[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
H.R. 40: EXPLORING THE PATH TO REPARATIVE
JUSTICE IN AMERICA
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, CIVIL
RIGHTS, AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2021
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Serial No. 117-4
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Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
45-379 WASHINGTON : 2022
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COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
JERROLD NADLER, New York, Chair
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania, Vice-Chair
ZOE LOFGREN, California JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Ranking Member
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr., DARRELL ISSA, California
Georgia KEN BUCK, Colorado
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida MATT GAETZ, Florida
KAREN BASS, California MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana
HAKEEM S. JEFFRIES, New York ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island TOM McCLINTOCK, California
ERIC SWALWELL, California W. GREG STEUBE, Florida
TED LIEU, California TOM TIFFANY, Wisconsin
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky
PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington CHIP ROY, Texas
VAL BUTLER DEMINGS, Florida DAN BISHOP, North Carolina
J. LUIS CORREA, California MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana
SYLVIA R. GARCIA, Texas SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado CLIFF BENTZ, Oregon
LUCY McBATH, Georgia BURGESS OWENS, Utah
GREG STANTON, Arizona
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
MONDAIRE JONES, New York
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
CORI BUSH, Missouri
PERRY APELBAUM, Majority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
CHRISTOPHER HIXON, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, CIVIL RIGHTS,
AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee, Chair
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina, Vice-Chair
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana, Ranking
HENRY C.``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr., Member
Georgia TOM McCLINTOCK, California
SYLVIA R. GARCIA, Texas CHIP ROY, Texas
CORI BUSH, Missouri MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas BURGESS OWENS, Utah
JAMES PARK, Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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February 17, 2021
Page
OPENING STATEMENTS
The Honorable Steve Cohen, Chair of the Subcommittee on the
Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties from the State
of Tennessee................................................... 1
The Honorable Burgess Owens, a Member of the Subcommittee on the
Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties from the State
of Utah........................................................ 5
The Honorable Jerrold Nadler, Chair of the Committee on the
Judiciary from the State of New York........................... 7
The Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Member of the Subcommittee on
the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties from the
State of Texas................................................. 9
WITNESSES
Shirley N. Weber, Secretary, Office of the California Secretary
of State
Oral Testimony................................................. 37
Prepared Testimony............................................. 40
E. Tendayi Achiume, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law and UN
Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance
Oral Testimony................................................. 46
Prepared Testimony............................................. 49
Kathy Masaoka, Co-Chair, Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress
Oral Testimony................................................. 83
Prepared Testimony............................................. 85
Herschel Walker, Former Professional Athlete
Oral Testimony................................................. 90
Prepared Testimony............................................. 93
Laurence Elder, Attorney, Author, and Radio Host
Oral Testimony................................................. 95
Prepared Testimony............................................. 98
Kamm Howard, National Male Co-Chair, National Coalition of Blacks
for Reparations in America
Oral Testimony................................................. 105
Prepared Testimony............................................. 107
Dreisen Heath, Assistant Researcher/Advocate, US Program, Human
Rights Watch
Oral Testimony................................................. 112
Prepared Testimony............................................. 114
Hilary O. Shelton, Director, NAACP Washington Bureau
Oral Testimony................................................. 132
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Items submitted by the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Member of
the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil
Liberties from the State of Texas for the record
An article entitled ``Harvard Study: Reparations for slavery
could have reduced COVID-19 infections and deaths in U.S.,''
Harvard Medical School....................................... 12
A letter from the CARICOM Reparations Commission............... 20
A letter to Speaker Pelosi, Minority Leader McCarthy, Chair
Nadler, and Ranking Member Jordan............................ 24
Pictures of lynchings.......................................... 34
A letter from The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human
Rights....................................................... 148
A letter from Vanita Gupta, President & CEO, The Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human Rights......................... 152
APPENDIX
Items submitted by the Honorable Steve Cohen, Chair of the
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil
Liberties from the State of Tennessee for the record
A letter from Dominique Day, Chair-Rapporteur, UN Working Group
of Experts on People of African Descent...................... 178
An article entitled, ``A Call For Reparations: How America
Might Narrow The Racial Wealth Gap,'' NPR.................... 181
An article entitled ``After Reparations Study Suggests $151
Million for Each African American, Experts Say Money Alone
Isn't Enough,'' Newsweek..................................... 189
An article entitled, ``Author Releases Illustrated Guide to
African-American History With 300+ Pages,'' BlackNews.com.... 203
Statement from Christopher Miller, Head of Global Advocacy, Ben
& Jerry's Homemade, Inc...................................... 205
An article entitled, ``After decades of failure to close the
wealth gap, Black Americans need reparations,'' The Kansas
City Star.................................................... 207
An article entitled, ``Black reparations and the racial wealth
gap,'' Brookings............................................. 211
Statement from William Darity Jr., Samuel DuBois Cook Professor
of Public Policy............................................. 216
A memorandum entitled, ``National Security Study Memorandum
200''........................................................ 218
A letter to President Calvin Coolidge and editorial written by
Marcus Garvey, Negro World................................... 224
A transcript of speeches given at the National Coalition of
Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) 30th Annual
Convention................................................... 232
Statement from The Reparationist Collective.................... 260
A report entitled, ``Why we need reparations for Black
Americans,'' Brookings....................................... 262
Statement from Ms. Rosiland Davis.............................. 268
A letter from Margaret Huang, President and CEO, Southern
Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Action Fund........................ 269
An article entitled, ``Tackling The Racial Wealth Gap: William
Darity's Plan For Reparations,'' wbur........................ 271
Statement from Nkechi Taifa, President and CEO, The Taifa Group
LLC.......................................................... 275
Statement from The Reparationist Collective.................... 292
Statement from Wade Henderson, President & CEO, The Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human Rights......................... 293
An article entitled, ``We Need To Discuss The Racial Wealth Gap
and Reparations,'' Forbes.................................... 301
A bill analysis of California Assembly Bill 3121............... 307
An article entitled, ``Campaign Unveils Hidden History of
Slavery in California,'' Next City........................... 312
Text of California Assembly Bill 3121.......................... 315
A bill analysis of California Assembly Bill 3121, Senator
Hannah-Beth Jackson, Chair, Senate Judiciary Committee,
California State Senate...................................... 321
An article entitled, ``California Once Tried to Ban Black
People,'' History............................................ 346
An article entitled, ``Pacific Bound: California's 1852
Fugitive Slave Law,'' BlackPast.............................. 349
An article entitled, ``What HR40 Gets Wrong and Why,'' Actify
Press........................................................ 356
An article entitled, ``A Compelling Argument for `True'
Reparations for the American Slave Nation and The Descendants
of American Slaves,'' Gerald A. Higginbotham................. 365
Statement from Jeffery Robinson, Deputy Legal Director, ACLU... 370
A study entitled, ``Harvard Study: Reparations for slavery
could have reduced COVID-19 infections and deaths in US,''
Harvard Medical School....................................... 373
Statement from Hashim Ali Jabar OdoKhan-El..................... 379
Statement from Rev. Aundreia Alexander, Associate General
Secretary for Action and Advocacy for Justice and Peace,
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA........ 381
Statement submitted by the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Member
of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and
Civil Liberties from the State of Texas........................ 382
H.R. 40: EXPLORING THE PATH TO REPARATIVE JUSTICE IN AMERICA
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February 17, 2021
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 10:04 a.m. via
Webex, Hon. Steve Cohen [chair of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Cohen, Nadler, Raskin, Ross,
Johnson of Georgia, Garcia, Bush, Jackson Lee, Johnson of
Louisiana, McClintock, Fischbach, and Owens.
Staff Present: David Greengrass, Senior Counsel; John Doty,
Senior Advisor; Madeline Strasser, Chief Clerk; Moh Sharma,
Member Services and Outreach Advisor; Jordan Dashow,
Professional Staff Member; John Williams, Parliamentarian;
James Park, Chief Counsel, Constitution, Civil Rights, and
Civil Liberties; Keenan Keller, Senior Counsel; Will Emmons,
Professional Staff Member, Constitution, Civil Rights, and
Civil Liberties; Matt Morgan, Counsel, Constitution, Civil
Rights, and Civil Liberties; James Lesinski, Minority Counsel;
Sarah Trentman, Minority Senior Professional Staff Member; and
Kiley Bidelman, Minority Clerk.
Mr. Cohen. Good morning, everybody. This is ``H.R. 40:
Exploring the Path to Reparative Justice.'' I hereby call the
meeting to order. I am Congressman Cohen. The Committee on the
Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and
Civil Liberties will come to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare
recesses of the Subcommittee at any time.
