimony
will be put into the record.
I just want to say that I am sitting before you, on many
days that I come down to Washington, brokenhearted, and very
angry. I live in a Black and Brown inner city community below
the poverty line. I have lived and worked in communities like
this all my adult life. And yesterday, hundreds of yards from
where I live, there were seven Black men shot. And this is an
everyday occurrence in America.
I have the privilege of having leaders in my community who,
over the decades, have given me strength. One of them was a
woman that lived on the 5th floor of the projects, our tenant
president, in some buildings in which I lived, whose son was
murdered as well in our community. And she taught me that hope
is the active conviction, that despair won't have the last
word.
But on a day like this, when I come back to Washington,
D.C., seven people shot in my community, I wonder if other
Senators had people shot like that in their neighborhood,
whether that wouldn't be a lead national story. But I see the
lives of low-income folks, lives of Black and Brown, folks.
When people are shot and killed, the world seems to keep going
on. And so I wonder about having the last word. What happens
when the last would is no words, when it is silence? And I feel
a sense of anger where we are in the United States of America
where we have not had direct conversations about a lot of the
root causes of the inequities and the pain and the hurt
manifested in economic disparities, manifested in health
disparities manifested in a criminal justice system that is,
indeed, a form of new Jim Crow.
And so we as a Nation have not yet truly acknowledged and
grappled with racism and white supremacy that has tainted this
country's founding and continues to persist in those deep
racial disparities and equalities today. This is a very
important hearing. It is historic. It is urgent.
I look at communities like mine, and you could literally
see how communities were designed to be segregated, designed
based upon enforcing institutional racism and inequities. We
know that racialized violence and terrorism has persisted from
Reconstruction well into the 1950s, as my friend Bryan
Stevenson's National Memorial for Peace and Justice shows. We
have seen bombings of churches. We have seen massacres at
places as recently as the Emanuel AME Church just 4 years ago.
The stain of slavery was not just inked in bloodshed but in
the overt state-sponsored policies that fueled white supremacy
and racism and have disadvantaged African Americans
economically for generations. Many of the bedrock policies, in
fact, that ushered generations of Americans into the middle
class were designed to exclude African Americans from the GI
Bill to Social Security, intentionally designed to exclude
Blacks as was school segregation, redlining, neighborhoods like
the one in which I live which were, by design, walled off and
disinvested in.
And while these policies of the past, their damage and
their reality has endured across generations and have created
and led to so much of the racial wealth gaps in our country.
Right now, we see cities like Boston, where the average White
family has somewhere around $240,000 in wealth and the average
Black family has about $8 in wealth. Health outcomes also vary
wildly by race. Nationally, Black women are nearly four times
as likely to die from pregnancy complications as White women,
and in so many other areas. Our criminal justice system as
well. No difference between Blacks and Whites for using drugs
or selling drugs, but African Americans are about four times
more likely to be arrested.
These injustices do not just cause injustice for African
Americans. It enforces a deep injustice in our Nation as a
whole. It is a cancer on the soul of our country and hurts the
whole body politic, making us all less wealthy, making us all
less just, making us all fall far short from being who we say
we are when we swear an oath that this will be a Nation of
liberty and justice for all.
I believe this is an urgent moment. And this bill, which I
am now leading on the Senate side, is the beginning of an
important process, not just to examine and study this history
that has not been addressed, the silence that persists, but
also to find practical ideas to address the enduring injustices
in our Nation. The characterizations of such an effort that I
hear from others is wrong and undermines our collective purpose
and common ground. This idea that it is just about writing a
check from one American to another falls far short of the
importance of this conversation and what I believe we will
truly talk about.
I say that I am brokenhearted and angry right now. Decades
of living in a community where you see how deeply unfair this
Nation is still to so many people who struggle, who work hard,
who do everything right but still find themselves
disproportionately with lead in their water, superfunds in
their neighborhood, schools that don't serve their genius,
healthcare disparities that still affect their body and their
well-being.
We as a Nation must address this persistent inequalities,
or we will never fully achieve the strength and the
possibility. Hope is the active conviction that despair will
not have the last word. I believe right now today we have a
historic opportunity to break the silence, to speak to the ugly
past, and talk constructively about how we will move this
Nation forward.
As the old African saying says, if you want to go fast, go
alone. If you want to go far, go together. It is about time we
find the common ground and the common purpose to deal with the
ugly past and make sure that generations ahead do not have to
continue to mark disparities but can truly talk about a Nation
whereas our ancestors spoke from the good book where justice
rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The statement of Senator Booker follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Thank you so much, Senator Booker.
I appreciate your testimony. Very heartfelt and well
received.
I also want to just reiterate that Congressman Al Green was
here, and he is a great champion.
Now, I would like to call upon our second panel and thank
Senator Booker for his sponsorship and his statement and
wonderful words. Thank you, sir.
The second panel, if they'd come forward. I guess we need
chairs.
There we go. The chair crowd is here. Good.
Okay. Enough with the pictures.
And if the Hope Hicks hearing--well, that is neither here
nor there.
We welcome our witnesses and thank them for participating
in today's hearing. Your written statement will be entered into
the record in its entirety, and I ask you to summarize your
testimony 5 minutes. There is a lighting system. Green means
you are on. Blue means you have got--yellow means you have got
a minute left, and red, you are over, cut, finished.
Before proceeding, I remind each witness that your written
and oral statements made to the subcommittee in connection with
this hearing are subject to penalties of perjury pursuant to 18
U.S.C. 1001, which may result in the imposition of a fine or
imprisonment of up to 5 years.
Our first witness is Ta-Nehisi Coates. If I mispronounced
it, I am sorry. Chris Hayes didn't teach me well when we first
met. Mr. Coates is an author and distinguished writer in
residence at New York University Carter Journalism Institute, a
position he has held since 2017. He has held a variety of
academic positions since 2010. Additionally, from 2008 to 2018,
he was a national correspondent for The Atlantic where he wrote
an extensive piece in June 2014 on the case for reparations. I
believe he also addressed Rhodes College on that subject
sometime in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of three
books, numerous articles and blog posts.
Mr. Coates, thank you for being here, and you are
recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENTS OF TA-NEHISI COATES, DISTINGUISHED WRITER IN
RESIDENCE, ARTHUR L. CARTER JOURNALISM INSTITUTE OF NEW YORK
UNIVERSITY; DANNY GLOVER, ACTOR AND ACTIVIST; KATRINA BROWNE,
DOCUMENTARIAN, TRACES OF THE TRADE; COLEMAN HUGHES, WRITER,
QUILETTE; BURGESS OWENS, SPEAKER AND WRITER; THE RIGHT REVEREND
EUGENE TAYLOR SUTTON, EPISCOPAL BISHOP OF MARYLAND; JULIANNE
MALVEAUX, ECONOMIST AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR; AND ERIC J.
MILLER, PROFESSOR, LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL, LOYOLA MARYMOUNT
UNIVERSITY
STATEMENT OF TA-NEHISI COATES
Mr. Coates. Yesterday, when asked about reparations, Senate
majority leader Mitch McConnell offered a familiar reply:
America should not be held liable for something that happened
150 years ago since none of us currently alive are responsible.
This rebuttal proffers a strange theory of governance, that
American accounts are somehow bound by the lifetime of its
generations.
But well into this century, the United States was still
paying our pensions to the heirs of Civil War soldiers. We
honor treaties that date back some 200 years, despite no one
being alive who signed those treaties. Many of us would love to
be taxed for things we are solely and individually responsible
for. But we are American citizens and thus bound to a
collective enterprise that extends beyond our individual and
personal reach.
It would seem ridiculous to dispute invocations of the
Founders or the Greatest Generation on the basis of a lack of
membership in either group. We recognize our lineage as a
generational trust, as inheritance. And the real dilemma posed
by reparations is just that: a dilemma of inheritance. It is
impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of
slavery. As historian Ed Baptist has written, enslavement,
quote, shaped every crucial aspect of the economy and politics
of America so that by 1836, more than 600 million, or almost
half of the economic activity in the United States, derived
directly or indirectly from the cotton produced by a million-
odd slaves.
By the time the enslaved were emancipated, they compromised
the largest single asset in America: 3 billion in 1860 dollars,
more than all the other assets in the country combined. The
method of cultivating this asset was neither gentle cajoling
nor persuasion but torture, rape, and child trafficking.
Enslavement reigned for 250 years on these shores. When it
ended, this country could have extended its hollowed
principles, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to all
regardless of color. But America had other principles in mind.
And so, for a century after the Civil War, Black people were
subjected to a relentless campaign of terror, a campaign that
extended well into the lifetime of Majority Leader McConnell.
It is tempting to divorce this modern campaign of terror,
of plunder from enslavement. But the logic of enslavement, of
white supremacy, respects no such borders. And the god of
bondage was lustful and begat many heirs: coup d'etats and
convict leasing, vagrancy laws and debt peonage, redlining and
racist GI Bills, poll taxes and state-sponsored terrorism.
Regret that Mr. McConnell was not alive for Appomattox. But he
was alive for the electrocution of George Stinney. He was alive
for the blinding of Isaac Woodard. He was alive to witness
kleptocracy in his native Alabama and a regime premised on
electoral theft.
Majority Leader McConnell cited civil rights legislation
yesterday, as well he should, because he was alive to witness
the harassment, jailing, and betrayal of those responsible for
that legislation by a government sworn to protect them. He was
alive for the redlining of Chicago and the looting of Black
homeowners of some $4 billion. Victims of that plunder are very
much alive today. I am sure they would love a word with the
majority leader.
What they know, what this committee must know, is that
while emancipation dead-bolted the door against the bandits of
America, Jim Crow wedged the windows wide open. And that is the
thing about Senator McConnell's something. It was 150 years
ago, and it was right now. The typical Black family in this
country has \1/10\th the wealth of the typical White family.
Black women die in childbirth at four times the rate of White
women. And there is, of course, the shame of this land of the
free boasting the largest prison population on the planet of
which the decedents of the enslaved make up the largest share.
The matter of reparations is one of making amends and
direct redress. But it is also a question of as citizenship. In
H.R. 40, this body has a chance to both make good on its 2009
apology for enslavement and reject fair-weather patriotism; to
say that a Nation is both its credits and its debits, that if
Thomas Jefferson matters, so does Sally Hemings; that if D-Day
matters, so does Black Wall Street; that if Valley Forge
matters, so does Fort Pillow. Because the question really is
not whether we will be tied to the somethings of our past but
whether we are courageous enough to be tied to the whole of
them.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Coates follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Coates.
Next witness is Mr. Danny Donny Glover, an actor, a
producer, and an activist for various causes. He is currently
goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, chairman of the board of
TransAfrica Forum, an African American lobbying organization
for Africa and the Caribbean, and a friend of Harry Belafonte.
You are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DANNY GLOVER
Mr. Glover. Thank you, Mr. Coates.
It is not often that you hear the words of a young man and
they enliven your emotional memory, your historic memory, as he
just did at this moment. Thank you so much.
I am deeply honored to be here today offering my testimony
at this historic meeting about the reckoning of a crime against
humanity that is foundational to the development of democracy
and material well-being in this country.
A national reparations policy is a moral, democratic, and
economic imperative. I sit here as the great grandson of a
former slave, Mary Brown, who was freed by the Emancipation
Proclamation on January 1, 1863. I had the fortune of meeting
her as a small child. I also sit here as the grandson of Reese
Mae Hunley and Rufus Mack Hunley. My maternal grandparents were
both born before Plessy v. Ferguson, a Supreme Court decision
in 1896. And for a significant portion of their lives, they
were sharecroppers and tenant farmers in rural Georgia until
they were able to save enough money to purchase a small farm.
They were subsistence farmers.
Despite much progress over the centuries, this hearing is
yet another important step in the long and heroic struggle of
African Americans to secure reparations for the damages
inflicted by enslavement and post-Emancipation and racial
exclusionary policies. Many of the organizations who are
present today at this hearing are amongst the historical
contributors to the present national discourse, congressional
deliberations, and Democratic Party Presidential campaign
policy discussions about reparations.
We are also indebted to the work of Congressman John
Conyers for shepherding this legislation. The adoption of H.R.
40 can be a signature legislative achievement, especially
within the context of the United Nations International Decade
for People of African Descendant.
We should also note that Common Market Nations and the
Caribbean community, CARICOM, Reparations Commission, chaired
by Professor sir Hilary Beckles, who is here with us today, has
exercised a leadership role from which we as a Nation can
benefit. Our sustained direct effective policy actions in full
collaboration with African Americans and progressive citizens
allies is the ultimate proof of the sincerity of our national
commitment to repair the damages of the legally and often
religiously sanctioned inhumanity of slavery, segregation, and
current structural racism that limit full democratic
participation and material advancement of African Americans and
of our country's progress as a beacon of justice and equality.
So I call on all of the elected public officials in
Congress to demonstrate your commitment and action today and
stand forth with Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and cosign
H.R. 40.
In closing, with insightful and still--I close--excuse me--
with the insightful and still relevant words of Dr. Martin
Luther king, Jr., in 1968. And I quote: Why is the issue of
equality still so far from solution in America, a Nation which
professes itself to be democratic, inventive, hospitable to new
ideas, rich, productive, and ultimately powerful. Justice for
Black people will not flow into society merely from court
decisions nor from fountains of political oratory, nor will a
few token changes quell all the tempestuous yearnings of
millions of disadvantaged Black people. White America must
recognize that justice for Black people cannot be achieved
without radical changes in the structure of our society. The
comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to
tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Glover follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Thank you.
Go ahead.
Ms. Katrina Browne is our next witness. She is a freelance
speaker, educator, and facilitator. She produced and directed
the documentary film ``Traces of the Trade: A Story from the
Deep North,'' which she made in response to her discovery that
her Rhode Island ancestors were the largest slave-trading
family in United States history. She also currently serves as a
consultant for the Episcopal Church's initiatives on racial
healing, justice, and reconciliation, authoring a 10-session
race dialogue series for congregational use. And I must
parenthetically say that, when we were doing our apology, the
Episcopal Church beat us to it. They were leaders on that
effort. She has an M.A. in theology from the Pacific School of
Religion where she wrote a thesis on film and civic dialogue.
And you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF KATRINA BROWNE
Ms. Brown. Thank you, Chairman Cohen and Ranking Member
Johnson and Representative Jackson Lee for the opportunity to
speak this morning.
I grew up in Philadelphia, six blocks from Independence
Hall and the Liberty Bell. I am a deep-seated patriot. So it
was devastating to learn from my grandmother at age 28 that our
ancestors had been slave traders and to discover that the
DeWolfs were, in fact, the largest slave-trading family in
United States history, bringing over 12,000 Africans to the
Americas in chains. That these were my Rhode Island ancestors
and that Rhode Island turns out be to the State that sent more
ships to Africa than any other required me to reorganize my
brain.
The amnesia in my family matched the larger amnesia of the
North. The self-serving myths of being always on the right side
of history. I could no longer carry a sense of moral
superiority relative to White southerners nor a sense of
innocence vis-a-vis the Black claims--vis-a-vis Black claims on
the White conscience. I decided to initiate a family journey to
retrace the triangle trade. Nine relatives joined me, two of
which are here today. And the documentary ``Traces of the
Trade'' is the result, the subtitle being ``A Story from the
Deep North.''
What we learned, how we stumbled, how we grew during that
journey led me to become a passionate believer in the
importance of reckoning with the history and legacy of slavery,
a believer in personal and family reckonings, institutional
ones, and larger national reckoning, and, with that, in the
need for repair or reparative action, which can and should take
many, many forms. I express wholehearted support for H.R. 40,
and I have met countless people of all backgrounds who believe
in this form of national effort as well.
I know there are many who strenuously object to the premise
that we need this reckoning. The pushback I hear most often is
that is your problem given your ancestors, but it has nothing
to do with me.
It is understandable that people distance themselves. I
will focus on two reasons. One, most of us learned a distorted
history of slavery in school. So, as White Americans, most of
us don't realize our connection to it. Second, there is a
natural instinct to avoid that which can bring feelings of
shame about our people, about the country that we love. To
address the first issue, here is a quick rundown of historical
facts I had not been taught: that the North was deeply
implicated; that slavery was legal in Northern States for over
200 years; that northerners up and down the economic spectrum
made their livings and businesses tied to slave trade and
slavery; that Northern mills processed cotton harvested by
enslaved people.
The Midwest and the West were implicated. They grew food to
feed the South where land was devoted to cash crops like cotton
harvested by the enslaved. Consumers throughout the country
were implicated in their everyday purchases of clothing,
coffee, sugar, rice, tobacco.
People who immigrated from Europe after slavery were
implicated. I have Irish, French, and German immigrant
ancestors who came to the United States in the 19th century,
worked in factories, struggled. But they were given access to
the American Dream. Why were waves of immigrants flocking here?
Because it was the land of opportunity. Why was the economy
booming? Why were there jobs? Because it had been built largely
on unpaid labor.
Once here, European immigrants got to systematically
leapfrog over Black families with devastating consequences up
to the present day. So slavery built the Nation. It turned--
turning us into an economic powerhouse due mostly to, I must
say, good folk who participated in mundane ways and looked the
other way.
Now for the second big reason for pushback against this
bill: the emotions that it stirs up. And I would speak directly
to my fellow White Americans on this. First, fear not, though
it is counterintuitive, I have seen over and over again the
liberating power of facing this painful past.
Second, White people tend to imagine that Black people are
angry at us. But in my experience, Black Americans don't blame
us for the deeds of bygone ancestors but are rightfully angry
that we don't just drop the defensiveness or the self-absorbed
guilt and sign up to work with them shoulder to shoulder to
tackle the legacies that are still with us.
Third, when we let go of defensiveness or guilt, we can get
to a healthy and shared grief which opens the door to sober,
sacred, respectful, creative, collective conversation about how
to make things right.
There are scores of organizations that are already able to
attest to this, the power of this work. They know, I know that
the process that a commission would help the country embark
upon could be a transformative, positive, and life-giving thing
for the country as a whole, a beautiful thing. It is good for
the soul of a person, a people, and of a nation to set things
right.
Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Browne follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Ms. Brown.
And I would note that the Capitol was built with slave
labor. And because of the work of Representatives Jesse
Jackson, Jr., and Zach Wamp, the new Visitors Center is named
Emancipation Hall in recognition.
Mr. Coleman Hughes is a columnist for Quilette and has
worked as a freelance opinion writer since January 2018. He has
had pieces published in The New York Times, the Wall Street
Journal, the National Review, the City Journal, and The
Spectator. He is studying philosophy at Columbia University.
And we appreciate your attendance, and you are recognized for 5
minutes, sir.
STATEMENT OF COLEMAN HUGHES
Mr. Hughes. Thank you, Chairman Cohen, Ranking Member
Johnson, and members of the committee. It is an honor to
testify on a topic as important as this one. Nothing I am about
to say is meant to minimize the horror and brutality of slavery
and Jim Crow. Racism is a bloody stain on this country's
history, and I consider our failure to pay reparations directly
to freed slaves after the Civil War to be one of the greatest
injustices ever perpetrated by the U.S. Government.
But I worry that our desire to fix the past compromises our
ability to fix the present. Think about what we are doing
today. We are spending our time debating a bill that mentions
slavery 25 times but incarceration only once in an era with no
Black slaves but nearly a million Black prisoners; a bill that
doesn't mention homicide once at a time when the Center for
Disease Control reports homicide as the number one cause of
death for young Black men.
I am not saying that acknowledging history doesn't matter.
It does. I am saying there is a difference between
acknowledging history and allowing history to distract us from
the problems we face today.
In 2008, the House of Representatives formally apologized
for slavery and Jim Crow. In 2009, the Senate did the same.
Black people don't need another apology. We need safer
neighborhoods and better schools. We need a less punitive
criminal justice system. We need affordable healthcare. And
none of these things can be achieved through reparations for
slavery.
Nearly everyone close to me--nearly everyone close to me
told me not to testify today. They told me that even though I
have only ever voted for Democrats, I would be perceived as a
Republican and, therefore, hated by half the country.
Others told me they that, by distancing myself from
Republicans, I would end up angering the other half of the
country. And the sad truth is that they were both right. That
is how suspicious we have become of one another. That is how
divided we are as a Nation.
If we were to pay reparations today, we would only divide
the country further, making it harder to build the political
coalitions required to solve the problems facing Black people
today. We would insult many Black Americans by putting a price
on the suffering of their ancestors. And we would turn the
relationship between Black Americans and White Americans from a
coalition into a transaction, from a union between citizens
into a lawsuit between plaintiffs and defendants.
What we should do is pay reparations to Black Americans who
actually grew up under Jim Crow and were directly harmed by
second class citizenship, people like my grandparents. But
paying reparations to all descendants of slaves is a mistake.
Take me for example. I was born three decades after the end of
Jim Crow into a privileged household in the suburbs. I attend
an Ivy League school. Yet I am also descended from slaves who
worked on Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Plantation. So
reparations for slavery would allocate Federal resources to me
but not to an American with the wrong ancestry even if person
is living paycheck to paycheck and working multiple jobs to
support a family. You might call that justice. I call it
justice for the dead at the price of justice for the living.
I understand that reparations are about what people are
owed regardless of how well they are doing. I understand that.
But the people who are owed for slavery are no longer here, and
we are not entitled to collect on their debts. Reparations by
definition are only given to victims. So the moment you give me
reparations, you have made me into a victim without my consent.
Not just that, you made one-third of Black Americans who poll
against reparations into victims without their consent. And
Black Americans have fought too long for the right to define
themselves to be spoken for in such a condescending manner.
The question is not what America owes me by virtue of my
ancestry. The question is what all Americans owe each other by
virtue of being citizens of the same Nation. And the obligation
of citizenship is not transactional. It is not contingent on
ancestry. It never expires, and it can't be paid off. For all
these reasons, bill H.R. 40 is a moral and political mistake.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Hughes follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Hughes.
Chill, chill, chill, chill. He was presumptive, but he
still has a right to speak.
Mr. Burgess Owens is recognized.
Every witness and everybody here should be treated with
respect. And please do so.
Mr. Burgess Owens is an author and a retired professional
football player for the New York Giants and the Oakland
Raiders. He is the author of a number of books, including the
2016 book ``Liberalism or How to Turn Good Men Into Whiners,
Weenies and Wimps,'' which offers a history and analysis of the
Black experience in the United States. He attended the
University of Miami, home of the Ibis, blow Hurricane, blow.
Mr. Owens, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF BURGESS OWENS
Mr. Owens. Thank you so much for this opportunity.
I am going to take a different tack from beginning. We are
at this point, this is not about Black and White, rich or poor,
blue collar, White collar. We are fighting for the heart and
soul of our Nation. We have a very, very special country that
started with Judeo-Christian values that allowed every single
generation become better than the last. And that has not ended.
It has not stopped until now. We are telling our kids a little
bit something different, that they don't have the opportunities
that we had.
I want to talk about some ideologies. When I talk about
them, I am not taking about people. People change. I used to be
a Democrat until I did my history and found out the misery that
that party brought to my race. So I talk with the ideologies,
ideologies don't change; people do. We are fighting for the
heart and soul of our Nation against socialism and Marxism and
the evil that it has brought to us and the stealing of our
history. Karl Marx said it best, the father of socialism, an
atheist, anti-Semite and a blatant racist, yet we teach his
philosophy in our school systems today. He said the first
battleground is the rewriting of our history. You steal our
history, you steal our pride in our past, appreciation for our
present and a vision for our future. And every single urban
city in our country is now experiencing that loss.
Real quick history because these are things we are not
taught. I am blessed to be a great-great-grandfather of Silas
Burgess. He came here in the belly of a slave ship, sold in
Charleston, South Carolina, with his mother to the Burgess
plantation, an evil, evil man that drove my great-great-great
grandmother either into leaving her family, her kids, or
committing suicide. I don't know. She disappeared. But Silas at
the age of 8 was blessed to be surrounded by men who believed
in freedom, even though they were shackled, they escaped. They
went the southern route of the underground railroad,
facilitated by White and Mexican Americans. And made his way
south to Texas, end up being a successful entrepreneur, owned
102 acres of land paid off in 2 years. Started the first Black
church, the first Black elementary school, pillar of his
community, 18 kids, Christian, Republican. His first son was
Alpha Omega, proud American, an example of what happens when
any race, any culture is given hope, opportunity, and freedom.
It didn't end there, by the way. The history of our Black
country, of our Black America has been stolen from us for
decades, almost over a century. Booker T. Washington 1882,
began Tuskegee University. By 1905 it was producing more self-
made Black millionaires than Harvard, Yale, and Princeton
combined. The '40s, '50s, and '60s, it was a Black community
that led our country in the growth of the middle class, led our
country in terms of the men committed to marriage--over 70
percent; now it is 30 percent--led our country in terms of
community business ownership 40 percent; now it is 3.8 percent.
Men matriculating college. We now have more--a higher
percentage of men incarcerated than in college.
By the way, my degree is biology. I learned a long time ago
that slavery is not a gene in the DNA helix. It is our actions.
It is our attitude. It is our belief. I do not believe in
reparations because what reparations does, it points to a
certain race, a certain color, and it points to them as evil
and points the other race, my race, as one that--it not only
becomes racist, but they are also beggars.
I do believe in restitution. Let's point to the party that
was part of slavery, KKK, Jim Crow, that has killed over 40
percent of our Black babies, 20 million of them. The State of
California, 75 percent of our Black boys cannot pass standard
reading and writing tests, a Democratic State. So yes let's
play restoration--let's play restitution. How about a
Democratic Party pay for all the misery brought to my race, and
those who, after we learn our history, decide to stay there,
they should pay also; they are complicit. And every White
American, Republican or Democrat, that feels guilty because of
your White skin, you should need to pony up also. That way we
can get past this reparations and realize that this country has
given us greatness. Look at this panel. It doesn't matter how
we think. It doesn't matter our color. We have become
successful in this country like no other because of this great
opportunity to live the American Dream. Let's not steal that
from our kids by telling them they can't do it.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Owens follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Our next witness will be the Right Reverend
Eugene Taylor Sutton. He is Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of
Maryland, a position held since 2008, previously served as
canon pastor of the Washington National Cathedral and director
of the Cathedral Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage. Bishop
Sutton has been a leader of retreats and conferences on
nonviolence, reconciliation in the environment, and has taught
at New Brunswick at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. He
is a graduate of Hope College. He earned his master of divinity
degree at Western Theological Seminary, completed his Anglican
studies at the University of the South School of Theology.
Reverend Sutton, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF THE RIGHT REVEREND EUGENE TAYLOR SUTTON
Rev. Sutton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am here today as a bishop of the Episcopal Church,
representing for many a perspective of the faith community in
favor of the proposed legislation on reparations.
I might say right at the outset the debate we are having
here this morning and the witness of my colleagues here points
to the need to establish a commission. This debate needs to
happen. And we need to entertain proposals for how we redress
the evils of our past. If we don't address those problems in an
open and fair way, then we are continuing to be lost as a
Nation.
By the way, in terms of politics, some of my friends are
for Democrats; some of my friends are for Republicans. And as a
religious leader, I am for my friends.
I want to say that, last month, the Episcopal Diocese of
Maryland that I lead, 110 congregations across most of the
State of Maryland, voted unanimously for the affirmation of
reparations of our diocese, knowing that so many of the
resources of our diocese was gained from uncompensated labor of
enslaved persons. One hundred percent, not a single negative
vote from a diocese that is over 90 percent White, encompassing
people from western Maryland, who have their own history of
injustices, coal miners and others, southern Maryland, suburbs,
and city people. How and why did that happen? If it could
happen in that diocese, I am convinced it can happen in
America.
It happened because when the subject with the issue of
reparations are fairly and fully explained, Americans want to
do the right thing. That issue of reparations is mired in
emotion. It is often mischaracterized and certainly largely
misunderstood. It wells up an emotional response in people to
the word, but when you break it down on what it is actually to
do, we find that many of those emotions dissipate.
Why is there a need for it? Let me tell you a story of a
friend of mine. She and her husband--she was a pastor of a
congregation. A long time ago, she told this story of, when
their child was young, there was a young girl, a young teenager
in the congregation who knew they had a need for babysitting,
and she said, ``I will sit for your son tonight.'' And then she
volunteered again. And then my friend and her husband started
calling on her more and more, ``Would you do this? Would you do
this?'' Never was the issue of money brought up. They knew she
volunteered at first, but she the teenager wanted to do this
for that more powerful person in that church. That went on for
years.
After a while, my friend and her husband thought this was
unfair; this actually was an injustice toward her. They wrote
her a letter then now in college, and they said, ``We believe,
we have come to know that we--that this was an injustice. We
are sorry. We want to make amends.'' The young woman wrote
back, ``Thank you.'' And then they worked out a way that she
could be compensated for her years of work. Their relationship
was reconciled. They could look each other in the eye in a way
that they could not before because that wall of injustice of
that past got in the way of their current relationship. That is
what reparations is. And that is what our Nation has failed to
do for the last 120 years.