I welcome everyone to today's meeting on H.R. 40. Before we
begin, I remind Members that we have established an email list
and distribution list dedicated to circulating exhibits,
motions, or other written materials that Members might want to
offer as part of our hearings today. If you would like to
submit materials, please send them to
[email protected], and we will have them distributed
to Members and staff as quickly as possible.
I will now recognize myself for an opening statement.
The enslavement of people of African-American descent in
America was started before we were a country, in 1619, and it
has gone on through the end of the Civil War. This has been a
crime against humanity, and the effects it has had on our
society, and on African Americans in general, continue to cause
difficulties for people in America, everything from racial
inequality, economic opportunities which have been manifest,
and disparate health outcomes which have been so sad and come
to much light recently but gone on for centuries, and to the
plague of unjustified police violence against Black Americans.
Slavery was our Nation's original sin. Our Constitution
protected it, embodying various compromises, and it gave
disproportionate power to slave States. For example, the three-
fifths clause, which we always hear about, counted a slave as
three-fifths of a person for population counts, which in turn
gave disproportionate representation to slave States in the
House of Representatives and, accordingly, in the electoral
college, which was created as a way to elect the President.
That gave slave States another avenue to exercise
disproportionate influence over national affairs.
In essence, slaves counted for three-fifths towards the
representation in Congress and the electoral college, but it
gave slaves nothing. It gave their masters something, and it
gave them more power. So, Congress wasn't made up of
representation of people who had rights and who were free
people. It was representative in the South of people who
didn't, and then it was a compromise that stained our
Constitution.
It is only fitting then that in the midst of a continued
reckoning over police treatment of Black people and a pandemic
that has disproportionately impacted Black Americans, that we
should hold this hearing today on H.R. 40, the Commission to
Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans
Act.
Our colleague, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who is a
member of the subcommittee, is the current lead sponsor of this
legislation. I am proud to be and have been an original
cosponsor ever since I came to Congress in 2007. Chair Nadler
is with us, who is also a longtime cosponsor of the bill.
The greatest credit for H.R. 40 belongs really to two
individuals. First and foremost, our former colleague and the
former chair of the House Judiciary Committee, my friend, my
mentor, and my political father when I came to Congress, the
late John Conyers, Jr. He first introduced this legislation
over 30 years ago and reintroduced it every Congress thereafter
until his retirement. He named it H.R. 40 for the promise that
was given slaves after the Civil War for having 40 acres and a
mule, and that is where H.R. 40 came from. John Conyers was a
great man and a great leader and is properly remembered here
today.
The second individual most responsible for H.R. 40 is,
unfortunately, one of the most despised characters in American
history, John Wilkes Booth. Why John Wilkes Booth? Because when
he assassinated Abraham Lincoln that led to Andrew Johnson
becoming President of the United States, and President Johnson
effectively rescinded the promise made by General William
Tecumseh Sherman to former slaves that they would each be
guaranteed that 40 acres of land and that mule, that each
person, when they become free, as free persons, the promise
that is colloquially referred to as 40 acres and a mule. That
ended with the assassination of President Lincoln, and it
really started off serious problems in our country and
shortchanged the newly freed Americans.
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 effects of slavery 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 those findings.
I want to digress for a minute and mention a hearing we
had, it might have been the first full hearing we had on H.R.
40, back in about 2007 or 2008. One of our witnesses was
Charles Ogletree, one of the giants in the courtroom and within
the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He said at that time H.R. 40 was
a study of reparations. It may not be the 2lst century
equivalent of 40 acres and a mule, and the 21st century
equivalent, he said, was an SUV and a condo. He said it might
be gigantic programs to help people, particularly African
Americans, but others who have been disproportionately affected
in healthcare and economic opportunity, et cetera.
An honest reckoning with the Federal Government's role in
protecting the institution of slavery has been the leading
priority of my congressional career. Back in 2007, I introduced
H. Res. 194--that was my first year in Congress--an apology by
the House of Representatives for its role in perpetuating both
slavery and its noxious offspring, Jim Crow. The House
ultimately passed that resolution that year with the help of
Chair, Mr. Conyers, who put it on the suspension calendar, and
we passed it in 2008 by a voice vote.
As I noted in my resolution, it was not just slavery itself
that was wrong but also the visceral racism against persons of
African descent upon which American slavery depended, a racism
long that had become entrenched in the Nation's social fabric,
an evil that we must continue to confront today.
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.
The Senate passed a resolution similar to ours but not
quite the same in the following Congress. We, unfortunately,
didn't pass them at the same time and have a joint resolution,
but the Senate passed an apology as well, and that was a good
Act by the Senate. It is unfortunate we weren't able to put
them together.
I watched a couple of movies in the last couple of days,
Chadwick Boseman's movies about Jackie Robinson and one about
Thurgood Marshall, and in those movies I was so affected by
what you saw. I know they are movies, but they reflected life.
The racism that Jackie Robinson faced getting into baseball,
that was 1947 when he was with Montreal and then the Dodgers,
racism from the coaches, from the other players, and from the
fans, it was just disgusting.
Thurgood Marshall faced the same thing up in Connecticut
when he and Mr. Friedman were representing a criminal
defendant. Mr. Friedman faced it too. Some of the racists that
took actions against African Americans took it out against the
Jewish man, too, the attorney, calling him a kike and beating
him up.
There has been a whole lot of horror in our Nation's past
and a lot of it has been racism that still we suffer from.
Racism became further entrenched after slavery's end as
reflected in the societal attitudes and Jim Crow laws, a system
of racial segregation laws intended to separate unequal
societies for Whites and African Americans that was a force
through both official means, which I, unfortunately, saw as a
young child, colored water fountains, colored restrooms,
colored sections at the football stadium, Mr. Owens.
When I went to the football stadium here in Memphis, the
place for African Americans to sit for the big SEC football
games was in the end zone, in the lower corner, in the lower
ten rows. The only thing they could have done to make the seats
worse was to put a hot dog stand in front to interfere with the
vision. It was just unbelievable what they did, the unequal
opportunities.
There was also lynchings, even worse, and they were
advertised, and people came to watch the lynchings and get body
parts and to cheer. It was disgusting. This was around the turn
of the century and through the 1900s. There was violence,
intimidation, and disenfranchising, mostly in the South but
other places as well.
It was not until a hundred years after the end of slavery
that Congress, under pressure from the civil rights movement,
Thurgood Marshall's work, Dr. King's work, Bayard Rustin, and
others, finally carried out its duty to end Jim Crow by passing
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
and other core civil rights statutes that are fulfilling the
Constitution's guarantee of equal citizenship for all.
While those great civil rights leaders were greatly
responsible for the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, and
certainly our late colleague John Lewis was too, something that
sometimes is forgotten in those facts is that the assassination
of John Kennedy, a second assassination of an American
President--although we had others in between, President
McKinley--but President Kennedy's assassination led to an
outpouring of support for these acts that Lyndon Johnson was
able to help bring into legislation. He nurtured them and
brought them forth. While the assassination of Abraham Lincoln
hurt the effort at having the opportunity, the assassination of
John Kennedy, unfortunately, helped it.
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 future.
For instance, according to the Census Bureau, 18.8 percent
of African Americans lived in poverty in 2019, compared to 7.3
percent of non-Hispanic Whites who lived in poverty. The
Washington Post reported last year that in 2016, the net worth
of African-American households was $13,024, which was less than
10 percent--less than 10 percent--of the $149,000 net worth of
non-Hispanic White households.
Limited access to wealth-building resources and
opportunities have led to this stark disparity. For instance,
African Americans continue to face discrimination in the
workplace. They also have limited access to educational
opportunities, according to the National Education Association.
The high school graduation rate for African Americans was 67
percent compared to the nationwide
average of 81 percent. They also continue to face racial
segregation in housing and discrimination in the availability
of quality healthcare services and most other facts of life.
The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the effect of
the structural racial disparities--workers on the front lines
at low-paying jobs often not covered by unions in the South,
collective bargaining and lower wages and contact with people
on the front lines where COVID-19 has spread.
Enacting H.R. 40 would be an important step in finding
effective long-term solutions to these problems, ones that can
trace their origins to our Nation's shameful history of slavery
and anti-Black racism.
Professor Ogletree of Harvard noted, as I mentioned
earlier, about the 40 acres and a mule, but he also put a focus
on the poorest of the poor, including efforts to address
comprehensively the problems of those who have not
substantially benefited from integration or affirmative action.