Reparations quite simply means to repair that which has
been broken. It is not just about monetary compensation. An act
of reparation is an attempt to make whole again, to restore, to
over atonement, to make an amends, to reconcile for a wrong or
an injury. It is not the transfer of money from White people to
Black people. It is what this generation, our generation, will
do to repair the broken pieces of the racial mess that we have
all inherited.
As an African American who is a descendant of slaves who
were never compensated, I can honestly say to all White people:
We have forgiven you. We forgave this country a long time ago,
and we continue to forgive every day, but we are not
reconciled. To reconcile means to put back together again that
which has been broken.
After the hard-fought abolition of slavery, there was a
fateful denial in our Nation of reparations for freed African
American people. Even though, in many instances, White
plantation owners received reparations in the form of
compensation for the losses they incurred from the Civil War
and the end of slavery. This Nation is not--we know about
reparations. It is just that it has never been done for those
who deserved it the most.
Finally, I am a Christian. That means I hold to the Holy
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as my guideposts and
to the teachings of Jesus. The Bible mandates that leaders are
to be held accountable for the fair and equal treatment of
every inhabitant in the land. All of us have been taught to
love everyone, regardless of their race and human condition.
However, we must come to acknowledge that there can be no love
without justice, and there can no justice without some form of
repairing an injustice.
I hear from many of my White friends, White brothers and
sisters, this question: What do Black people want? Haven't we
done enough? What do they want? I want to turn the question
around. What do you want? What kind of America do you want to
live in? If you are happy with the state of race relations now,
don't do anything on this issue. But if you want a reconciled
nation, let's get this commission and let's entertain those
proposals.
[The statement of Rev. Sutton follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Thank you very much, Reverend.
Before I recognize our next witness, I want to recognize a
Member of Congress who is here, Representative Fredericka
Wilson from Florida. And we appreciate your attendance.
Our next witness is Dr. Julian Malveaux. Dr. Malveaux is a
labor economist, noted author and frequent media commentator.
She wrote a weekly column for more than a decade that appeared
in newspapers across the country, including the LA Times, the
Charlotte Observer, The New Orleans Tribune, the Detroit Free
Press, and The San Francisco Examiner, hosted television and
radio programs, and appeared widely as a commentator on
networks, including CNN, BET, PBS, NBC, ABC, FOX News, MSNBC,
CNBC, C-SPAN, our favorite station, and others. She also serve
as a 15th president of Bennett College for Women, America's
oldest Historically Black Women's College, received her Ph.D.
in economics from MIT, and her bachelor's and master's degrees
from Boston College. Thank you for coming, and you are
recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JULIANNE MALVEAUX
Ms. Malveaux. Chairman Cohen, thank you so very much for
this opportunity. I also want to thank my sister friend,
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, and my twin sister over
there, Congresswoman Karen Bass--people frequently comment on
our resemblance--and, of course, Congressman Nadler for your
work and your leadership, and Dr. Ron Daniels, who was here it
has been mentioned his leadership of NAARC, the National
African American Reparations Commission, on which I serve.
I am delighted to be here because this hearing is not on
time; it is like overtime. It is more than time for us to deal
with the injustices that African American people, not only have
experienced in history, but continue to experience. I am an
economist. So economics is a study of who gets what, when,
where, and why? It is a study of the way the factors of
production are paid, the elements, our land, labor, capital,
and the secret sauce: Some people call it entrepreneurial
ability; some call it creativity. Land gets rent. Labor gets
wages. Capital gets interest. And the secret sauce gets
profits. But the work of predatory capitalism is to figure out
how to extract more from the factors of production toward
capital and away from people. And we have seen that in the past
three decades with our own economy, but more importantly,
enslavement was about the Devil's work of predatory capitalism.
Indeed, enslaved people got no wages, and we represented
capital for other people. And so after enslavement--first of
all, enslavement was the foundation on which our country was
built. So anybody who says, ``Well, I didn't have any slaves,''
no, you didn't have to have any. What you had to do was
experience them, enjoy the fact that they were here, enjoy the
fact that their labor made it possible for there to be a Wall
Street, a bond market, and all of that.
But, beyond that, I want to speak specifically to section
3(b)3 of the legislation. That is the part that talks about the
Federal and State laws that discriminate against formerly
enslaved Africans and the descendants who are deemed United
States citizens. From Robert Higgs, in a book called
``Computation and Coercion: Blacks and the American Economy,
1865 to 1914,'' he shows that, in 1880, the ratio of Black to
White was 1 Black dollar for 36 White dollars; 1890, 1 to 26;
1900, 1 to 23; 1910, 1 to 16; today 1 to 20. In other words, we
are almost worse off in 2019 than we were in 1910 because of
evil because basically there have been deliberate attempts to
marginalize African American people, especially those who were
formerly enslaved, because of the interest of predatory
capitalism and because it is expedient to maintain the status
quo of having free Black labor and to prevent wealth
accumulation.
Despite the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments Black people
were treated as other and perniciously and viciously excluded
from the possibilities of economic advancement. The Emergency
Land Fund documented the reduction of Black land ownership
between 1910 and 1969 from 60 million acres to 6 million acres.
How and why? Land grabs, tax schemes, faulty deeds, and
downright force. My own family in Moss Point, Mississippi,
experiencing expropriation of land through a moving fence, like
the fence moved one night. We used to have land, and we didn't
have the land. Years later, after a couple of cousins were
lynched, they changed the name of the land to Hawkins Lane. So
they named it after us, but we didn't get it back. Joseph
Brooks in 1978 estimated that Black folks were losing 6,000
acres of land per week, and we saw what happened with the
Agricultural Department.
The post-enslavement case for reparations can be made by
examining racially hostile policy and government complicity to
white supremacy. You all have an article that I wrote for the
ACLU that talks about several cases, Memphis; Wilmington, North
Carolina; Tulsa, Oklahoma. But these were the tip of the
iceberg. The this happened everywhere. The journalists Ida B.
Wells said that lynching was the first example of white
supremacy because it was a tool of terrorism. It dampened the
ability of African American people to participate in the
vibrant entrepreneurship of the late 19th and early 20th
century with a chilling message that our economic success could
be punished by the rope.
The economic damage to Black people post-Reconstruction can
be summarized in three ways: Number one, we were denied the
ability to participate in our Nation's economic growth. The
Homestead Act of 1862 did not include formerly enslaved people.
More than 10 percent of the continental U.S. land was
distributed to recent immigrants from Europe, but not Black
folks. So the 40 acres and a mule was given to somebody else,
not us. These folks were able, not only to get land, but then
to get grants from the Federal Government to develop their
land. Meanwhile, African American people were denied the right
to these wealth transfers.
Secondly, we were denied the right to accumulate. The
attacks of the paper that I mentioned talks about how our
accumulation was essentially stymied by lynching. The first
lynching that Ida B. Wells examined was one when a Black man
had the nerve, the utter nerve, to open up a grocery store near
a White man's store. So the White man had the brother lynched,
had three people lynched because of economic envy. Listen to
those words: economic envy. This is how Black people have been
suppressed in their ability to accumulate.
Tulsa, Oklahoma; Wilmington, North Carolina, long stories
that I don't have any time to talk about. I want you all to
look at the paper I submit and to think about the many ways
that Black people who tried to participate, tried to encourage,
tried to be American, simply tried to be economic actors, was
suppressed because they have the nerve to think it worked. So,
my brothers over here who say their American Dream, it is some
people's American nightmare, let's just be clear.
Number three, public policy hostility, the public policy
hostility to Black people: GI Bill, legislation, truncated
opportunities for African American veterans, Federal Housing
Administration, reinforced redlining and segregation as an
official policy of the Federal Government. People talk about
racists as if they are individuals. Yes, sir, but the fact they
are not individuals; they are individuals who are buttressed by
the Federal Government and legislation.
So let me simply say H.R. 40 is important, NAARC has
developed a 10 point plan, but more importantly, as you, my
brothers and sisters on this Congress, go forward, may there be
a racial justice audit of any new legislation that has economic
implications. Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Malveaux follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Our final witness is Professor Eric Miller,
professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. He has
held a number of law teaching positions since 2003, where he
has written a number of academic pieces on reparations, among
other topics. He testified in December of 2007 before this
subcommittee on the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade in
America. Professor Miller received his bachelor of law with
first class honors from the University of Edinburgh in U.K.,
and his master of law degree is from Harvard Law School, and he
has held a number of fellowships.
Professor Miller, welcome back. You are recognized for 5
minutes.
STATEMENT OF ERIC J. MILLER
Mr. Miller. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am
honored by the committee's invitation to testify at this very
important hearing on H.R. 40 and the path to restorative
justice.
I will speak to my experience as an academic studying the
issue of reparations and as a lawyer representing the victims
of the Tulsa massacre of 1921 in a reparations lawsuit against
the State of Oklahoma and the city of Tulsa. In the short time
available, I want to make the following points: Local, State,
and Federal governments were active perpetrators of race-
targeted discrimination against and domination of African
Americans during slavery and Jim Crow and beyond. These
governmental institutions engaged in the massive social,
political, economic, and cultural destruction of African
American communities. Many of the perpetrators and victims of
race-targeted state action are readily identifiable through a
thorough investigation of existing historical records currently
in the hands of public and private institutions.
The race-based disparities brought about by Federal, State,
and local government discrimination remain baked into our
governmental institutions, as well as the persistently
segregated private social ordering those institutions brought
about.
Reparations addresses the ways in which these institutions
entrance race-based discrimination and domination throughout
American social, cultural, economic, and political
institutions. The committee should consider specific legal
remedies to remove the time-limited bars against litigation,
which is among the major impediments preventing identifiable
victims of extraordinary race-targeted state action to sue
State and Federal Governments for financial damages.
There have been multiple reparation-style lawsuits brought
since the Supreme Court decided City of Richmond v. Croson
which have survived constitutional challenge. But reparations
must also include rebuilding the social, political, economic,
and cultural infrastructure of the communities destroyed by the
state because, without cultural and political reparations,
race-neutral programs of economic uplift will preserve the
relative social and political disadvantage, domination, and
disempowerment of African Americans across this Nation.
The urgent need for the H.R. 40 commission on reparations
as a path to restorative justice for the victims of state-
sponsored racial injustice became clear to me in 2003. That is
when I joined the Reparations Coordinating Committee, a group
of lawyers led by Charles Ogletree and Adjoa Aiyetoro. Our
legal team filed suit representing more than 125 still living
survivors of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, race massacre of 1921.
Now some historical context is in order here. On May 30th,
1921, some African Americans mobilized to stop lynching in
Tulsa, Oklahoma. One lynching had an effect on a whole
community because, in response, White citizens deputized by the
police and aided by the State National Guard burned down the 35
city blocks of Greenwood, a thriving African American
residential and business district in Tulsa. Up to 300 African
Americans died in the massacre in the ensuing fire. Overnight,
5,000 African Americans became homeless; 3,000 terrorized
people fled the city. The rest were rounded up and held under
guard for days at the local baseball park and fairground. The
Red Cross had to mobilize to provide tents for those who
remained. The city of Tulsa and the State of Oklahoma moved
quickly to suppress news of a massacre. Survivors were
terrorized into silence. All mention of it was excised from
official accounts of Oklahoma history. The details of the
massacre only became public in 2003 after the State of Oklahoma
formed an H.R. 40 style commission, including historians,
lawyers, and activists, to report on the massacre. The
commission's painstaking research through the historical record
discovered much previously unavailable material. The commission
apportioned detailed financial damages and proposed that
reparations be paid to survivors and descendants.
When the State refused to make good on these
recommendations, we filed a lawsuit trying to complete the
process begun by the commission. The only impediment to our
success, the court acknowledged, was a rule requiring the
survivors to file any lawsuit within 2 years of injury. These
statutes of limitations are the major impediment to many
reparations lawsuits.
The Tulsa experience demonstrates the harms of slavery and
segregation scar our communities to this day. The city and
State dismantled economically, politically, and culturally a
specific community: African Americans in Tulsa. Subsequent
generations of Greenwood residents have labored under the
social and disempowerment whilst trying to rebuild their
community. The Tulsa experience is emblematic of many African
American communities around this country. So whilst a monetary
payment would count as a beginning, economic justice is not
enough without racial justice to repair the specific race-based
wrongs of the Tulsa massacre and its aftermath.
To quote Harvard law professor and reparations activist
Charles Ogletree, ``reparations are more than an exercise in
education, remembrance, and apology; reparations demand the
political, social and economic power and equality for African
Americans that has been stifled and suppressed in America since
its inception.''
Accordingly, I urge Congress to pass H.R. 40 as a first
vital step on the path to acknowledging and accounting for the
history of race-targeted discrimination and wrongdoing that has
marked too much of this Nation's history.
[The statement of Mr. Miller follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Professor Miller.
We will now proceed under the 5-minute rule of questions.
And I will begin now by recognizing myself for 5 minutes.
Mr. Ta-Nehisi Coates, in your article, ``The Case for
Reparations,'' you state: 250 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim
Crow, 60 years of separate but equal, 35 years of racist
housing policies. Until we reckon with our compounding moral
debts, America will never be whole.
Why should the Federal Government bear responsibility for
economic and social damages to the descendants of the enslaved?
Mr. Coates. I thank you, Chairman Cohen. I think the most
obvious reasoning is because the Federal Government is
complicit in it. The article that you spoke about--this period
of white supremacy that you referenced in the headline, it is
so broad that, if I tried to cover it in one article, it would
have been impossible. So I focused on a very specific thing,
and that is the period of Jim Crow and housing segregation and
redlining, specifically in the city of Chicago.
The Federal Government should pay because the Federal
Government was deeply complicit in housing segregation and
redlining and in the plunder of Black homeowners in Chicago. It
would not have existed if the FHA had not had a policy of not
ensuring loans for Black people living in Chicago. It would not
have existed if not for the redlining maps which were written
and created by this government of every major city in the
country, which effectively relegated Black people, whether they
had a down payment or not, outside of a class of people who
could benefit from a movement which basically created our
modern middle class. And so I don't know how it would be
possible to exempt the Federal Government from such a process.
And, furthermore, I just have to make this point over and
over: Many of the people who were victimized by housing
segregation and by redlining are very much alive today. So this
is not strictly about the past. This is identifiable victims,
as Dr. Miller--as Professor Miller--said, who were there and
who are ready to be part of the process.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, sir.
Reverend Sutton, let me ask you, you heard Mr. Hughes'
testimony and said he didn't want reparations. Do you believe--
and this would be a study of reparations--H.R. 40 draws no
conclusions; it would be a study--do you believe that there
should be exclusions for wealthy folks who have been successful
and maybe emphasize deeds and works and actions that help the
people who have not achieved as much and lift them up?