I hope our hearing today can lead to a fruitful conversation
with the hope of achieving that goal.
I thank our witnesses for being here today and look forward
to their testimony.
At this point in our hearing we would normally recognize
the Ranking Member. The Ranking Member is Mr. Johnson, but
today Mr. Burgess Owens, a new member from the State of Utah, I
believe will serve as Ranking Member, and I will recognize Mr.
Owens for his opening statement.
Mr. Owens. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
On June 19, 2019, I was honored to testify before this
Committee as a witness for the hearing on ``H.R. 40 and the
Path to Restorative Justice.'' Little did I know that a little
less than 2 years later I would, once again, participate in
this hearing of this subcommittee, this time as a member.
I want to thank Ranking Member Johnson for the honor of
acting as Ranking Member for this hearing. I want to again
thank Chair Cohen, my fellow Committee Members, and invited
guests for this opportunity to share my story with you today.
Before I share my story, let me emphasize three points to
help guide us through our discussion.
First, let me reiterate that slavery was and still is evil,
whether it be the 83-year history of our Nation or the prior
2,000-year history or the presence around the world today.
Incompatible with American ideals, we purged the stain from our
Nation's soul at the cost of 600,000 American lives.
I am a product of that evil practice. My great-great-
grandfather, Silas, arrived here in the belly of a slave ship,
sold to the Burgess Plantation. He escaped through the
Underground Railroad and died a successful entrepreneur, built
the first Black church, elementary, purchased 102 acres of
farmland that he paid off in 2 years.
Second, reparations is not the way to right our country's
wrong. What I propose later will be more lasting.
Third, it is impractical and a nonstarter for the United
States Government to pay reparations. It is also unfair and
heartless to give Black Americans the hope that this is a
reality.
The reality is that Black-American history is not one of a
hapless, hopeless race oppressed by a more powerful White race.
Instead a history of millions of middle- and wealthy-class
Black Americans throughout the early 20th century achieving
their American Dream.
We are discussing this morning the theory of reparation. It
is nothing new. It has been tried over the last hundred years,
resulting in the misery and death of over a hundred million
men, women, and children. It is called the redistribution of
wealth or socialism.
Instead of that theory, I would like to share the reality
of a race whose history of success in America has been stolen
and what we can do to repair that damage.
I grew up in the Deep South, Tallahassee, Florida, in the
1950s and 1960s, the days of KKK, Jim Crow, and segregation. It
was my community that was our Nation's most competitive
community. We believed and taught the love of God, country,
family, respect for women, authority. We believed in commanding
respect through meritocracy, not just in sports and
entertainment but in every discipline, math, science,
exploration, innovation, farming, and entrepreneurship.
We had a reputation as a race for our courage and
commitment. We led our country in the growth of the middle
class during that period. Men matriculated from college. Men
committed to marriage, over 70 percent. The percentage of
entrepreneurs was over 40 percent.
Before we embraced the theory that real success was moving
out of our community and integrating into White neighborhoods,
businesses, and schools, our community turned within. I
remember as a young man Perkins service stations, Speed's
Grocery Store, Baker's Pharmacy, FAMU Hospital with only Black
doctors and nurses, when 50 to 60 percent of Black Americans in
the 1960s nationwide lived the middle-class lifestyle.
We were taught respect for our flag and raised by a
generation of men who fought for it. They taught us that you
can't demand or beg for respect, you can only command respect
through merito-cracy.
We were taught pride in our history, both American and
Black history. We were taught about Crispus Attucks, America's
first freedom martyr in the Revolutionary War, the Tuskegee
Airmen, and over a hundred thousand Black men, including my
father, who fought against the godless ideologies of Marxism,
socialism, and communism. We were taught to recognize and
appreciate progress.
I entered the NFL in 1973, at a time there were no Black
quarterbacks, Black centers, or Black middle linebackers. They
were ``White thinking men'' positions. Forty years later, our
Nation has elected a Black American as President and a Black
female as Vice President. It is called progress.
Once we lose our history, we lose pride in our past,
appreciation for our present, and the vision for our future. If
we are sincere about repaying Black Americans for our loss,
let's give us back our history. That includes the history of
we, the people, whose Judeo-Christian values have granted every
generation the opportunity to look at each other better from
the inside out, not outside in.
In doing so, you will ensure pride within our race. As we
accept our lineage as victors, this same history will command
the respect from our fellow Americans, an example of how to
overcome the most overwhelming odds.
The most important thing is that we realize the failure
that is happening today is the failure not of the American
system, not of free markets, not of the faith and the neighbor
and the family system. It is the failure of policies. We have
75 percent of Black boys in the State of California in 2017,
they cannot pass standard reading and writing tests. We have
three schools in Baltimore that have zero--Black schools in
Baltimore have zero proficiency in math. Ten years ago we had
92 percent of the Black teen males in Chicago unemployed.
These are policies, policies we can change, but we first
need to recognize and understand the pride of my race, the
pride of those who came before us, and that they cannot be
forgotten or disappear because they worked too hard to command
the respect of our fellow Americans.
I feel if we do that, we change our policies so that the
American, the Black-American youth and generations can take
advantage of the same things that all other Americans can do
so, then we will take again our place as being one of the most
impressive races in our Nation.
With that, I yield back.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Owens. Appreciate your
opening statement. I hope you see my lapel pin here,
recognition for Miami. Love of the Canes.
Mr. Owens. There you go.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you.
I would now like to recognize Chair of our Full Committee,
Mr. Nadler, for his opening statement.
Chair Nadler. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Today's hearing on ``H.R. 40: Exploring the Path to
Reparative 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 Chair of the House
Judiciary Committee, John Conyers of Michigan, introduced H.R.
40, which would establish a commission to study proposals for
slavery reparations. Our colleague, the gentlewoman from Texas,
Ms. Jackson Lee, has taken up sponsorship of this legislation,
and I am pleased to be an original cosponsor.
H.R. 40 is intended to begin a national conversation about
how to confront the brutal mistreatment of African Americans
during chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the enduring
structural racism that remains endemic to our society today.
Even long after slavery was abolished, the anti-Black
racism that undergirded it reflected and defined part of our
Nation's attitudes, shaping its policies and institutions.
Today we still 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. These disparities in terms of disproportionate
burdens on African Americans have only been exacerbated by the
COVID-19 pandemic.
It is important to recognize that H.R. 40 makes no
conclusion about how to properly atone for and make recompense
for the legacy of slavery and its lingering consequences. It
does not mandate financial payments of any kind, and it does
not prejudge the outcome of the commission's work.
Instead, it sets forth a process by which a diverse group
of experts and stakeholders can study the complex issues
involved and make recommendations. In fact, most serious
reparations models that have been proposed to date have focused
on reparative community-based programs of employment,
healthcare, housing, and educational 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 the rising tide
of racial and ethnic division. On January 6, we saw the ugly
confluence of such division, as White nationalist groups
appeared to be among those playing a central role in the
violent assault on the United States Capitol. Last summer we
saw an outpouring of protests stemming from the killings of
unarmed Black people by police.
White nationalism and police-community conflict are just
part of the long legacy of anti-Black racism that has shaped
our Nation's views, institutions, and societal attitudes. That
racism and division 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 in the hope that one day all
Americans can work together toward a more just future. I hope
that the commission established by H.R. 40 can help us better
comprehend our own history and bring us closer to racial
understanding and advancement.
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
reparative 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.
A discussion of reparations is a journey in which the road
traveled is almost more important than the exact destination. I
am pleased that the Subcommittee is beginning this process
today, and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Nadler.
Mr. Owens, do you need time for a Ranking Member statement
or are we going to proceed on to Ms. Jackson Lee?
Mr. Owens. Let's go ahead and proceed on to Ms. Jackson
Lee. We will proceed.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, sir.
One of the Members of our Committee and the sponsor of this
resolution is Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee from Houston,
Texas. She was largely responsible for the formation of the
panelists on this dais as well as the driving force behind this
resolution today, taking the leadership that John Conyers left
to be picked up, just as she took the leadership of Barbara
Jordan. She has picked up many great tasks.
Ms. Jackson Lee will be recognized now for an opening
statement, and at some point later on she will take my spot as
the chair of this Committee for the time that I have to be
vacant.
Ms. Jackson Lee, you are recognized for an opening
statement.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chair, thank you so very much. Thank
you for your great leadership and ongoing support and your
history of righting the wrongs of racial injustice in this
Nation.
Thank you very much, Mr. Nadler, for your consistent
support of this legislation, beginning with our beloved late
colleague, John Conyers.