Rev. Sutton. I believe that one of the reasons why it was
so widely accepted in my--I believe one of the reasons why the
vote for reparations was so widely accepted in my diocese is
because we separated it from Black descendants of slaves
getting checks. We are talking about funding initiatives,
programs, addressing issues, such as mass incarceration. And
when that is explained to people that that is a reparation,
that is repairing something that can be traced to slavery, then
that is the case.
Personally, I am not looking for a check from the Federal
Government or from my church or anything. I am concerned about
those who have been left behind, the masses of African American
descendants of slaves who are mired in hopelessness and despair
in communities of crime, violence, poverty, and racism.
And so I think if we can at least have a civil good
conversation on the concept of reparations, then talk about
money because the moment you start talking about money, the
idea, especially among many White persons--``I am going to give
a check to Black persons? What about me?''--the moment you
begin with money, then the resistance goes up. Let's talk about
the concept.
Finally, in relation to your question, we have a problem in
this Nation of being able to talk civilly about race. And when
I am talking for reparations, I am talking about those who are
left behind, but I am actually talking to my White brothers and
sisters. You need this more than we do. You need this for your
soul. You need this to be able to look Black persons in the eye
and say, ``I acknowledge the mistake, and I want to be part of
the solution to repair that damage.''
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Reverend Sutton.
As Reverend Sutton speaks to the soul, Dr. Malveaux, you
speak to the economics. And if some of this efforts to
remediate the past, as Dr. Ogletree has spoken about, a massive
influx of moneys for health, education, and job training, if
some of that went into areas where there are large
concentrations of descendants of slaves who have not succeeded
for a myriad of reasons and if some of that went to White folks
who were there who also are living in bad conditions, would
that be a problem do you think, Dr. Malveaux, or would that
just be helping everybody that is in a miasma?
Ms. Malveaux. Chairman Cohen, it is really interesting that
right this minute, as we are having this hearing, Reverend
William Barber is having a hearing on poverty. So this is a
great day for economic justice issues. Poverty is a problem in
our Nation. But you can't fix poverty nor can you fix
inequality unless you deal with racism. And dealing with racism
is about dealing with reparations. I am with the Reverend
here--I don't care about a personal check made out to Julianne
Malveaux or anybody else. How about we fully fund our
Historically Black Colleges and Universities? How about--once
upon a time, Brother Chairman, we had more than 100 Black-owned
banks; now we have 23. How come? Again, the Devil is busy.
Pernicious legislation that basically caused people to lose
banks, changing in reserve requirements, and things like that,
gentrification. While you have empty swaths of land all over
other Nation, why not deal with that?
So I respect your question about areas, but I think that
really does speak to our dis-ease, our uneasiness in talking
straight up, upfront about race. Race is our Nation's second
original sin. The first was what we did to Native people.
Racism enslavement was our original sin, and we have got to
deal with reparations by dealing exactly with that. If we want
to have an American Marshall Plan that deals with all poor
people--Reverend Barber says there are 140 million poor people,
43 percent of our Nation--let's deal with that. But let's not
forget that race is central to anything we do around economic
justice.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Doctor.
My time has expired. And I recognize the ranking member Mr.
Johnson for 5 minutes.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, again, thank you to all of you for your time and your
heartfelt sentiments. And we know they are sincere.
Mr. Hughes, I want to thank you for your honesty and your
humility and your courage, sir. I know this isn't easy today.
Here is a big question that hangs over all of this and that
all of us need to I guess address. Look, many people believe,
on all sides of the political spectrum, that racial inequality
that we see today is not entirely attributable to the legacy of
slavery and Jim Crow. It is a factor, but it is not entirely
attributable. Can you elaborate on what some of the other
causative factors may be?
Mr. Hughes. Well, the first thing I would say is that
blaming slavery and Jim Crow for the entirety of racial
disparity--obviously, it is clearly a factor--but blaming it
for the entirety of the problems we see today facing Black
people is actually a way of not taking responsibility for
policy decisions that were made just in the last 50 years. Our
prisons did not balloon until the 1980s. Unemployment for Black
and White youths were virtually identical until the late 1950s,
the early 1960s. So, perversely, by blaming slavery and Jim
Crow for everything, we actually fail to take responsibility
for policy decisions that were made on both sides of the aisle
in very recent history.
Secondly, I would say that there is a naive assumption
that, wherever there is a statistical gap in outcomes between
two groups, that that gap must be attributable to some kind of
discrimination, whether that is overt or whether that is
structural in systemic. That assumption is not true. Okay.
Just, I will give one example, but I could give dozens.
According to 2015 Census figures, there is a 21 cents on the
dollar gap, 21 cents on the dollar gap in household income
between White Americans of Russian descent and White Americans
of French descent. Right? Disparity is the norm, not the
exception.
So the question is not why two groups would have different
outcomes, whether it is for wealth, income, or incarceration.
The question is why we would expect any two groups with
different histories, different geographical patterns, different
patterns of migration, different cultures to nevertheless get
exactly the same outcomes.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you for that.
Mr. Owens, thank you as well. And I was moved by your
testimony about the fact that we are fighting for the heart of
our Nation. I think everybody in this room as part of the
American family understands that we see it different ways.
Here is a question, in your opinion, is there a formula
that allowed the African American community to achieve the
measures of success during the '40, '50s, and '60s that is
missing today?
Mr. Owens. There is. And I am going to point to Booker T.
Washington to tell you what that formula is.
First, I want to set up a few things, square a few things
away. I had been talking about restitution a little bit ago,
and I have so much respect for the Black men and women who
built that great Wall Street out of Tulsa. Not only did they
have--they had 60 millionaires. They had international
business. Within 12 hours, it was destroyed by air by
Democratic KKK. A lot of White--they were White people, yes,
but they were part of a certain party. Forty acres and a mule,
that was actually implemented. But when the Democratic
President Andrew Johnson took over, they took that land back.
They took away their guns, and then they took away their land.
KKK, inside of the Democratic Party by the way, they
lynched 4,700 people; 1,500 of them were White Republicans. So,
yes, we have a lot of evil going on, but let's not broadbrush
this guys. There is a certain ideology that certain people that
belong to a certain area, a certain niche, we need to hold them
accountable. And so let's do that, and I think we are in good
shape.
Booker T. Washington had four foundations: It was head,
heart, hands, and home. In that process, head is education;
heart is compassion and service; hands are industry
entrepreneurship; home is family. The reason why my race were
kicking butt--the history is not being told--they were
beating--they were so busy, they weren't looking at finding
somebody to blame for where they were. They were busy beating
out these racists. That is what my parents did. At the end of
the day, they held on to those principles for decades until the
socialists and Marxists got into our community and they stopped
educating our kids.
I said something earlier, and there has not been aghast--75
percent--2017, the Department of Education study, 75 percent of
Black boys in the State of California cannot pass reading and
writing tests. And you wonder where they are going to go from
here? They are not going to learn anything about our country.
They are not going to read about our God. They are not going to
hear anything about what we the people have done together. They
are going to turn on BET and hear how bad they have been
treated. They are going to hear how bad our country is, how bad
White people are. They are going to be taught how to disrespect
our women, and they are going to be put in jail. And then we
are going to sit around and talk about why is this being done.
Let's put a commission together: Why is this happening with
so many of our kids not being educated in every single urban
American city in our country? That is what our problem is.
As we ho-hum and we blame people from years ago, we have
yet to put together a commission. How about this one: 82
percent of Black teen males across our country in the last 8
years, unemployed, soon becoming unemployable; 92 percent in
our liberal city of Chicago, where we are killing each other
right and left, and there is not one commission, not one peep
about this misery that is going on in our country.
I have something I put in my book. I am going to read this
real quickly: Evil is the person who is stealing the hopes and
dreams and future of an individual. Pure evil is the target of
a race of millions and using human misery as political strategy
to steal their hopes, dreams, and future.
We are dealing with pure evil, to have my race dealing with
the evil, the misery that we have been dealing with, and no one
says a word, other than: Let's look back and see what has
happened for 200 years ago.
Let's deal with today, and I think we will be in good
shape.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you for that.
I am out of time. I yield back.
Mr. Raskin [presiding]. The gentleman's time has expired.
Thank you very much.
The chairman of the Judiciary Committee is recognized for 5
minutes.
Chairman Nadler. I thank you. I am going to ask one
question and then yield to the gentlelady from California, Ms.
Bass.
Mr. Coates, Senate Majority Leader Mitchell McConnell on
Tuesday said that he does not support reparations for
descendants of slaves saying, quote: I don't think reparations
for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us
currently living are responsible is a good idea. We have tried
to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a Civil
War, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We elected
an African American President.
There is an unconscionable denial and lack of knowledge in
this Nation about the true nature of facts and current
consequences of the transatlantic slave trade and the
enslavement of African American people upon which American
democracy, prosperity, and White privilege are founded.
Mr. Coates, based on your monumental essay in The Atlantic
Magazine, ``The Case for Black Reparations,'' can you please
describe briefly some of the continuing impacts and vestiges of
the enslavement era on living African Americans today?
Mr. Coates. First of all, one of the things I tried to make
clear in my testimony is that we perceive the era of
enslavement, the era of Jim Crow, and in fact, I would actually
even add the era of mass incarceration as separate things that
are somehow not tied to each other.
The greatest damage that enslavement did, besides the
economic damage, besides the normalization of torture, of rape,
besides the normalization of treating people as though they are
things, is the institution in the American mind that Black
people are necessarily inferior.
In 1865, when Black people were emancipated, that belief
did not magically dissipate. It proceeded for 100 years
afterwards. It proceeded, as I said in my testimony, well into
the lifetime of many panel members, Chairman--sorry, Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell, and many of the people in this
audience. So it is not a matter of the past. These things are
linked. It has been said, I think, or alluded to repeatedly
throughout this conversation that somehow wealthy African
Americans are immune to these effects. But in addition to the
wealth gap that is cited, one thing that folks should keep in
mind is that quote/unquote ``wealthy African Americans'' are
not the equivalent of quote/unquote ``White Americans'' in this
country. The average African American family in this country
making $100,000, you know, decent money actually lives in the
same kind of neighborhood that the average White family making
$35,000 a year lives in. That is totally tied to the legacy of
enslavement and Jim Crow and the input and the idea in the mind
that White people and Black people are somehow deserving of
different things.
If I injure you, the injury persists even after I actually
commit the act. If I stabbed you, you may suffer complications
long after that initial actual stabbing. If I shoot you, you
may suffer complications long after that initial shooting. That
is the case with African Americans. There are people well
within the living memory of this country that are still
suffering from the after-effects of that.
Chairman Nadler. Thank you very much.
I yield to the gentlelady from California, Ms. Bass.
Ms. Bass. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and all of the
witnesses that are here today and Representative Jackson Lee,
for doing this legislation.
And, you know, this is just such an important moment in our
history. But I just wanted to spend a couple of minutes talking
about how we have viewed this issue and why we are even having
this hearing today. It is so important because I believe that,
in this country, we have never been able to come to grips with
our history. We either don't know our history, or we deny it.
When we talk about the 250 years of enslavement, we call it a
sin. We call it a mistake. We say that it was a subset of
Americans, not the entire Nation. We say it was inconsistent
with the values of our Nation's founding, that it was something
it that happened long ago, and why can't we get past it? Why
can't we move on? Why do you keep bringing it up? Slavery might
have ended in the mid-1800s, but apartheid and terrorism lasted
for 100 years after that. We passed a bill on lynching last
week. Why did we even have to do that? There was a man that was
executed 2 weeks ago for a lynching that took place in Texas.
There are many murders that have happened that people are still
wondering whether or not they were lynching. We have to say
that, in our country, we pride ourselves with our development,
but we refuse to acknowledge that the reason we have the
development that we do is because the first 200 years of our
history was done with free labor. The South enslaved African
Americans, but the North's economy flourished by that. And I
believe that our economist explained in detail of that.
So our fundamental problem is our ignorance of history or
our refusal to admit it. Everyone understands the pain caused
by people who deny the Holocaust. Deep pain is caused by this,
and deep pain is caused by our country that cannot acknowledge
what has happened here.
I want to say that it should be obvious, but the entire
Congressional Black Caucus supports this legislation. We have
problems denying--we think that racism sometimes it is
trivialized as behavior, as ideas, and that we are all equally
racist because we refuse to accept the fact that racism is
ingrained in our institutions. We say that there must have been
something that 12 year old did to have gotten shot. We say that
there must have been a reason that that police officer pulled
that gun on that pregnant woman last week with her two babies.
We don't see the connection between this because we refuse to
admit it.
H.R. 40 calls for the establishment of a commission. It
does not call for checks. We trivialize reparations by saying
that these are just African Americans that want to be paid. I
think Mr. Coates goes into details about reparations meaning
much more than that.
And then, frankly, when I hear from my colleagues on the
other side of the aisle that we need to be encouraged to work
harder, to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, that we can
actually achieve, that that is the only thing that is the
problem, and then to talk about the Democratic Party, I think
maybe people don't remember who Fannie Lou Hamer was? Black
folks fought the Democratic Party. Nobody acts as though the
Democratic Party was not a racist party until there was a
movement that fought for justice.
I am glad that we are having this hearing today. I thank my
colleagues for doing it. I look forward to this legislation
moving to the floor. And, once again, I just want to emphasize,
at what point, can we in this country have a conversation about
race? We will never get past it until we can have the
conversation, and the conversation begins with the commission.
Thank you.
Mr. Cohen [presiding]. Thank you, Congressman Bass. And I
would now like to recognize----
Mr. Glover. Excuse me, let me have a word, please. Because
I wear several hats and certainly most people consider me the
one hat and know me from the hat I wear as an artist and an
activist and an artist. But I worked for the city government
for 6 and a half years in 1971 in the Model Cities Program in
San Francisco, California. I was at the mayor's office and
Joseph Alioto. For 6 and a half years, I worked both in the
Mission and in the African American community at that
particular point in time. And most of that was the realization
of what we were--the programs about the Great Society, the
programs that came about. And I have seen--I saw those programs
get eviscerated. Those programs in the sense designed to bring
great opportunities and great hope lasted only a short period
of time. So I certainly understand that because I have lived in
the same community my entire life in San Francisco. My mother,
a migrant, someone who met my father and came to San Francisco
after World War II. They became--they had descent jobs. They
worked for the post office in 1948. They were able to raise a
family on that income as well. They were able to eventually buy
a house in the same neighborhood that I live in right now.
Also, they were part of that generation who were the first
beneficiaries of the upcoming and ongoing civil rights
movement. I have watched that city and worked in that city. And
I am just talking about the city of San Francisco, this liberal
city that has this great tradition around labor and everything
else. We talk about Harry Bridges and what he did and
longshoremen and bringing African Americans into longshoremen.
And then I watched the evisceration of the cities and people's
lives because of crack cocaine and mass incarceration as well
right in my neighborhood, right in my family. So those are the
kind of long-term impacts that we don't realize that happened.
Those children who were the descendants, not only slaves but
descendants of the those, the generation who had the
opportunities after World War II, those children did not have
the same opportunities.
And now those children are abandoned as adults in that
city, in that great city.
So I think we have to kind of look at this, as people said
often, that this is just a study of look at racism and all of
its manifestation and can't--in terms of gentrification as
well. I was in the Fillmore area in 1966 going to Western
District Community Organization meetings, where people were
desperate to find different ways in which they were not being
removed from their communities. These are real issues that
happened. They are longstanding issues that go back and find
themselves resonating in slavery and going further--all the
material that we have, all the books that we have now, all the
studies that have been done has outlined that. We have to begin
to say--to tell ourselves the truth. James Baldwin, the great
writer, once said, if cannot tell ourselves the truth about the
past, we become trapped in it.
And that is what we are. We are trapped in it. This country
is trapped in the truth--not telling the truth. And we got to
find, we got to start--that is the leverage right there. Begin
to we talk about any of it. We talk about education, Bob Moses
has talked about math literacy is important. And most children,
particularly children of color, aren't prepared for math
literacy. We have to talk about education and preparing our
children for 21st century citizenship. And that is what it is.
And this is what this is talking about. If we raise the boat of
those people who have been most disadvantaged historically, we
raise--we create a better country here.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.
Ms. Malveaux. Chairman Cohen, may I----
Mr. Cohen. No. We can't. We are not going to get out of
order. I gave--no, ma'am. I gave Mr. Glover great respect. But
the panel and the way we operate is we go from member to
member, and they can ask questions. And if somebody--the next
person wants to ask you, they can ask you.
Representative Cline, you are recognized for your 5
minutes.
Mr. Cline. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the witnesses for being here.
Mr. Coates, I followed your career with interest.
Mr. Glover, I am a big fan.
And I want to thank the witnesses for their remarks.
Mr. Hughes, I wanted to ask if there was anything that was
said previously that you would like to respond to.
Mr. Hughes. Yeah, I would like to address myself to the
comments made on the subject of us not knowing our history, of
us not having told the truth about slavery and Jim Crow.
It strikes me that this is not exactly true. Mr. Glover
mentioned all of the studies and books that have been written
on the subject. I would argue, in fact, that in the 10,000 year
history of slavery on every continent, there is not a single
example of slavery that has been more studied than slavery in
America from the 17th century to the 19th century. So it is
actually not true that we have not told the truth, that we
don't know our history.
Moreover, in the past 50 years, if we are talking about
what scholars in America--in the American social sciences have
directed their attention towards, it is hard to find a subject
on which more books have been written that has been more
studied than racial inequality.
Thank you.
Mr. Cline. Thank you for that.
Mr. Owens, I followed your career with interest as well.
Can you speak to, specifically your career in the NFL--and
also, you spoke of your family--what was the greatest legacy or
lessons from your family that brought you to the opinions that
you hold now?
Mr. Owens. The greatest legacy from my dad who served in of
war, World War II, came home. Could not do his postgraduate
down in Texas because of Jim Crow laws. So he put out a lot of
letters. Ran across of a box when he passed away of hundreds of
rejection letters. He used that as motivation because he
eventually got to Ohio State where he got his Ph.D. and went on
to become a very successful entrepreneur, college professor,
researcher, and someone who was very proud of our race. He
reached back to his very last days to the young people giving
him hope that this country, they can succeed and if they really
wanted to. And if they pull themselves up by their bootstraps,
worked harder than the next guy--that is not a racist deal,
guys. That is the American way. We work harder than the next
guy.
The greatest legacy from him was my belief that I would do
everything I could to make sure he was proud that I held his
name. The greatest thing from my mom--from my dad is I never
ever even thought about disrespecting Mom.
We have come to a point where we allow our young men to
disrespect women. I think there is no consequences. We are not
going to develop men if we allow our boys to call our women
baby mamas and everything else in the book and not pull them
aside and tell them it is wrong.
It is about policies, guys. It is not about 200 years ago.
We have kids in the State of California that--there is against
anti-choice, by the way. These kids are stuck in these failing
schools because we have a party that is against them moving on
to someplace else. We have a Davis-Bacon Act, 1932, put in
place specifically to help to stop Blacks from competing
against White unions, still in place today. You wonder why we
have so high unemployment, why our business ownership has gone
from 40 percent down to 33.8 percent.
By the way, a higher minimum wage is not as good as it
sounds. It keeps our young people out of work. It keeps them--
they are too expensive to hire even to get started if you have
high minimum wage. Now, the unions benefit from that, by the
way.
And open borders hurts our race, period. Period. It is
commonsense. If you have non-Americans coming in while working
for lower wages, we get hurt first. We got to understand this.
And let's get this thing right, guys. It is about our people,
my race. We are just as good as anyone else out there given the
right opportunity and not told that we can't. But us raising
our kids and telling them that, because of their skin color,
they are already against every opportunities out there, it is
stealing their dreams. We can't afford to do that.
So my parents' generation, the Greatest Generation in the
history of mankind, told us to dream big and wipe out those
other guys that are working harder and showing them they are
wrong, and we did that.
Mr. Cline. Thank you for that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Raskin is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I am looking
for some points of----
Mr. Cohen. Excuse me, Mr. Raskin. I am sorry.
I saw Mrs. Lawrence here earlier, and then she disappeared,
and she is back. And I want to recognize the distinguished--I
am sorry. Mrs. Lawrence was here, and she is gone. She was
sitting there. And Mrs. Beatty is here now.
So, Mrs. Lawrence, thank you.
Representative Raskin, you are on.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Both sides seem to agree this is something that should have
been done long ago. I think I heard Mr. Hughes say that, and I
think, Mr. Coates, you said that. There was an effort after the
Civil War in Reconstruction organized around a field command I
think President Lincoln issued to redistribute 40 acres and a
mule, and it never happened. And it was interrupted. And then
we had a period of a decade of active national investment in
Reconstruction in the South that was undone by white supremacy.
And so we were never able to follow through on the political,
economic, and social promise of Reconstruction.
So, given this history and the distance between now and
slavery and then the continuing injuries of racism with Jim
Crow and with the sharecropper system and the criminalization
of the African American population after the Civil War, what--
Mr. Coates, let me ask you. What are the differences in
approach that have to be taken now given the distance of time
that has lapsed than if it had been done completely right after
the Civil War and Reconstruction had been allowed to run its
course for a period of several decades before the so-called
redemption took place?
Mr. Coates. Sure. If I could just address the notion of
slavery having been well-studied and understood.
I think my fellow panel member is quite correct that, at
this moment in history, it is certainly true that the system of
enslavement in America has probably been the most studied in
America. That is not particularly surprising given the
extensive and revolutionary and wide system of universities we
have in this country, which is also probably unprecedented and
also probably a new development also.
But I think, even given that, it is worth noting the lack
of penetration that those studies have had into the American
mindset. I don't know if it is still here, but relatively
recently, there was a statue garden here in the Capitol that I
believe had statues of General Lee and Alexander Stephens. And
one has to ask, if, in the Capitol, people understood the
history of this country, why there would be statues honoring
people who led a revolution or destroy it? One would have to
ask, if that history were well understood why, and for
instance, the State of Mississippi there still was a flag
flying dedicated to people who tried to destroy this country?
Why only a couple of years ago we saw the murder of Heather
Heyer, and that was precipitated by a movement to erect a new
group of statues and remove the statue of General Lee?
And so, while it has been well studied, I don't know that
Americans quite understand it. At this very point, you can get
at least a plurality of White Americans who will tell you that
the Civil War was about States' rights with no conversation
about States' rights to do what.
In terms of the differences in approach today, what I would
say is that is why we need H.R. 40. That is exactly what we are
here to discuss in the first place. I am very skeptical of the
notion that one person should stand up and speak for our 40
million African Americans, that one person should stand up and
speak for all the generations that came before me.
I think the proper thing to do is, A, for this body to
convene a committee and convene a discussion to study exactly
what the damage was and what potential remedy might be offered
and also to convene conversations around the country.
Just attendant to that, I also would like to say there has
been a lot of, shall we say, shade throwing on the notion of
cutting checks. I just want to say, you know, in the spirit of
openness, in the spirit of actual study, I don't think we
should necessarily rule out cutting checks. There are people
who deserve checks. And I think that actually should be part of
the study. We aren't ruling out any solution. I don't think we
should rule out that one either.
Mr. Raskin. Well, thank you for your emphasis on what H.R.
40 will do. It will set up a commission to study all of the
different dimensions and ramifications of reparations and what
it means, because I think one of the productive aspects of this
conversation has been that we have learned that it is not just
about cutting checks although it is not to the exclusion of
that. But it is about rethinking our relationship to this whole
history, which has been so injurious to so many of our people.
Let me focus on the question of the congressional role
because I am moved by the fact that it is Congress that is
taking this up seriously. As we said before, enslaved Americans
helped to build the Capitol where Congress meets. Enslaved
Americans helped to build the White House where the President
sleeps. And there was a slave market across the street where
the Supreme Court stands today. And, of course, that was the
Supreme Court that gave America the Dred Scott decision in
1857, and the Supreme Court that gave us Plessy v. Ferguson in
1896, and recently gave us Shelby County v. Holder and Shaw v.
Reno in the undoing of the modern civil rights movement, the
modern Reconstruction.
But my question here is, why is it that Congress should be
the one to act? You would think that we would rely on the
Supreme Court for justice in the country. But people are coming
to Congress to act. And, you know, perhaps, Reverend Sutton,
let me come to you about that. By the way--and I do have to
identify the fact that we have two great Marylanders here
today. One is Mr. Coates and one is Reverend Sutton, and we are
very proud of both you.
So, Reverend Sutton.
Rev. Sutton. First off, let me say that I am a bit dismayed
and appalled that my brother panelist here, when we are talking
about reparations goes to family and all--of course, we are all
hardworking, and, of course, we are for families. I just don't
want the impression to be that if those are for reparations
don't know about the role of family.
Mr. Raskin. While we are on that point, let me just ask
you----
Rev. Sutton. Okay. And why Congress. Because you are
leaders and legislation helped to get us into this mess,
legislation has a role. The church has a role. Our educational
systems have a role. And maybe even the Supreme Court and
hopefully the President.
But your role is to redress some of what your predecessors
did in this Congress. And so I think you are the only body that
can call for this commission that desperately needs to happen.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Reverend.
And thank you, Mr. Raskin.
I would now like to recognize Mr. Gohmert from Texas for 5
minutes.
Mr. Gohmert. Thank you. And I appreciate the witnesses
being here.
And, Mr. Glover, any time I see your name listed as being
in a movie, I normally say that is one I will enjoy and
appreciate your body of work throughout your career. You have
provided a great deal of enjoyment, even in the dramas, so
thank you for that.
I had a colleague mention an execution in Texas. And that
was--the incident arose down in Jasper where three White men
drug a Black man to death. Now, I have supported the death
penalty. I was a judge who was--assessed the death penalty. And
I wouldn't have a problem with a law that said, in a situation
like that, the victim's family can choose the manner and means
of carrying out the death penalty. But we don't have that law.
That case was also heralded as the poster case for needing
hate crime legislation when, actually, under the hate crime
legislation that was so heralded in the past, there is no death
penalty. The only way these guys got the death penalty finally
after 21 years--the most culpable guy finally was executed here
recently; he should have been. The death penalty I hear
constantly being referred to as being racist. I know, in my own
court, the statistics will show that I had three individuals
charged and tried for capital murder. Two were White; one was
Black. Based on the jury findings, I assessed the two White men
to be put to death, and the Black gentleman was sentenced to
life for his murder. The hate crime laws had nothing to do with
actually carrying out the executions in the appropriate case as
they were in Jasper.
I also heard a colleague talking about it is critical to
know our history. And I have some screenshots here from the
Democratic Party's history that says our history. And I ask
unanimous consent to submit that for the record.
And it is interesting--and also, this Wall Street Journal
article, ``The Democrats' Missing History.''
Mr. Cohen. Without objection, it will be entered.
MR. GOHMERT FOR THE OFFICIAL RECORD
=======================================================================
Mr. Gohmert for the record: https://www.wsj.com/articles/
SB121856786326834083.
Mr. Gohmert. I'd ask unanimous consent on both of those, so
thank you, Mr. Chair.
There is no reference in the history of the Democratic
Party platform supporting slavery. There were six of those from
1840 to 1860. No reference to Democratic Presidents who owned
slaves. There were seven from 1800, 1861. There is no reference
to the number of Democratic platforms that either supported
segregation outright or were silent on the subject. There were
20 from 1868 to 1948. No reference to Jim Crow laws nor is
there reference to the role the Democrats played in creating
them. These were the post-Civil War laws passed
enthusiastically by Democrats in that pesky 50-year part of the
DNC's missing years.
Also, there is no reference that three-fourths of the
opposition of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, what came in the House
from Democrats, or that 80 percent of the nay votes in the
Senate came from Democrats. There is certainly no reference to
the fact that the opposition included future Democratic Senate
Leader Robert Byrd from West Virginia; former Klan member of
Tennessee, Senator Al Gore, Sr., father of Vice President Al
Gore. And last but certainly not least, there is no reference
to the fact that Birmingham, Alabama, public safety
commissioner, Bull Connor, who infamously unleashed dogs and
firehoses on civil rights protesters was, in fact, a member of
both the Democratic National Committee and the Ku Klux Klan.
So it is important that we know our history and we not
punish people today for the sins of their predecessors in the
Democratic Party.
Voice. You lie.
Mr. Gohmert. I just stated all facts. And, again, we have
people who are denying history. That is not helpful to our
discussion.
But, Mr. Owens, I would ask you, understanding that today's
claim that the Republicans are the party of racism, what do you
think your great, great--your great-grandfather Silas would
have said to someone who claims the Republicans are the party
of racism?
Mr. Owens. Well, my great-great-grandfather lived through
that period, and he wouldn't have said that because, at that
time, all Blacks were Republicans because that was the party
that gave them freedom.
Mr. Gohmert. Let me just ask: Have you suffered for taking
these conservative positions?
Mr. Owens. Well, I guess what it comes down to is--I don't
think I have suffered at all. I am thankful for growing up in
an age where--I was the fourth--of the fourth Black American to
be given a scholarship at the University of Miami. I was one of
the first Blacks to integrate in the schools. So I understood
exactly what racism looked like and how it felt.