To my colleagues on the committee, on the Constitution
Subcommittee, I am appreciative of your graciousness as well in
joining us in this hearing.
Thank you very much to our Ranking Member, both Mr. Johnson
and the gentleman from Colorado, I believe. Thank him very much
for his statement today.
This is what this hearing is about, to be able to speak to
the Nation and for the Nation to continue its overwhelming
support that it has given to H.R. 40. That has been one of the
comforting aspects of continuing to carry this legislation, how
to speak in support of H.R. 40 and the legislation that I
introduce that establishes a Commission to Study and Develop
Reparation Proposals for African Americans. It is an active
commission. It is a study, but it is also to develop reparation
proposals.
Now, we come from a community, a race of people that have
been known as overcomers. We shall overcome, and we have
overcome. Mr. Owens has eloquently spoken of the overcomers. We
are successful. We believe in determination. We believe in
overcoming the many bad balls that we have been thrown. We have
caught them, and we have kept on going.
That is not the point of H.R. 40, the Commission to Study
and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans. For
hidden in the corners of this Nation are those of African-
American heritage, the descendants of enslaved Africans, who
have felt the sting of disparities. They continue to feel that
sting.
Now more than ever the facts and circumstances facing our
Nation demonstrate the importance of H.R. 40 and the necessity
of placing our Nation on the path to reparative justice.
That is what H.R. 40 is about. This commission will probe
into the facts of the longstanding impact of disparities that
slavery brought about in this country. We still experience them
today.
When this Committee last met to discuss this legislation,
we required three overflow rooms to contain the scholarship and
the passion displayed in support of this bill. I am very
pleased to say that we have had over 170 cosponsors, close to
that now, and those Members of Congress, I want to thank them
personally, because there are a wide perspective and spectrum
of political views, from progressives to moderates to
conservatives, coming from all regions of the United States,
all racial backgrounds. That is America. That is what repair is
all about, reparative justice.
Since that time, we have seen a pandemic sweep the country,
taking more than 500,000 souls in its wake and devastating the
African-American community. According to the latest estimate
from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, Black people get
COVID-19 at a rate nearly one and a half times higher than that
of White people. They are hospitalized at a rate nearly four
times higher than them and are three times as likely to die
from the disease. We have seen it in our cities and our rural
communities across America.
Interestingly enough, a recent peer-reviewed study from
Harvard Medical School suggests that reparations for African
Americans could have cut COVID-19 transmission and infection
rates both among Blacks and the population at large. Their
analysis, based on Louisiana data, determined that if
reparation proposals had been implemented before the COVID-19
pandemic, narrowing the wealth gap, COVID-19 transmission rates
in the States' overall population could have been reduced by
anywhere from 31 to 68 percent.
Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent to submit into the
record the Harvard article.
Mr. Cohen. Without objection, it shall be entered.
[The information follows:]
MS. JACKSON LEE FOR THE OFFICIAL RECORD
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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Jackson Lee. Since our last hearing, we have also seen
hundreds of thousands peacefully take to the streets in support
of Black lives and accountability for law enforcement. Many of
these protestors carried signs in support of H.R. 40 and made
the important link between policing reform and the movement for
reparative justice.
Tragically, we have also witnessed insurrectionists attack
this institution, brandishing symbols of division and
intolerance that echo back to the darkest periods of our
Nation's history. Clearly, we require reckoning to restore
national balance and unity.
The government sanctioned slavery. That is what we need, a
reckoning, a healing, reparative justice. We need to bring our
Nation together. This commission is really, it is no figment of
your imagination. It is a commission that will be appointed by
the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, the Speaker of
the House, the President of the United States, a commission
that will be funded for fact-based hearings, the opportunity
for all people to be heard, and then, yes, reparative healing
proposals to deal with the questions of the starkness of the
life of African Americans in this country.
Like our last hearing, the minority has selected two
African-American witnesses to speak against H.R. 40. That is
their privilege. We know that justice, facts, and that life
that was led and continues to be led by African Americans is on
our side. Their selection, however, fails to undermine the
overwhelming support for this legislation and merely
demonstrates the multiplicity of views within the Black
community.
I would ask unanimous consent to submit into the record a
message from the CARICOM Reparations Commission on the occasion
of the United States congressional hearing on H.R. 40, Bill 17,
February 17, 2021. Mr. Chair, I ask for that permission.
Mr. Cohen. Without dissent, it is so granted. So entered.
[The information follows:]
MS. JACKSON LEE FOR THE OFFICIAL RECORD
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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
I also ask, Mr. Chair, as I conclude, for the submission of
the ``Why We Can't Wait'' letter, because the question that Dr.
King asked is relevant today, why we can't wait. It has been
signed, Mr. Chair, by more than 300 organizations from varying
backgrounds, racial backgrounds, including Japanese Americans,
rabbinical associations, individuals from the diocese of the
Episcopalians, the NAACP, Urban League, and many others.
As I conclude, I ask my colleagues to recognize that what
we speak of today is based on the continuing impact of the
brutality of slavery.
As I close, I need you to take a look at what I offer to
put into the record. This was our life, the back of a beaten
slave. This was our life into the 20th century, pain of African
Americans, men and women. This was our life. This was our life
when we were in public display, brutalized. Our life was also
the Tulsa riots where 300 African Americans were buried in an
unmarked grave.
So, Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent for those pictures
of lynching that continued into the 20th century and offer to
say that I conclude my remarks by saying this is a potent and
powerful hearing today, and I am glad that we are responding to
the majority of Americans who see the value in H.R. 40, the
Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals.
I yield back, Mr. Chair. I ask unanimous consent that the
pictures be submitted into the record.
[The information follows:]
MS. JACKSON LEE FOR THE OFFICIAL RECORD
=======================================================================
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Ms. Jackson Lee. Those will be
entered into the record. Without objection.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chair. Thank
you. I look forward to hearing from the witnesses.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Ms. Jackson Lee.
We will welcome our witnesses and thank all of them for
participating. There are eight witnesses, six picked on the
Democratic side and two on the Republican side. While I won't
be here for some of the testimony, Mr. Herschel Walker's in
particular, I was a fan of his except when he played the
Memphis Tigers or the Memphis, I think it was the Grizzlies, or
whoever we were in the league in the USFL.
I would like to welcome all of our witnesses and let you
know that your testimony is--if you would like, summarize your
testimony in 5 minutes. Normally we have lights to tell you
whether you have got 4 minutes or more to go, a green light; 1
minute, a yellow one; and a red light to say your time is up.
With this system, we will have timing on your screen to tell
you how much time you have left. Please try to keep your
statements to simply 5 minutes.
All of our witnesses have a legal obligation to provide
truthful testimony and answers to this subcommittee, and any
false statement you make today may subject you to prosecution
under section 1001 of title 18 of the United States Code.
Also, I would like to note that we have scheduled
testimony, we had, from former Congressman and Cabinet
Secretary Norman Mineta. Unfortunately, we were informed
yesterday he is very ill and not able to participate today. I
wish him a full and speedy recovery.
Our first witness is Shirley Weber. She is the California
secretary of state, a position she has held since December of
2020, a newbie. She previously served as a member of the
California State Assembly, representing the 79th Assembly
District, including portions of San Diego, after having been
elected in 2012.
Before that she served on the San Diego Board of Education
as a professor of African-American studies at San Diego State
University.
She received her Ph.D. in communications, as well as her
master's and bachelor's degrees, from UCLA.
Secretary Weber, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF SHIRLEY N. WEBER
Ms. Weber. Thank you very much. I want to thank Chair
Nadler, Chair Cohen, and Ranking Member Johnson, as well as
thank Congresswoman Jackson Lee, for inviting me to be with you
this morning.
As pointed out, I am currently the secretary of State for
the State of California, the first African American who has
ever held that position in the 170-year history of the State of
California. So, I come to you today as the author also last
year when I was in the assembly of AB 3121, a reparations bill.
For us in California, we are very clear that we need not
ask whether or not slavery has had an impact, but instead
illuminate the extent to which it has had an impact. We are
through AB 3121, which is law in California, establishing the
Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for
African Americans. It will consist of experts and study
slavery's impact, educate Californians, compile a report of
their findings, and provide information and recommendations to
our legislature as to what we need to do to repair the damage
done as a result of slavery.
The body that will exist, the task force, it will encompass
experts in fields such as history, ethnography, law, and civil
rights. But, more importantly, the body will consist of those
who understand how we as Californians still reap the
consequences of slavery both nationally and in our own State.
California's history with slavery is often not well known,
but between the statehood in 1850 and the end of slavery in
1865, California, though named a free State, had many laws and
rules and regulations that basically made it a haven for
slavery.
The California Legislature authorized Southern slaveholders
to hold persons in bondage so long as they entered the State
under an enslaved property State. We did not provide sanctuary
to any slave who ran who was basically seeking freedom. In
1852, we adopted one of the most harsh fugitive slave laws in
the country, encompassing State and local law enforcement or
authorities to enforce self-emancipated persons living within
the State back into slavery.
The California Supreme Court ordered fugitive slaves, as in
the case of Archy Lee, to return to their enslavers in direct
violation of California's law. Until the end of the Civil War,
California's city, county, and law enforcement authorities
enforced the Fugitive Slave Law. They enforced also a contract
labor system that was no more than a slaveholder's effort to
maintain their slaves in bondage.
In other words, California State, county, and city
authorities actively supported the institution of Black slavery
both within and beyond the borders of California.
So, this history is often not a part of California's lore,
that we somehow or another believed that California was this
free State and had no discrimination that existed in the State
of California.
It should be noted not only that every attempt that has
been made by African Americans to attain wealth that was
enjoyed by others has been met with violence in this Nation,
not only involved the Black Wall Street in Oklahoma but also
the Allensworth story in California. We have not only taken
away the good part that African Americans have started, but the
campaign of terror met by African Americans has tactics such as
fearmongering, lynchings, discriminatory voting laws, lower
wages, denied home ownership, and these tactics have led to
inequalities and the reality in California.
According to Governor Newsom in the 2020 State of the State
Address, Black Californians, we make up only 8 percent of
California's population, yet we make up 43 percent of the
homeless population in California. We also make up only 5.6
percent of the male population of California, yet we make up 28
percent of those who are incarcerated, Black men who are
incarcerated.
It also shows us, by any indication, that African-American
children, despite the fact that they have been in California
for many years, continue to perform at the lowest level that is
possible. Of course, COVID-19 has emphasized to all of us, just
the disparities that exist in California in terms of the deaths
and the health system that has failed us all.
In sum, the age of enslavement, both in California and
across the Nation, birthed a legacy of racial harm and
inequality that continues to impact the conditions of Black
life in California. People have suffered various injuries and
losses through the malicious culpability, negligence, and
conduct of others and we have the right to redress.
Interestingly enough, as California has, we have had
reparations in many areas throughout California and this
Nation, and yet none have felt the need to provide it for
African Americans. The task force is currently being
established. We hope that the recommendations that will come
forth will be recommendations that will begin to repair the
damage done to us in California.
By no means does this mean that there should not be Federal
reparations in any sense. The law clearly states that. Out of
all due respect, Californians can no longer wait for the
national government to do its job. We believe that we must do
what is necessary for Californians and be an example of what
can happen in this Nation when there is serious discussions and
research done on African Americans and the impact of slavery.
We hope that the Nation will join California in forming a
task force to be able to address the issue of reparations and
the damage that has been done and continues to be done as a
result of the engagement in slavery.
Thank you so very much.
[The statement of Ms. Weber follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Madam Secretary.
Our next witness is--and going to have work with me on the
pronunciation--Tendayi Achiume. If I am wrong, I apologize.
She is a professor of law at UCLA and the U.N. Special
Rappor-teur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. Her work
focuses on the global governance of racism and xenophobia and
the legal and ethical implications of colonialism for
contemporary international migration. More generally, her
research and teaching interests lie in international human
rights law, international refugee law, international migration,
and property.
She earned her J.D. and her B.A. from Yale University and
then moved on to sunny southern California.
Professor, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF E. TENDAYI ACHIUME
Ms. Achiume. Thank you very much.
Congresspersons, it is a privilege to address you today. I
am professor of law at UCLA School of Law, where I am a core
faculty member of the Promise Institute for Human Rights and
the Critical Race Studies Program, and my areas of expertise
include international human rights law and the global
governance of racism.
I am also the United Nations Special Rapporteur on
Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia
and Related Intolerance. In this role, I am an independent
expert who is appointed to provide counsel to U.N. member
states regarding, among other things, the meaning of their
obligations under international human rights law to combat
racism, racial discrimination, and to promote racial equality.
My testimony today is drawn to a great extent from a report
I presented to the United Nation General Assembly in 2019 on
the urgency of reparations for racial discrimination rooted in
transatlantic slavery and colonialism.
International law recognizes reparations as necessary for
rectifying wrongful acts and providing accountability for human
rights violations. Within the international legal system,
reparations entail a specific framework and responses, which I
describe in full in my written testimony. Briefly, within the
system reparations are defined broadly to require restitution,
compensation, satisfaction, rehabilitation, and guarantees of
nonreputation.
Popular conceptions of reparations are often fairly narrow,
focusing only on financial compensation. By contrast, the
international system places emphasis on a more comprehensive
approach, according to which financial compensation may
certainly be necessary but not sufficient. Other required
measures may include transforming the political, economic, and
social institutions and mechanisms for disclosing truth and
restoring dignity for those subject to racial subordination
resulting from legacies of enslavement.
Notably, general measures, such as social welfare programs
that benefit racially subordinated groups, including people of
African descent, that are pursued in the ordinary conduct of
government, are not a substitute for reparations. Fulfillment
of State reparative responsibilities requires tailored
interventions that are rooted in acknowledgement of the
underlying harm of violations these interventions seek to
remedy.
In the context of racial discrimination rooted in slavery,
reparations address two sets of human rights. First, the
historic racial injustices of slavery that remain largely
unaccounted for today. Second, the contemporary racially
discriminatory effect of structures of inequality and
subordination that have resulted from failures to address the
racism of slavery and of colonialism.
There is broad consensus in the international community
that the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery
in general did not terminate the racial discriminatory
structures built by those practices. The consensus is that
transatlantic slavery and colonialism remain among the root
causes of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and
related intolerance against Africans and people of African
descent.
As a result, in addition to implicating individual wrongful
acts in the past, reparations for slavery implicate entire
legal, economic, social, and political structures that enabled
slavery and which continue to sustain racial discrimination and
inequality today.
This means that the urgent project of providing reparations
for slavery requires governments not only to fulfill remedial
obligations resulting from specific historic wrongful acts, but
also to transform contemporary structures of racial injustice
and of inequality and discrimination that are the product of
centuries of slavery.
National commissions such as those proposed by H.R. 40 are
well positioned to tailor recommendations to specific legal
contexts which sustain racial inequality. In the United States,
the history of transatlantic slavery has left an indelible
mark. The continued presence of racism, racial discrimination,
ideologies of racial superiority in U.S. legal, political,
social, and economic structures underscores the interconnection
between the historical wrongs of slavery and contemporary
injustices.
I have joined other U.N. experts in noting that reparations
are not just useful mechanisms for fulfilling moral or
political obligations. Rather, reparations for slavery are an
integral part of fulfilling the international legal mandate to
eliminate racial discrimination. The United States is not
exempt from these responsibilities, and H.R. 40 would represent
important progress in fulfilling its obligations under
international law.
Reparations for racial discrimination rooted in the
transatlantic slave trade have proven controversial in the
countries that bear the greatest responsibility for the
associated violation. In cases where states have pursued
reparations for slavery and colonialism, they have done so in
racially discriminatory ways. Notable historical examples exist
where Whites who have profited and benefited the most from
chattel slavery and colonialism receive monetary compensation,
while non-Whites and their nations were partially or wholly
left without redress.
The reparations commission proposed by H.R. 40 presents an
opportunity for the United States to show international
leadership on what can be achieved when sufficient political
will exists to remedy historic and persisting racial injustice
associated with the enslavement of people of African descent.
Among the most significant barriers to the pursuit of
reparations for people of African descent in the United States
and elsewhere is the absence of comprehensive accounting of the
harms of slavery, and the reparations commission would provide
the foundation for this accounting.
Thank you very much.
[The statement of Ms. Achiume follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Thank you very much, Professor. I appreciate
your lifelong studies and your work and your passion and your
participation.
Our next witness is Kathy Masaoka. Ms. Masaoka is co-chair
of Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress. Since 1971 she has
worked on youth, workers, housing, and redress issues in the
Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles. She is a graduate of the
University of California, Berkeley.
Ms. Masaoka, you are recognized. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF KATHY MASAOKA
Ms. Masaoka. Good morning, Chairperson, Ranking Member of
the committee, and Members of the committee.
The Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, NCRR, and Nikkei
Progressives support H.R. 40 and the Black community's demand
for reparations because, one, it is the right thing to do; two,
it is long overdue; and, three, because we know it is possible.