But my mom said one thing very--I remember specifically
that I was kind of going through this phase. She said,
``Burgie, make sure you don't let somebody else's problem
become yours.'' In other words, ``Burgess, don't let a racist
let you become one.''
The other thing is that my dad taught us very simply to be
a leader. If it was right, do it. If it is wrong, don't. I love
my country. I love my race. I love my family. And that becomes
all the other stuff of being accepted or liked. It makes no
difference to me.
We are at a very, very important point in our country today
where Black Americans are waking up. And I know that a lot
might not agree what I am saying. That is okay. Just listen.
And with time, let it simmer a little bit. Look around and see
where our misery is being done today. Our misery is in the
urban communities throughout our country where our kids have no
hope, no jobs, no family, no dad, and no one to tell them they
can make it.
If we understand that and we take responsibility that every
single generation has done in our past to make sure the next
generation feels better about their opportunities then less, we
are failing them big time if we don't change our narrative.
These kids can do it. We just have to believe in them, give
them opportunities, and tell them man up, woman up, it is okay
if things get wrong. Things go sideways for every person that
lives or God wouldn't be a fair God. When you go sideways,
stand up, man up, woman up, and let's get back on the track and
get after your dreams and get this thing done with.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Owens.
Mr. Gohmert. I appreciate----
Mr. Cohen. The time is up for Mr. Gohmert, and we are going
to move on and----
Mr. Gohmert. I thank all of you for being here today.
Mr. Cohen. First, I would like to recognize Congressman
Plaskett who is with us today.
I would also like to have another reminder to the crowd:
The next person that screams out may be asked to be removed. We
have got to have order. So keep it together.
Representative Swalwell, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you, Ms. Jackson Lee, for your leadership on this. I
am a proud cosponsor of H.R. 40.
And I have listened to some of my colleagues, Mr. Glover,
tell you how much they like your movies. And I have to say: We
didn't come here to talk about your movies. We came here to
talk about your activism. I like your activism. I also like
your movies. But I want to give you a chance because I haven't
heard the other side other than tell you--that they like your
movies, that they want to hear what you have to say on this
important issue.
The Senate majority leader has said that no one living is
responsible, and there is no way to compensate for this. And he
is suggesting that there is no way to pay for it.
And I guess I would ask you, Mr. Glover, would you agree
that if a Black college graduate is paying on average about
$10,000 more in student loan debt, we are paying for it? Would
you agree that if the Black population is disproportionately
incarcerated to any other population, that we are paying for
it? And would you believe and agree that if the healthcare
costs for a Black family are extraordinarily higher than for a
White family, that we are actually already paying for it?
Mr. Glover. Statistics would suggest that. But I think
there is such--a discussion that we seem to miss the point on
and often as we talk about the different issues that we deal
with in this country and their intersectionalism, their
interconnectedness, the issue, whether we are talking
historically or we talk about how those things manifest
themselves in our policy, what we do today in a sense.
And I think a part of what we don't do today is to evoke
the kind of spirit that was so essential in this country's
formation, in this country--in the moments--and when there were
radical changes in this country.
We often talk about the right for organized labor to
organize, the impact that they had on the African American
community and to begin at some point in the 20th century, past
the end of World War II, the benefits that were accrued at that
particular point. And those people who struggled for that,
whether it is Eugene Debs who struggled against--or whether it
is Emma Goldman or whether it is W.E.B. DuBois and all the list
of activists and men and women who brought about the kind of--
who raise the bar with respect to, I think, our sense of
revolutionary purpose in that sense.
And what I think, with the incredible wealth that this
country has and the resources this country has and the capacity
to do what it had once done, when I came into the world, there
were opportunities that were different than previous
generations. There were more schools that were built instead of
prisons. There were more opportunities that were--for
employment and new opportunities for employment.
Mr. Swalwell. So we are going backwards.
Mr. Glover. There was more infrastructure development. And
all those things played a role in our own ability, in our own--
my own enhancement, personally, and collectively as well.
And so I think when we talk about them--when I went to
college, certainly, I didn't have the debt responsibility that
students have now. And certainly there are ways in which we can
mediate that. Certainly, there have been arguments about
whether college should be free, whether we should build more
colleges, et cetera, et cetera, and provide different
opportunities.
But we also have the transformation of a society that was
an industrial society, industrial workforce, and now that
depends directly on different forms of intelligence and certain
technology. And that is a place where those who are most
vulnerable across the board have not been--they have not been--
how you say, they have not benefited from those new
technologies.
Mr. Swalwell. So----
Mr. Glover. And so what I am saying--so the picture that I
am painting is a much larger picture, you know, within the
dangers that we have, relative global warming and climate
change and all the other issues here now. We can say right now
the health condition of African Americans is pretty desperate
in places. They live in toxic situations. We can talk about
environmental racism that we haven't talked about, and maybe
that would be a part of H.R.--the study that we talk about
currently about H.R. 40.
So there are various things. So to begin to kind of like
codify this in a way in which I find makes sense, I think the
broader look at this study would also reveal some other things
about what can happen and what the possibility is.
It seems as if we--if Dr. King said the imagination is the
incredible vehicle for us, Albert Einstein said our imagination
is more important than knowledge itself, then certainly the
capacity that we have in terms of imagining a better future
for--certainly for African American children and African
Americans, the descendants of slaves, would we also would
imagine a better opportunity for this country as well.
Mr. Swalwell. Mr. Chairman, can I just say to your--I
wanted to put this on the record.
I was not in the House when your resolution came up for a
vote. But I would have voted to support it. I am sorry that it
is something our government was responsible for. And Mitch
McConnell may be right that no one alive is responsible for
what happened then, but everyone alive is responsible to do
something now.
Thank you.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you.
Mr. Reschenthaler.
Mr. Reschenthaler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to yield to my ranking member, my colleague
from Louisiana.
Mr. Johnson. I thank my colleague.
I wanted to pitch it back to Mr. Hughes for a moment.
In spite of your relative young age, you have had some
valuable experience publicly discussing sensitive issues of
race and culture. And I just wonder what advice you would give
to young people who are thinking about this. As Mr. Owens said,
everybody ought to let that marinate a little bit.
As they begin to think about it, it has been suggested this
morning that ignorance of our history is a big part of this,
that we--everybody across the country--I mean, large numbers,
we suffer from that. What is the response and what advice do
you give to young people?
Mr. Hughes. Well, I would urge people to observe the
distinction between understanding history and responding to
history. You can understand history, and it can still be the
case that you have a range of possible responses in front of
you. So addressing myself to Mr. Coates' comments before, if I
understand them, the idea is, if we really understood our
history, then we wouldn't keep Confederate statues up, for
example. Therefore, the fact that they are still up implies
that we don't really understand it in our bones.
And that, I think, highlights a distinction between how I
think about this issue and how other people on the panel think
about it. For example, there was a poll in The Washington Post
last year which found that 30 percent of Black Virginians
wanted the Confederate statues to stay up. Now, I don't think
they wanted that because they hated themselves. I don't think
they wanted that because they didn't understand their own
history. Perhaps they were people who just didn't like seeing
their communities change. There are many people like that. And
I respect that, even though I myself would be fine to see those
statues come down.
So the point here is that our response, whether or not you
agree with it, is not itself evidence that we don't understand
our history. And we can have two separate conversations. One
is, what happened in this country? What was done to Black
people? What harm was incurred? And the second conversation is,
what do we do about that? And that second conversation is--the
answer to that second conversation is not self-evident from the
answer to the first.
Thank you.
Mr. Johnson. I see Mr. Owens making notes over there. I
know you have a lot to contribute on this subject. You do a lot
with young people.
What would you add to that?
Mr. Owens. I would, first of all, say we live in the United
States of America, the greatest country in the history of
mankind, a place that every person who comes here that applies
themselves to the rules, to the standards in which we all can
succeed, treat people right, be honest, dream big, dream above
your obstacles, and get back up when you fall down, then they
can make it.
History is there for us to find out and to gauge ourselves
how far we have come. Fifty years ago, guys I was fighting on
the football field as being one of four Black athletes are some
of my best friends on Facebook today because we have all grown
up. We have all understood that the message of our fathers was
incorrect. And we are doing our very best to make sure we be
the better people as we move forward.
This country, every generation works to find its better
self. As long we don't reach back and define ourselves by the
worst of ourselves. And that is what too many people are doing
today. We have Americans in this country, and we will call them
elitists, that live the American Dream, put their kids in the
best colleges ever, drive every place you can think of, not
having any issues, are going to have a great retirement, and
then tell the rest of our race they can't do it. Why? Because
the White man won't let them.
I personally think that is an insult to my parents, my
grandparents. I did not grow up around White people until I was
16 years old. And I was so proud to be in that community I grew
up in in Tallahassee, Florida, because we were kicking butt. We
were leading our kids. They were teaching us how to be proud
Americans.
Last point, I went to the University of Miami to study
biology. By the time I was in my junior year, I decided I
didn't want to do biology anymore. You know why I stayed with
it? Because when I was leaving high school, there was a White
guy who said I couldn't do it. And my parents taught me: If
they say you can't, you do it. I lived in the library to prove
that guy wrong. That is the way our race was, and that is the
way our race needs to be again. What we can achieve, nothing
about what has happened to us in the past. What strangers did
to other strangers 200 years ago has nothing to do with us,
because that is not in our DNA.
Thank you.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
Mr. Hughes, I have got 15 seconds. Let me give you one more
question. You can answer it, I hope.
You wrote an article a while back entitled ``Black American
Culture and the Racial Wealth Gap.'' And you talked about
specifically the city of Boston. And there was a disparity
within the Black community. And you pointed out that Black
Bostonians of American ancestry had a median household wealth
of $8 in that but Caribbean ancestry had $12,000 of wealth,
talks to the disparity.
I just wondered if you would comment on the implications of
that.
Mr. Hughes. Well, this just goes back to the point I made
before about disparities even within races being normal. So, if
you go to--if you look at Census figures for White Americans
and break it down, instead of talking about, quote/unquote,
White people into White people of French ancestry, Russian
ancestry, Swedish ancestry, you will find all kinds of
disparities that, by definition, cannot be caused by some kind
of systemic discrimination. Likewise, with, quote/unquote,
Black Americans, it is a very diverse group. Something like 10
percent of Black people in this country are immigrants from
places like Jamaica, Haiti, Nigeria, Ghana, and if you look at
each individual group, you will find various disparities in
wealth, in income, in crime rates, that, by definition, can't
be explained by either race or racism.
So my point in citing that disparity is to upset the notion
that if society were fair, evidence of that would be equal
outcomes between all groups because there are so many
differences historically in groups themselves geographically
just in terms of median age, right? The average Black person in
this country is 10 years younger than the average White person.
So, when you are comparing Blacks to Whites, that is just one
of the many ways in which you are not actually comparing apples
to apples. So my point in citing that was just to upset that
lazy assumption that we make about socioeconomic and other
outcomes.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, sir.
I next recognize Ms. Scanlon for 5 minutes.
Ms. Scanlon. Thank you.
Before coming to Congress just last November, I was a
public interest attorney, and so my work focused on access to
justice, access to the ballot, and access to a good public
education. And all three forms of access, as we have been
discussing here today, are too often denied to people of color
and poor people. And, unfortunately, as we have discussed,
there is a disproportionate representation of people of color
among poor people in this country.
So I wanted to ask some questions to talk about the
relationship between the structural legacy of slavery and
racism and a couple of the issues that are top of mind in my
district. So one of them--and thank you for mentioning it, Mr.
Glover--is environmental justice. The city of Chester is it my
district. It is a majority African American population, and it
is surrounded by heavily polluting industries.
Just Sunday night, CNN's ``United Shades of America''
featured the incinerators there. One in four children, African
American children, in my district have asthma largely as a
result of these environmental factors. So we have got this
environmental justice issue we are dealing with. We have got
schools issues. Pennsylvania has one of the most wildly
inequitable public school funding systems. And if you go to the
schools in Philadelphia and some of the other majority African
American school districts, you see schools that are over 100
years old. And, literally, visiting them, there is asbestos and
lead paint dripping into the water fountains that the children
have to use.
And then a third issue, which we have also touched on, is
our policing and criminal justice issues where African American
folks are locked up at, what, five times the rate of White
people.
So how does the reparations conversation help us drive
forward those issues? How can I link it for folks in my
district to the issues they are facing daily?
And if I could ask Revered Sutton and then Mr. Coates to
maybe address that.
Rev. Sutton. Thank you.
Those issues are linked. We have to make a distinction
between personal responsibility and social responsibility. I go
into the high schools in Baltimore as well. And we even sponsor
programs to convince high schoolers: You can do this. You can
succeed. You can make it. That is personal responsibility.
But when you go in the schools and you see the conditions,
you see the quality of the teaching and all that, you know that
they don't have the same shot as those who live 10 miles away
or 5 miles away in their school systems.
And so one of the roles of the Congress is to make sure
that there is a corporate responsibility that we all have for
all of our citizens. We can all celebrate the tremendous
strides that have been made in racial attitudes in this
country. We are proud of the accomplishments of many African
American individuals. I am proud of my accomplishments. I have
worked very hard, and my brothers and sisters.
But for the millions of descendants of slaves who are
trapped in this pernicious cycle of hopelessness, poverty, and
rage due to their real experience of inequities, segregation,
inferior schools, redlining and the like, the widespread
assumption that everyone can pull themselves up by their
bootstraps is a lie. It is a falsehood. And that is one of the
things that this legislation wants to address.
Thank you.
Ms. Scanlon. Thank you.
Mr. Coates.
Mr. Coates. I think, frankly--and this is going to get
repetitive--it comes back to the weight of history.
I heard it said just earlier, for instance, that the
matters which face us today have nothing to do with strangers
from 200 years ago. That is not the attitude we take toward
George Washington. That is not the attitude we take toward
Abraham Lincoln. We take that attitude to history that we are
ashamed of. We don't take that attitude toward history that we
are proud of.
Again, as I said earlier, answering another question, one
the great weights of 250 years of enslavement in this country,
which is longer than the 150 years of freedom that African
Americans have enjoyed, is the codification of the idea of
inferiority among Black people and not just in the culture but
in the very laws themselves.
And even after those laws are repealed, as well they
should, the idea still remains, and it is passed on. And so,
for instance, it was just said by one of my fellow committee
members that there was a difference between the incomes of
Caribbean Black immigrants and native Blacks. This is true.