We won reparations in 1988.
Japanese Americans were not the first to make that demand.
The Black community has long demanded reparations. In 1963,
Queen Mother Audley Moore, the mother of the modern day
reparations movement, launched a campaign claiming back pay for
descendants of enslaved people as well as job quotas and
training. Groups like the Self-Determination Committee formed
in 1956, and along with the National Coalition of Blacks for
Reparations in America and the National African American
Reparations Committee have called for reparations for the
institution and legacy of slavery.
H.R. 40, as you know, has a long history, thanks to late
Congressman John Conyers. Even before the Civil War and since
emancipation, individual Black Americans fought for and won
limited reparations.
Our community's demand for reparations did not arise by
itself, but was inspired by the Black community's fight for
civil and equal rights in housing, education, and more. Their
sacrifices and leadership opened the doors for us and gave us
the strength to demand redress and reparations from the U.S.
Government.
We have to acknowledge the generous support of many Black
groups and individuals who supported us in our campaign for
redress, like Congressman Mervyn Dymally, who authored a
Japanese-American redress bill in 1982, Representative Ron
Dellums who spoke in support of the bill, and the Congressional
Black Caucus, and many others, including then California
Assemblywoman Maxine Waters and the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
H.R. 40 is an important first step towards reparations for
the Black community. In 1981, when the Commission on Wartime
Relocation and Internment of Civilians, the CWRIC, a commission
to study if a wrong had been committed, was first proposed,
many of us, including me, were against it, angry that the
injustice of the concentration camps was even a question. We
soon understood that this was an opportunity for many former
incarcerees to speak out about their feelings and experiences
they had held inside for 40 years.
So, the community swung into action to mobilize testifiers
for the hearings. NCRR played a key role in organizing
grassroots support within the Japanese-American community,
insisting that former incarcerees speak at the hearings instead
of just having experts or academics testify.
Many of the Sansei, third-generation Japanese Americans
like myself and children of the incarcerees, organized this
effort. We heard anger, sadness, pain, and strength as we
listened to stories we had never heard before. None of us could
stop listening. It was an opportunity to begin the healing
process for our elders, ourselves, and for the entire
community.
More importantly, it was a chance for those incarcerated to
express their own demands for income and freedoms lost, for
babies who had died, for dignity taken away, and much more.
These hearings brought our Issei, Nisei, and Sansei, first,
second, and third generations, together to build a grassroots
campaign, educate others about the incarceration, and reach out
to other communities to win reparations.
Moreover, the hearings solidified our determination to hold
our government accountable and to continue the campaign no
matter how long it took. We saw individual reparations as a
just accounting and not as a handout.
Similarly, H.R. 40 is an opportunity for all of us to learn
about the institution and legacy of slavery and its destructive
impact that continues today on the Black community. This is a
chance for many Black voices to be heard and for the Black
community to express what kind of reparations it is owed.
What we must do is listen and learn from these stories,
from broader historical context to the most personal
testimonies of pain, trauma, and generational struggle.
It was important for Japanese Americans to determine our
own path for redress and reparations, and we fully stand behind
the Black community as they determine their own path forward.
There is no dispute that the wealth of this country was
built on the stolen lands of the indigenous people and on the
free slave labor of Black people. In other words, reparations
are owed to Black people and to the indigenous people as guided
by their communities.
The Movement for Black Lives toolkit talks about
reparations being owed in a manner and form to be determined by
Black people themselves. It must take as many forms as
necessary to equitably address the many forms of injury caused
by the institution and legacy of slavery. H.R. 40 is a
necessary first step towards justice. It is a first step
towards healing.
Thank you very much.
[The statement of Ms. Masaoka follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Ms. Masaoka. I appreciate your
testimony and your relating the experiences of Japanese
Americans and African Americans.
Our next witness is Mr. Herschel Walker. Mr. Walker is a
former professional football player, college football player,
athlete in general. He played college football at the
University of Georgia, and he won the 1982 Heisman Trophy.
In his professional football career that began in the
United States Football League with the New Jersey Jets, he
played for the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL, the Vikings, the New
York Giants--football Giants--and the Philadelphia Eagles. He
also competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics as a bobsledder and
has competed as a mixed martial artist.
He was a supporter of President Trump in 2016 and 2020,
spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
He holds a bachelor of science degree in criminal justice
studies from the University of Georgia.
Mr. Walker, you will be recognized for 5 minutes.
At this point, I need to go to the Natural Resources
Committee for an organizational meeting. Ms. Jackson Lee, if
you are there, if you will take the chair for Mr. Walker's
testimony and until I can return.
Ms. Jackson Lee?
Ms. Jackson Lee. Yes, sir, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Cohen. You are recognized.
Mr. Walker, you are recognized. You are now the acting
chair. Thank you, ma'am.
Ms. Jackson Lee. [Presiding.] Mr. Chair, I can't thank you
enough for your stupendous leadership and friendship. We will
do this together. Again, thank you for your history on all of
this. Glad to work with you and Chair Nadler. I just wanted to
interject that as you move to your other committee.
I am delighted to listen to Mr. Walker.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
Mr. Walker, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF HERSCHEL WALKER
Mr. Walker. Chair and Ranking Member, I thank you for this
opportunity to speak on reparations, which has been spoken
about many times over my lifetime, though over the past year it
has become a hot topic.
I ask the question: Why? There have been many surveys show
that a large percentage of Black and White teens will say
racism is better today than yesterday. We use Black power to
create White guilt.
My approach is Biblical. How can I ask my Heavenly Father
to forgive me if I can't forgive my brother? I never want to
put anyone's religion down, but my religion teaches
togetherness. Reparations teach separation.
Slavery ended over 130 years ago. How can a father ask his
son to spend prison time for a crime he committed? In the case
we speak of, we are researching farther back in history, a
history many are not taught or spoken about in school.
America is the greatest country in the world to me, a
melting pot, a lot of great races, a lot of great minds that
have come together with different ideas to make America the
greatest country on Earth. Many have died trying to get into
America. No one is dying trying to get out.
Reparations. Where would the money come from? Does it come
from all of the other races except the Black taxpayers? Who is
Black? What percentage of Black must you be to receive
reparations? Do you go to 23-and-Me or a DNA test to determine
the percentage of Blackness?
Some American ancestors just came to this country 80 years
ago. Their ancestors weren't even here during slavery. Some
Black immigrants weren't here during slavery nor their
ancestors. Some States didn't even have slavery.
We as Black Americans have always wanted what the
Constitution stated: All men, Black, White, and today Latino,
Asian, Italian, et cetera, should be guaranteed the
inalienability of rights of life, freedom, and the pursuit of
happiness.
Years later, after slavery ended, Dr. King's ``I Have a
Dream'' speech said the signing of the Emancipation
Proclamation was a great beacon of light, but hundreds of years
later we are still not free because of segregation and
discrimination. Today, I call that reparation.
I asked my mom, who is in her mid-eighties, her thought on
reparation. Her words, ``I do not believe in reparation. Who is
the money going to go to? Has anyone thought about paying the
families who lost someone in the Civil War who fought for their
freedom? Your dad and I taught you,'' speaking of me, ``to
provide for you and your family through a good education and
hard work.''
If you give a man a fish, you feed him a day. You teach him
to fish, you feed him a lifetime. Reparation is only feeding
you for a day. It is removing a sign of ``For Whites Only,''
replacing it with a sign for ``No Education Here.'' Black
America is asking for a hand up, not a handout.
Another big question: Who is the guilty party? Should we
start at the beginning where African-Americans sold the
African-American ancestors into slavery and to a slave trader
who eventually sold the African-American ancestors to slave
owners, the slave owners who had no success and no luck trying
to make a Native American whose land they took become their
slave because the Native American ran away.
Well, they thought it was fine then to use African
Americans who didn't know the country, didn't know the
language, didn't know the religion, and they didn't run away.
So I ask: Why reparation? Now, we are in the years 2020 and
2021, still talking about reparation, not equal education.
Not to compare a game to a horrible period in my life, but
as I fought shoulder and shoulder with my fellow football
brothers of other races, I saw struggles they were encountering
the same as I. I heard them speak to their parents of problems
my family were dealing with as well.
If a Black player would have been given something different
than another player, it would have created problems within the
team, separation and division.
Ezekiel 18:20: The righteousness of the righteous shall be
upon him. The son shall not suffer for the crime of the father,
nor the father suffer the crime of the son unless either father
or son know beforehand the father or son was a criminal.