It is also quite understandable. People who come to America
to pursue opportunity generally tend to do better than the
masses of a whole group that have been here. This is true of
all immigrants. So this is not particularly surprising. But
what happens when you look at that second generation? What
happens when you look at that third generation of Caribbean
Blacks? In fact, unlike all other groups, they quickly become
African American Blacks in terms of their other statistics. Why
is that? It is the weight of history. It is the implicit idea
that is codified in our laws, in our criminal justice system,
in the very places that we live to this very day. There is no
way to get out of this. There is no way of escaping this
without a direct confrontation, without H.R. 40, the very
reason we are here.
Ms. Scanlon. Thank you very much.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Ms. Scanlon.
Before I go to my--I would like to recognize Mr. Wade
Henderson who is here. He was the president of the leadership
conference on human and civil rights and a great hero for many
years. Thank you for your attendance and your years of work.
Mr. Hilary Shelton was here earlier, and they kind of were
a team. He was the NAACP. And he left.
Ms. Dean, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Dean. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank you for
having this hearing.
As troubling as this topic is, I can't tell you how glad
that we are here today. I can't tell you how glad that this
conversation is taking place. So I thank my colleague from
Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee, for her extraordinary tenacious
leadership on this legislation. We are here to acknowledge the
terrible wrong in history, to recognize the continuation of
those injuries, and that is one area I want to examine quickly,
if I can, and to discover a remedy to these atrocities. Some
measure of healing for this country.
So if I could take a look in the time that I am allotted
two things. Mr. Coates, I wanted to ask you about the ongoing
predatory practices. I happen to also be a member of the
Financial Services Committee, and so we have examined some of
the practices, for example, by Wells Fargo in predatory
subprime lending in the African American community. Because too
often we hear that this is a thing of the past. This is not
something that has happened today. There is not an ongoing
problem. You are dealing with something that is past. It is not
past. The discrimination, the atrocities continue.
So if you could help me with the predatory practices. And
then I wanted to try to lift it a little after that, because I
loved what you said, Right Reverend, that it is important for
our White brothers and sisters. We need this as much if not
more for healing of our soul, healing of the soul of the
country.
And, Ms. Browne, you talked about the liberating power of
having this conversation and taking a look at all of this.
So, if we could talk about ongoing predatory practices and
discrimination, and then maybe take it to the other side.
Mr. Coates. Sure. As I was saying earlier, it is like any
other injury. There is the primary effect of the injury, and
then there is secondary and tertiary effects of that injury.
African Americans have a history of segregation in this
country. What that means is not merely living separately from
Whites. It means living separately from Whites for the explicit
purposes of denying certain benefits and certain funding and
certain resources to Black people.
In the case of the housing history in the 20th century,
what that meant was that, for long periods of time, while this
country was making access--making available to middle class and
working class White families low interest loans, the
possibility of home ownership, which had not been available in
the previous preceding decades, Black people were completely
cut out of that process.
But still, there was that dream of buying a home. And so
what that big gap left was for predatory lending to come in,
illegitimate lending, that did not enjoy the imprimatur or the
backing of the FHA to come into Black neighborhoods and make
loans under conditions that were, to say the least, onerous. In
some cases, Black folks didn't even actually own the homes.
This practice of--sure.
Ms. Dean. Contract lending.
Mr. Coates. Contract lending, yes.
Ms. Dean. Could you give us a quick definition of that?
Mr. Coates. The basic idea of contract lending, because I
don't have access to the normal routes of banking to buy a
home. And so a contract lender comes in and pretends to
actually sell me the home and gives me all the responsibilities
of the homeowner, the upkeep, the upkeep, the maintenance, the
taxes, et cetera, but actually holds onto the deed. It is a
high-tech, what do you call it, rent-as-you-buy, buy-rent
option.
Ms. Dean. And the other practice that Wells Fargo
participated in in a huge way in the early 2000s, 2005, as
quoted by a former Wells Fargo loan officer, they went into
Black communities, particularly through their churches, and
pushed subprime lending mortgages on those folks who would have
qualified likely for regular mortgages. And she said: We went
right after them.
She is a former member of Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo mortgage
had an emerging market unit and specifically targeted Black
churches because it figured church leaders had a lot of
influence, and we could convince congregants to take subprime
loans.
That is recent. That is ongoing kinds of stuff. That is
egregious. So anybody who says this is a thing of the past just
isn't paying attention.
Mr. Coates. Congressman, just really quick. The reason why
I just keep insisting on history is the very fact that that
group of people was vulnerable in the first place is because of
redlining and Jim Crow. They never would have been in that
position if not for history.
Ms. Dean. And I apologize.
But, Ms. Browne, if you don't mind, I am from Pennsylvania,
so--suburban Philadelphia. If you could, talk about that notion
of liberation as a result of looking at your own history. Can
you tell us what that felt like and why we should argue that
for us, and paint that picture?
Ms. Browne. Thank you so much.
There is so many layers to it. The part--what hasn't been
mentioned today is the fact that race is a fiction. So
slavery--the very concept of race and of one race being
superior to another was invented to justify slavery. And it was
also deployed in order to have White working class, like
indentured servants back in the Virginia in the colonial era,
identify with this notion of whiteness and with wealthier
Whites rather than identify with enslaved Africans and native
people with whom they had common cause. And so there is a lot
of layers to this history that I think for a lot of the White
Americans who feel like this is just an accusation and this is
just yet another case of calling their people historically
racist or calling them racist today.
In my experience, the African American community is much
more sophisticated about understanding that some of these
dynamics, for example, with the GI Bill and whatnot, it is
mundane complicity of White folks who are benefiting from a
system and looking the other way. They are not necessarily
getting up in the morning and saying, ``I want to be racist.''
And there is an understanding of that amongst those of us
who are in the field doing this work. So they are just, again,
coming back to the learning of the history, it is liberatory to
get beyond even the very concept of race.
Ms. Dean. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know I am over.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Ms. Dean.
Sylvia, you are on.
Ms. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, first, I want to
thank the chairman for bringing this forward. And, of course,
to my colleague from Houston, that we have worked for many
years on so many social justice issues at home. It is just
great to stand with you again in this time here on such a very
important national topic. I am a cosponsor, and I pledge to you
that I will work shoulder and shoulder with you to make sure we
get this done.
And to all the people in the audience, thank you for being
here. I know it has been a long hearing. But I think it is
going to be--thank you for being here. And I know you have been
waiting, but I think the waiting will be worth it when we get
to the end of the tunnel. So thank you all for being here.
And, Bishop, I wanted to start with you because it really
did warm my heart that you have some scripture notes here and
that you mentioned Jesus.
You know, I have a very deeply firm held religious belief
that we really are all created equal and that we really are all
children of God. And I want you to just pretend that instead of
speaking to us right now that you are speaking to the average
American, who may not have read everything that we have, who
may not have been as attuned to this hearing, but is kind of
wondering what this is really all about. Because as much as you
say and others have said, that this isn't about a check. The
bottom line is that when some people start talking about
reparations, they think that it is just about that.
So my question to you is, what would Jesus do about
reparations?
Rev. Sutton. Well, when it comes to those questions, I like
to rely on people. I am in sales, not management. So I am not
going to----
Ms. Garcia. Very nice. It is a good start.
Rev. Sutton. But the--I want to be clear: It is not just
about a check.
Ms. Garcia. Correct.
Rev. Sutton. When I think of--I think about some African
American women who are languishing in nursing homes with no
money, no wealth. No, let's cut a check. I think about some
others where a check would be very good. So I just wanted to be
clear about this.
But it is not essentially about money. It is about being
good. There has been talk here about our Nation being a great
Nation or to make it great again or the greatest Nation of all.
I am more concerned about this Nation being good. Let's be
good. Let's do a good thing.
And if we can be good enough, then let history and let
people around the world say: The United States is great, not
because you can make a lot of money there, not because you can
enrich yourself, not because of the size of your military or
your armaments. They are great because they are good. And so I
am here today to witness to being good about this, that there
is some unfinished business in this Nation.
Lastly, about the souls. In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois wrote the
famous book, ``The Souls of Black Folk.'' I would like to see
another book written, ``The Souls of White Folk.'' The Souls of
White Folk in this Nation right now. What does it do to your
soul to know that some of the benefit you get from your White
skin and your background is not accrued to everybody? What does
that do to your soul? And so this is a soulful act I think that
we are talking about today.
Ms. Garcia. Thank you.
Rev. Sutton. And it is really going to take all of us.
I said earlier that we have forgiven you. And that what I
mean is we are here. We are in America. We want America to be
good and great. Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Africa
said once: Without forgiveness, there is no future. We have to
forgive one another, but that doesn't mean we stop there. We
have work to do. And this let's for reconciliation. I wonder if
my sister here----
Ms. Garcia. Well, actually, I had a question for Mr.
Coates.
But you had to go really quickly. I had one question for
Mr. Coates. If you wanted to add something really quick, I am
running out of time.
Ms. Malveaux. I am the economist on the panel, so it is a
little bit frustrating that economic questions are being
directed to noneconomists who I think I have some things that I
would like to be able to say about some of this. But thank you,
my brother, for giving me--for passing the mike. I really do
appreciate it.
The questions about predatory lending really need--that
your sister Congresswoman raised really need to be dealt with,
because it is not just--that is something that is happening----
Ms. Garcia. If you are going to talk about predatory
lending, could you also add--because what I was going to ask
him, you could probably answer also, this whole history of the
exclusion of Blacks from some of the early programs like Social
Security and the GI Bill and others because it all is about
economic security.
So, if you could blend your answer, that would be great,
because then I would use my time to get both questions in.
Ms. Malveaux. Sure. I mean, we can go back and look at the
minimum wage, which excluded farm workers in the South which
were predominantly Black people, excluded domestic workers who
were Black women. And so these folks were excluded not only
from the minimum wage but also from the Social Security system.
And so your comment about Black women in nursing homes is
very pointed given all of that. I mean, we have to look at
this--the hearts and minds questions--I am an economist, so I
leave that to the reverend. But what I want--but my thing is:
Let's look at the economic underpinnings of the inequality that
exists in this country, the wealth gap that exists in this
country, and the differences that it makes.
Sister Congresswoman, when you talked about predatory
lending, a third of the people who had predatory loans
qualified for regular loans, a third of them. However, they did
not get them because of the way that slavery, racism, basically
segregated people. So, while it is lovely to sing Kumbaya,
which I don't do very often, I think it is even better to talk
about what is going on economically and the differences that
exists because of the wealth gap.
When a Black woman, man is arrested, absent wealth, they
lay up in the jail for I don't know how many days because they
don't have the home, the mortgage, to get the bail. And cash
bail is discriminatory. And so we could just go down the list
and talk about the very many ways that racism affects equality
of the folks' lives.
And with all due respect to these Kumbaya brothers over
here who--you know, I am proud of my family too. I mean, we
good Black people too. I have a Ph.D. I have two MBAs in my
family. But I am not going to give you my family history.
But--you know, but it is irrelevant. It is irrelevant when
you are dealing with structure. I want you all Congress people
to deal with issues of economic structure. Have an economic
structure that has generated an inequality that makes it
difficult for people to live their lives.
When a ZIP Code determines what kind of school that you go
to, when ZIP Code determines what kind of food you can eat,
these are the vestiges of enslavement that a lot of people
don't want to deal with. Forgive my--you know, I am kind of
over the top. But I usually am. Those in the audience who know
me know, you know, tick tick boom.
But the fact is that I am gratified, Sheila, Congresswoman
Jackson Lee, for these hearings. But I am also frustrated for
the tone that some of this has taken because it takes us away
from the economic underpinnings what needs to go on here.
Ms. Garcia. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you.
Mr. Jordan is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.
Mr. Johnson. I thank my colleague.
This has really been a thoughtful discussion. I know we are
nearing the end of it. We have more to go. Thanks, everybody,
for their patience.
I just want to touch on something that Reverend Sutton said
a moment ago about America being good. It is good. It is the
greatest Nation in the history of the world. There is a reason
for that.
G.K. Chesterton was a famous British philosopher. He
famously said America is the only Nation in the world that is
founded upon a creed. And he said it is listed with almost
theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence. And
what is the creed? We are the first people in the history of
the world that openly acknowledged, boldly declared that we are
created in the image of God. And, therefore, every single
person has inalienable human rights.
There is a self-evident truth, the Founder said. We are
trying to live up to that promise. As you all know, Martin
Luther King, Jr., famously said that was a promissory note to
future generations, and we are trying to get there.
The honest question that we are trying to get to, is the
payment, okay, which would be part of this, by many people's
estimation, is that part of that attaining the ultimate goal?
And it is a thoughtful question. It is a serious one. And I
don't think that you should disparage the motives of anybody
who is asking these piercing questions. And we are going to,
and we are. You are all part of the dialogue. And I am grateful
that it has largely been a civil discussion today, and I really
appreciate your contributions.
Let me go back to Mr. Owens. In a 2018 interview, you noted
that--you said, quote: It was the Black community that led our
country in terms of the growth of the middle class. Between 40
and 50 percent of Black Americans became part of the middle
class. The Black community also led the country in terms of the
commitment of men to marriage at over 70 percent, unquote.
I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on what you
attribute that to.
Mr. Owens. Head, heart, home, hands. We were a race that
believed in God. Very committed to the Christian faith. Because
we did, our men believed in being the men of their household to
provide for their kids and their wife, and they took that
commitment very seriously. They took pride in being producers.
The idea of me being a beggar was not an option. When I
failed after coming out of the NFL--7 years after coming out of
the NFL, totally humbling. But for a brief few months I was
willing to be a chimney sweep. I was willing to be a security
guard. That was what we were taught. Do whatever it takes to
provide for your family. It doesn't matter. Be proud of it.
I am proud of it now. I would never want to go there again.
But at the end of day, that is what we were taught. We have
now--we are turning out my race into one that is feeling that
they are entitled to somebody else's property. We are now
asking for something, reparation, that will get to funding, for
something we never experienced ourselves in our lives, are not
owed, because we have a chance, every single day, to make a
choice. I can choose today to be more successful or less. And
it has nothing to do with my ancestors or my great-great-
grandfather Silas other than the fact I am so proud that he
showed me, through his example, how to overcome obstacles.
So we need to get back to the pride that we had during the
'40s, '50s, and the '60s as a race when we are competing
against the White race, when we were segregated, when our money
stayed within our community and our leadership stayed in our
community. We weren't trying to get after somebody else's race
to give them our business.
We need to recognize that within our kids is our future. I
personally believe this. Right now, we have over 60,000 of our
youth that is incarcerated every single year. These kids, most
of them, 85 percent, don't have fathers. We are able to get
those kids back, give them the hope that this country give them
a great opportunity that they can go out and build businesses
or move their future on, they will bring us back to the abyss.