To help any race, provide them with a good quality
education and help incentivize through opportunities with
responsibilities which helps generation in the future. If
reparation is a fee or a correction for a terrible sin of slave
owners, government and others, but we punish the nonguilty
party, is it not creating division or separation with different
races?
I feel it continues to let us know we are still African
American rather than just American. If reparation or atonement
is outside the teaching of Jesus Christ, you are not teaching
the Word of God.
So I speak back.
[The statement of Mr. Walker follows:]
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Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you very much for your testimony. I
am delighted to now be able to introduce our next witness is
Mr. Kamm Howard.
Mr. Howard is the male co-chair of the National Coalition
of Blacks for Reparations in America, or NCOBRA. If I might,
NCOBRA is a founding father and mother of the effort and the
mission of H.R. 40, working early on with the late Dean of the
United States Congress, John Conyers, and continuing to work
with over 300 organizations that are now standing very
effectively in support of H.R. 40.
NCOBRA is a mass-based coalition of organizations and
individuals organized for the sole purpose of obtaining
reparations for persons of African descent in the United
States. He is a Chicago businessman and real estate investor
and a long-time activist on the issue of reparations and
reparative justice. I think it is important to take note of the
fact that Mr. Howard is a businessman, an investor, but he is
also someone who understands pulling yourself up by the boot
strap works when you have boots.
In 2015, as a member of the National African-American
Reparations Commission, he led a team to revise H.R. 40 and in
June of 2020, he successfully led the work to pass the City of
Chicago Subcommittee on Reparations. He lived it. He has been
successful, and he understands that the Nation now needs H.R.
40.
Mr. Howard, you are recognized for 5 minutes. Thank you
very much.
Mr. Howard? I will give Mr. Howard one more minute, one
more moment, and then we will go with our next witness, and we
will bring Mr. Howard back in in a moment.
Let me now move to our next witness, is Mr. Elder. Mr.
Elder is a conservative attorney, author, and host of the
national syndicated radio program, The Larry Elder Show. He
also writes a nationally syndicated column and produces videos
for his YouTube channel in association with the Epic Times. Mr.
Elder received a J.D. from the University of Michigan and his
B.A. from Brown University.
Mr. Elder, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF LAURENCE ELDER
Mr. Elder. Congresswoman Lee, thank you very much for
having me. I really appreciate it.
I am the executive producer of a documentary that came out
June 19 last year called, ``Uncle Tom: An Oral History of the
Black Conservative.'' As Congresswoman Lee pointed out, Black
people are a race of overcomers. It talks about the fact that,
despite all the problems that have been brought up in this
Committee about racism, about slavery, about Jim Crow, Black
people have overcome to the point now where only 20 percent of
Black people are below the federally defined level of poverty.
Still too high, in 1940, that number was 87 percent. Twenty
years later, that number had been reduced to 47 percent, a 40-
point drop in 20 years. That is the greatest 20-year period of
economic expansion for the history of Black Americans.
Notably they came before the Brown v. Board of Education
decision. They came before the civil rights bills of 1964,
1965. Despite all of this racism, all of the prejudice, Black
people still overcame. I often find it ironic we are having
this hearing 13 years after we elected and then re-elected the
first Black President of the United States.
I am old school. I still get the newspapers thrown to my
house. The day that Obama got elected, I got The New York Times
and The L.A. Times thrown to my home. On the front pages of
both those newspapers, there were color pictures of Black
parents hugging their kids, crying, saying things like: Now, I
can say for the first time truly that if you work hard, you can
be anything you want to be.
In 1997, Time Magazine and CNN did a broad survey of Black
teens and White teens, and asked both of them whether or not
racism was a major problem in America. Both of them said yes,
not too surprisingly, but then Black teens were asked the
following question: Is racism a big problem, a small problem,
or no problem in your own daily life? Eighty-nine percent of
Black teens in 1997 said racism was a small problem or no
problem in my own daily life. In fact, twice as many Black
teens as White teens said: ``Failure to take advantage of
available opportunities is a bigger problem than racism,'' end
of quote. Again, was 23 years ago before Obama got elected, let
alone re-elected.
Speaking of Obama, 2007, he ran for Presidency. His rival
for the Democratic side was Hillary Clinton and on the
Republican side the two rivals, primary rivals, were John
McCain and Mitt Romney. Gallop asked whether or not Americans
would not vote for a Black person, referring to Obama; would
not vote for a woman, referring to Hillary Clinton; would not
vote for a Mormon, referring to Mitt Romney; would not vote for
a person as old as John McCain would be 72 years old.
What Gallup found was 5 percent of Americans said they
would not under any circumstances vote for a Black person; 11
percent said they would not under any circumstances vote for a
female; 24 percent said they would not vote for a Mormon; 42
percent said they would not vote for a person who would be 72
years old when he became President, which would have been the
case had John McCain being elected. In other words, Obama as a
Black person had a smaller barrier than these three White
politicians.
So, having this conversation right now when racism has
never been a less significant problem in America to me is mind-
boggling. Right now, Congress is 12 percent Black, which is
roughly the percentage of Blacks in America. In 1964, Martin
Luther King gave an interview to the BBC, and he said he was
surprised at the changes that had taken place in America in
recent years, and he believed that a Black person could become
President in 40 years' time or maybe even less. That is roughly
around the time when Obama became President. Martin Luther King
did not say we will know when we have arrived at the promise
land when there is a Black coach of Notre Dame, which has
happened; when there is a Black female who is the President of
an ivy league university, which has happened; when Blacks are
mayors of all the major cities in America, which has happened;
when Blacks are police chiefs of the major cities in America;
when they are superintendents of schools of America, or mayors
of America, sometimes all three at the same time; he did not
say that. He did not say when Black people become millionaires
and billionaires, which has happened. He did not say when Black
people become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. He said when a
Black person becomes President, that is when we will know we
have reached a point where people are being evaluated based on
the content of their character to the extent that it is
reasonable to expect.
The idea that slavery built America is belied by the fact
that, at one time, Virginia was the most populous and
wealthiest State in the Union, but within a couple of
generations, it had fallen behind States in the North because
the South depended upon slavery, which impoverished the South
relative to the North, which is primarily why the North won the
election.
No one could have had or very few people could have had a
life harder than my father. My father was 13 years old, born in
1915. He was kicked out of his house by his mother. Athens,
Georgia, Jim Crow at the beginning of the Great Depression.
The man walked down the street, did whatever he could.
Ultimately, he became a Pullman porter on the trains, which was
the largest private employer of Blacks in those days. Traveled
all the world, became a marine, was one of the first Black
marines, a Montford Point marine, and my dad always told my
brothers and me the following: Hard work wins. You get out of
life what you put into it. You cannot control the outcome, but
you are 100 percent in control of the effort. Before you
complain about what other people did to you, go to the nearest
mirror and say to yourself, what could I have done to change
the outcome?
My dad always told us this: No matter how hard you work, no
matter how good you are, sooner or later bad things will happen
to you. How you respond to those bad things will tell your
mother and me if we raised a man.
My father always said this about the Democrat Party: They
want to give you something for nothing. When you try to get
something for nothing, you almost always end up getting nothing
for something.
Thank you very much for taking the time. I appreciate it.
[The statement of Mr. Elder follows:]
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Ms. Jackson Lee. Attorney Elder, thank you so very much for
your presentation today.
Mr. Howard, are you present?
Mr. Howard. I am, Congresswoman.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Did you hear my introduction?
Mr. Howard. I did, Congresswoman.
Ms. Jackson Lee. All right. I think I will then just ditto
my introduction to you. Thank you so very much for this
longstanding commitment, and I will yield now to you. You are
recognized for 5 minutes. Thank you very much.
STATEMENT OF KAMM HOWARD
Mr. Howard. Thank you, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee,
for your strong leadership on this legislation. NCOBRA would
also like to thank the many congressional cosponsors of the
Black Caucus, the Asian Caucus, Hispanic Caucus, and the
Progressive Caucus. I am honored for this opportunity to
testify before the Members of the House Judiciary Committee on
the subject of ``H.R. 40, Exploring the Path to Reparative
Justice of America.''
The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in
America, NCOBRA, is in our 34th year fighting for reparations
of crimes committed against humanity, committed against
Africans and their descendants in the United States. NCOBRA
wants this Committee to know that the H.R. 40 commission is
long overdue.
During the 32 years in which this bill has languished in
Congress, many years have been wasted, many lives lost, and
untold sorrows of African descendants have continued and
abounded. Even the financial loss to this Nation in delaying
redress since H.R. 40's first introduction is calculated to be
near $25 trillion, about two to three times the cost of any
minimally viable reparations plan.