And I believe those kids, the ones that we give hope again,
will bring our country back from the the abyss. We need to give
the right message first.
Mr. Johnson. Very well said.
Mr. Hughes, I know there is lot that has been said here.
And I know you have thoughts on a lot of these topics. I would
yield back to you for 55 seconds here, pitch it to you.
What would you like to add to the conversation?
Mr. Hughes. Oh, yeah, a lot has been said. I am not sure
there is any no one specific thing at this moment I want to
respond to.
Mr. Johnson. That is great. I respect that.
Listen, we are probably out of time for--or out of
questions on this side. But, again, on behalf of everybody
here, I think I speak for all my colleagues, we really
appreciate your interest, your involvement, your patience
today. It has been a long hearing. But I think we have had a
thoughtful discussion. I think it is important for the country
for us to do this, so I am grateful, and I yield back.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.
Ms. Escobar of Texas is next, 5 minutes.
Ms. Escobar. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. And I want to
just say how proud I am and fortunate I feel to be in the room
with all of you, to be able to have this very important
discussion, and to participate in this historic hearing. I also
just want to quickly acknowledge and thank my sister
Congresswoman, the Congresswoman, the gentlelady from Texas.
Thank you, Sheila, for your incredible work and your
passion and the dignity and strength that you bring to this
discussion.
And as my colleague from California Ms. Bass mentioned,
this is a difficult conversation to have but one that is so
long overdue.
Dr. Malveaux, I so appreciate your economic perspective,
and I want to ask you a couple of questions rooted in that
economic background that you have so that you can help the
country understand the significance of why we have to have this
conversation.
So, first, I would like to ask you to respond to critics of
this bill who claim that the U.S. has already paid reparations
to African Americans through affirmative action.
How would you respond to that?
Ms. Malveaux. Thank you so much, Sister Congresswoman, for
the question. Let me say that affirmative action--the primary
beneficiaries of affirmative action actually were White women.
And there is a significant research that shows that. Because
White women were better poised to take advantage of the
benefits that affirmative action. You had disadvantage and
discrimination. The African-American community had disadvantage
plus discrimination. White women simply had discrimination. So,
when you go back and look at the data, you will not find that
African Americans significantly benefited from affirmative
action. It was a lot of talk and not a lot of action. So, when
people talk about we have already paid reparations--I have
heard people talk about the fact that White people died in the
Civil War fighting on the side of the North. Well, the North
was also a beneficiary of enslavement, quite frankly. My sister
here who talked about her family has lifted that up. So, no,
the reparations have not been paid. And the fact is that we are
not as again--some folks may want checks. But what we are
really talking about is closing that wealth gap and making
people whole.
Ms. Escobar. Thank you. And to that point about the wealth
gap, you have remarked and pointed out that the income gap was
actually shrinking until government played a role. The income
gap for formerly enslaved individuals.
Ms. Malveaux. The wealth gap. The wealth gap was shrinking
until Jim Crow laws and profligate racism intruded in the ways
that people were able to live their lives. The Tommy Moss story
that I told a little bit of, the guy who opened the grocery
store, Ida B. Wells' goddaughter's dad, opened a grocery store.
He dared, he dared to compete with White people. And because he
dared to compete with White people, he basically lost his life.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, when the Governor of the Oklahoma actually
appointed a commission to find out why the Wall Street massacre
occurred, one of the newspapers came up with this conclusion:
Too many n-words have too much money.
That was the conclusion of an official government
commission.
And Black Wall Street was amazing. Dr. Olivia Hooker, who
passed just last November, she was the oldest living survivor,
and she was a friend. She said: We didn't have to leave the
Black community for anything, except for banking. We had our
own grocery stores, department stores. Black doctors built a
library when White folks wouldn't build a library for Black
people.
That kind of economic thriving became a source of envy.
Wilmington, North Carolina, brother man over here wants to talk
ugly about Democrats. People change their ideologies. So the
Democrats were the Devil once upon a time. There was a group
called the Red Shirts which were the Klan. This had he were
Democrats. However, the Republicans took that over. They became
the Devil and--I am just saying--forgive me, Brother Chairman,
I know you said I am not supposed to say that. Forgive me. But
in any case, people do change ideology so all this throwing at
Democrats, Democrats and Republicans have been racist. But in
Wilmington, North Carolina, Republicans and Black people came
together to form a fusion government. And White folks were so
frightened that they took all the prominent Black men in that
town, arrested them. The next morning gave them tickets to
leave town. They had to leave their property, their livelihood,
their families, everything. This is why we need reparations.
White Democrats were so threatened by the notion of the fusion
government that they basically burned people out. They
documented 60 deaths, but there is a film--when I was talking
and you told me I couldn't talk--there is a film called
``Wilmington on Fire.'' I want everybody to watch this film,
``Wilmington on Fire.'' It really does talk about what happened
in Wilmington in 1898 when they just basically burned Black
folks out. Twenty five percent of the Black people in
Wilmington left. Nearly one-third of the Black businesses in
Wilmington went out of business. It was really about economic
envy. So, absent this economic envy and fear, Black folks, we
didn't get the 40 acres and a mule, but we were still trying to
do it. And then folks came in and said: Wait a minute. If we
let them do their thing, where is our cheap labor going to come
from?
So that is what happened. Thank you for the question.
Ms. Escobar. Thank you so much, Chairman. I am out of time.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you.
Last, but far from least, is the sponsor of H.R. 40, The
Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee for her 5 minutes-plus.
Ms. Jackson Lee. It is appropriate for me, Mr. Chairman, to
thank you so very much and to dispel this audience from any
suggestion and witnesses that we are here on a temporary pass,
doing temporary work, that is going to be fleeting and never to
be seen again.
I want to thank Chairman Cohen, who comes from the heart of
Memphis in Tennessee, who has walked in the life of a dual
society.
And I want to thank Chairman Nadler, who has indicated, as
I did, supported H.R. 40 and the leadership of John Conyers.
I want to thank all my colleagues on this panel for their
diligence and outstanding questions. They are going to be in
the forefront of educating, answering the questions, being a
team, and I look forward to their work on this very powerful
committee, the Judiciary Committee. What better place to have
this hearing. And to those who are again trying to understand
our process. You have to have a hearing, then there is
something called a markup, then there is a vote in committee,
and then there is the opportunity to go to the floor of the
House of Representatives on to the Senate, which will be the
other body as we call it, and the challenge that I will accept,
and I hope that you will accept, and then the signature by a
President of the United States of America.
Let this day, June 19, 2019, be the marker for the
commitment for each and every one of you who have come to
support to say: On my watch, we will watch this bill pass and
be signed by the President of the United States of America.
I want to acknowledge Pastor Alan Patterson, who is from my
hometown--and I know he wouldn't mind me saying--the inheritor
of a great historic church in the historic Fifth Ward, Texas,
that was a settling place for freed slaves, Mount Corinth
Baptist Church. I am delighted that he is here, and I thank
him. All the others I have thanked.
Let me thank the witnesses. Mr. Chairman is very kind, but
I will be diligent. Let me thank the witnesses who are here.
Each and every one of them. Let me thank Mr. Coates, Mr.
Glover, Ms. Browne, Mr. Hughes, Mr. Owens, the Right Reverend
Eugene Taylor Sutton, and, as well, Dr. Julianne Malveaux,
Professor Eric Miller.
Let me get to my questions at this point. During the Red
Summer of 1919, violence against African American communities
erupted. Two years later, in the Tulsa race riots, 300 African
Americans were killed and the entire Black community of
Greenwood in Tulsa was destroyed.
Another devastating racist attack took place in Rosewood,
Florida, in 1923, Black-owned homes and businesses were
systematically burned, at least eight people were killed.
During--and despite African American service in World War II.
I commend Mr. Coleman and I think Mr.--Mr. Owens and Mr.
Hughes, excuse me: Read the bill.
What the bill says is that this is a study to consider a
national apology, which has been done, and a proposal for
reparations for the institution of slavery. The institution of
slavery has never gone away. It exists. It is subsequent to du
jour and de facto, that is, that it is subject to the laws and
to the current sphere of what has generated today. Racial and
economic discrimination against African Americans and the
impact of these forces on living African Americans that are to
make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies,
and for other purposes. Why does the Congress have to do it?
Because a Congress is the law-making body of the Federal
Government, and it was the States and Federal Government that
institutionalized laws that made slavery an act of the state.
And it is not the courts, they will interpret, but we have to
correct our error. That is why, in that historic moment,
Republicans and I guess some Democrats came together in the
Congress and supported the 13th Amendment, which then Democrats
and Republicans or whatever they were called at that time
throughout the States, then the States voted to accept that
particular amendment. That is why the Congress must do its job.
I welcome the disparate opinions, but I would argue to the
gentleman from Columbia that you are I think, without the
historical perspective and the pain, of being opposed at your
very young age to affirmative action and reparations. So I
would welcome a continuing debate. My door is open for you. I
welcome you being here as a witness. But I think it is
important to take note of this: One, my husband--excuse me,
love him too--not my husband, love him too. My father was Ezra
Clyde Jackson. He was the baby boy of a widowed mother with
three brothers that went to World War II. A young man that
graduated from high school for arts, New York City. He, out of
high school, went to the cartoon industry in New York, it was
thriving, what an amazing thing for a young Black boy. When the
White men came back from World War II, my husband--my father
was summarily fired for them to take his place. I was not born
then, but I can tell you the life of that talented Black man
was never the same until some 40 years later, when he was able
to--talent never lost--able to be called back into that
industry. Racism, it wasn't slavery; it wasn't 1892. It was in
these prosperous '40s that you were talking about that my
father, because of the color of his skin, his brilliant talent,
the cartoonist artist that he was, was summarily fired.
And so the question I have, Dr. Malveaux, while the White
middle class were being buoyed by the New Deal, period of my
father's life, African Americans were consistently excluded
from its benefits. For example, the 1935 Social Security Act
carved out jobs largely filled by African American workers,
such as farm and domestic labor, from its old age and
employment insurance. Federal housing programs also
discriminated against African Americans by redlining Black
neighborhoods to preclude them from receiving Federal Housing
Administration, FHA. The GI Bill, which dedicated billions of
dollars toward expanding opportunity for soldiers returning
from war, also contributed to the widening gap between White
and Black Americans. Southern congressional leaders made
certain that the programs were controlled by local White
official, resulting in Black veterans being denied housing and
business loans.
Dr. Malveaux, I want to get to your seatmate there, Mr.
Miller. So I am going to you first, and I also want to get to
Mr. Coates on these issues. And I thank all the other
witnesses. Could you comment on this impact, on this continuing
impact when we didn't benefit from that?
Ms. Malveaux. Thank you, again, Congresswoman, both for the
hearing and for the question. The continuing impact is it shows
up in the wealth gap. In addition to the entirety of the way
that we redline Black communities through the Federal Housing
Administration, redline communities so that people could not
get housing loans, even when they qualified for them. This was
government policy. This is why Congress must do this. Congress
did the Devil, and now Congress has to do the right thing. It
is quite simple.
I am so happy that you mentioned the GI Bill for a couple
of reasons. Number one, as you said, the State authorities
decided who got benefits. In the State of Mississippi, fewer
than 1,000, the number is 600 or 700, but I will just round up,
fewer than 1,000 Black men were able to go to college on the GI
Bill in Mississippi because when they went to get their GI
benefits, the GI boys said: Well, you could go to barber
school, or you could go to trade school. But these were
brothers who were qualified to go to college, should have had
that opportunity, would have had generational differences in
the way they lived had they done that. So Congress has
indifferently, essentially sidelined Black people from the
opportunities that they created for White people. It is plain
and simple. Sideline us from those opportunities, and that is
why it is time now to talk about how to fix that.
My brother who has done the work on Tulsa can talk so much
more about that. But let us simply say the commission that is
created must go through line by line and look at all this--and
detail it. I don't like to think--like I said, I am not
Kumbaya.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
Ms. Malveaux. I don't like to think White people are evil.
I think White people are ignorant. I think White people do not
know what the history is. And I commend you all to look at the
history and the work that you have done in the past and then
challenge you to do the right thing.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
Mr. Coates, may I bring you to the 21st century and recent
article in The New York Times that basically says----
Mr. Cohen. We have a call for votes; make it real quick.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you. This is Kansas City: Downtown
is booming. But in the shadows of the city's thriving business
and entertainment district are languishing East Side
neighborhoods pocked with boarded-up homes and overgrown,
trash-strewn lots. The shiny cafes and storefronts are almost
nonexistent there, and residents like LaTonya Bowman feel
forgotten. ``I love downtown, and I would love to see it grow
too, but you have got to be real,'' says Ms. Bowman, who lives
in the predominantly Black East Side. ``It is like neglect. We
get the leftovers.''
Can you just bring that all together for us in what you
have ascertained about the commission, racism, and where we are
today.
Mr. Coates. Sure. I think the consistent point from the
comments that you just read--the article you just read from--
stretching all the way back to the period of enslavement in
this country is the idea of theft. Enslavement is threat. For
250 years, Black people had the fruits of their labor stolen
from them. We don't often think about Jim Crow and the era of
segregation as theft, but it is theft too. If I agree to pay
taxes, if I agree to fealty to a government, and you give me a
different level of resources out of that tax pool, if you are
giving me a different level of protection, you have effectively
stolen from me. If you deny my ability to vote and to
participate in the political process, to decide how those
resources are used, you have effectively stolen from me. So it
makes a kind of sense that after a period that begins in 1619
of theft, ending conservatively in 1968, I think I will get an
argument on that, but conservatively in 1968 that if you steal
from a group of people over that long period of a period of
time, you will have the very wealth gap that Dr. Malveaux--
results from. I think it is very, very important to bring that
into the conversation because this wasn't a passive
discrimination. This was appropriating resources from one group
and giving them to the other through the auspices of the state.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very grateful to you to yield
back. And I feel the power in this room.
And I ask my colleague Mr. Johnson: Let us work together.
Let's get this done. It is long overdue. It is deserving, and
it is the right thing to do.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Ms. Lee. And of course, I want to
thank all of our witnesses. This concludes our hearing. I want
to thank our witnesses. This has been a great panel. This is
what, magnified times 10, 20, 50, of a study would be like
because this panel would be heard and heard and heard, and
people would get the story of what has happened in America and
different perspectives on how to deal with it.
Without objection, all members will have 5 legislative days
to submit additional written questions for the witnesses or
additional material for the record.
I want to thank my ranking member and all of my members.
Our attendance was excellent. If anybody sees Jon Stewart, tell
him everybody was here and very attentive.
And, with that, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:24 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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