This means America would have gotten a 100 to 200 percent
return on a reparations program if it had taken steps to do so.
America would, in fact, be greater today if it had acted
correctly at any time in its past. Even still, the opportunity
for true greatness can begin with the rightful action of this
117th Congress.
H.R. 40 purports to establish a commission to do a
comprehensive investigation into the wide scope of harms
committed and the range of injuries still being suffered by 48
million Black people in America. The highest standard of
reparations is needed to adequately address over 400 years of
atrocities and compounded and concretized injuries that this
community endures. No quick fix. No singular action or tweak
here or there in existing policy will do. America must engage
in full reparations.
Full reparations is the international standard for
reparations, and NCOBRA declares there is no rational reason
why the highest standard of redress should not be applied to a
people harmed by its own government in so many ways and for so
many years. Full reparations has five encompassing areas of
repair:
One, cessation, assurances, and guarantee of nonrepetition.
America must cease all continuing wrongful and injurious acts,
and put in place structures to ensure that they do not
resurface in another name as slavery did during the Jim Crow-
apartheid period.
The second area of repair is restitution. The goal here is
restoration. Where would we be as a people if not for 246 years
of stolen labor and accompanying horrors, if not for the
multiple periods of multi-billion dollar plunder post
enslavement? We must be made whole.
Three, compensation. Compensation is obligatory if the
damage is not made good by restitution. It must be,
``appropriate and proportional'' to the gravity of the
violations.
Four, satisfaction. Here proposals must be offered that
focus on the return of our dignity. In addition, full admission
of fault, full acceptance of responsibility, and the
willingness to do whatever it takes to repair the wrongs is a
foundation of which satisfaction rests.
Five, the final component of full reparations is
rehabilitation. Initiatives must be developed that address the
negative transgenera-tional, spiritual, emotional, mental, and
physical effects of the historical traumas of enslavement, Jim
Crow apartheid, and the ongoing racial violence and police
terror.
I will conclude with a brief comparison. During the Civil
War, 200,000 men, 40,000 women, and 20,000 children of African
descent aided the Union Army in saving this country from White
nationalist hatred and destruction. Afterwards, a very grateful
President and Congress quickly acted to reward this service
with previously denied acts of justice, issuing Special Field
Order No. 15, granting 40 acres and a mule, and passing strong
civil rights legislation and three constitutional amendments.
Fast-forward to November of last year, as the acts of
January 6th proved, Blacks with our overwhelming vote for the
Democratic Party, again, helped save America from White
nationalist hatred and destruction. It is now time for this
117th Congress to be as justice rendering as the Reconstruction
Congresses. Passing H.R. 40 on the way to full reparations is
how.
A Luta Continua--Pamoja Mbilishaka. Asante sana. The
struggle continues. Together we will be victorious. Many thanks
to this committee.
[The statement of Mr. Howard follows:]
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Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Howard, thank you for that very
powerful testimony.
I am delighted now to yield to our next witness, Liz
Dreisen Heath. Ms. Heath is assistant research and advocate
with the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch, a leading domestic
research and advocacy on reparations and reparative justice, as
well as human rights around the world. A most recent research
endeavor, the conditions of pervasive inequality and structural
violence stemming from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, of which
we need commemorate a hundred years this year.
Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, she worked as a
special assistant to the director and counsel of the Brennan
Center, Washington, DC, office and was a researcher at the
center. Her research in education and social policy at the
University of Delaware. Ms. Heath holds a bachelor's degree
from Wesleyan University.
Ms. Heath, welcome. You are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DREISEN HEATH
Ms. Heath. On behalf of Human Rights Watch, it is an honor
to be here today. Thank you to the Committee for this
opportunity to testify about this important piece of
legislation. I am Dreisen Heath, a researcher and advocate on
racial justice issues within the U.S. Program at Human Rights
Watch, an international organization that investigates human
rights violations in over 90 countries around the world,
including in the United States.
The concept of reparations is well established in
international human rights law. At its core is the idea that
economic and social conditions cannot improve without
addressing and repairing harm. The U.S. has never fully or
properly reckoned with the gross human rights violation of
chattel slavery and the post-emancipation racist policies that
continue to impact Black people in the U.S. today.
If racial justice is ever to be achieved, repair needs to
be a part of the equation. Chattel slavery was national policy,
reducing humans to the status of property, subjecting them to
horrific violence and unspeakable cruelty while simultaneously
exploiting them through forced labor that laid the foundation
for the U.S. global economy as we know it today.
The harms of enslavement range from mass death to routine
torture and sexual violence to deprivation of education, food,
medical care, and sanitation. The trauma of such harms have
been passed down generationally. Post-emancipation promises of
restitution in the form of 40 acres and a mule were broken.
Coercive discriminatory Federal policies created by the New
Deal and run through the Department of Agriculture helped to
transfer much of the land Black farmers were still somehow able
to obtain after slavery to White people, leading to Black
farmers being dispossessed from roughly 90 percent of their
land.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Black codes and Jim Crow
laws denied Black people the right to vote, to serve on juries,
allowed them to be exploited for cheap labor, and excluded them
from nearly every aspect of daily life, reinforcing White
cultural, political, and economic power, and perpetuating and
deepening racial inequalities.
The KKK, White paramilitary groups, and other White people,
some deputized by law enforcement, terrorized Black people. In
1921, for example, a White mob burned down the prosperous
Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, then known as Black Wall
Street, killing hundreds of people, the government didn't
provide reparations or help rebuild. They placed obstacles in
the way of their rebuilding, setting generations of Black
Tulsans back in countless ways, including economically and
socially today.
The Tulsa race massacre was just one of the many incidents
of racial violence carried out by similar White mobs throughout
the country between 1877 and 1950. The Equal Justice Initiative
documented 4,300 terror lynchings during this period.
In the 21st century alone, the Federal Government redlined
many Black neighborhoods as high risk for lenders, making it
virtually impossible for Black people to get home loans.
Urban renewal programs tore down blighted areas, primarily
low income and communities of color, displacing hundreds of
thousands of families in the process. Federally financed
highway systems destroyed Black neighborhoods. All of these
policies contributed to institutional racism and the creation
of present-day economic, education, employment, housing, food,
sanitation, and health inequities.
We have seen firsthand the disproportionate impact of
COVID-19 on communities of color leading to more suffering and
death. Black people continue to be policed, arrested, and
jailed at rates vastly disproportionate to their numbers. For
example, making up 40 percent of those incarcerated but only 13
percent of the overall population.
In this way, our policing and criminal legal systems
maintain unequal power structures created and dominated by
White people preserving White supremacy. The failure to provide
full acknowledgement and repair has clearly worsened injuries
in the Black community. How can a Nation truly heal if it takes
no action towards acknowledging the full scope of pain and
dressing the punctured wounds of racism?
The U.S. Government has created commissions in the past
like the one proposed by H.R. 40 to document and remedy
violations. Rather than asking why at this stage, Congress
should be asking how. How can we provide comprehensive repair
for our grave and systemic failures connected to slavery, and
what steps must we take to get there?
I urge Congress to account for and repair systemic racism
rather than to ignore it and embody it. We are at a defining
moment in U.S. history, and reparative justice for the legacy
of slavery demands facing the fierce urgency of now.
Thank you.
[The statement of Ms. Heath follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you so very much for your testimony
that is so provocative and well detailed. Thank you for being
here this morning. We appreciate it very much.
I am delighted now to introduce our last witness, and that
is Mr. Hilary O. Shelton. Mr. Shelton is director of the
NAACP's Washington Bureau and its Senior Vice President for
Advocacy and Policy. The question would be, who does not know
Mr. Hilary O. Shelton as relates to the fight for civil rights
for decades? His calming voice, his beliefs and values have
been of great value to those of us in the United States
Congress, to the NAACP, and the Nation.
Mr. Shelton is responsible for advocating the Federal
public policy issue agenda of the oldest, largest, and most
widely recognized civil rights organization in the United
States. Mr. Shelton's government affairs portfolio includes
crucial issues, such as affirmative action, equal employment
protection, access to quality education, stopping gun violence,
ending racial profiling, abolition of the death penalty, access
to comprehensive healthcare, voting rights protection, Federal
sentencing reform, and a host of civil rights enforcement.
He has been a major force and support of information as we
went through the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act and as
well his knowledge of H.R. 40 has been both assisting and
informative in the work and research of this committee. So, we
look forward to hearing from you, Mr. Shelton, as a person that
believes in advancing and protection of those who cannot speak
for themselves.
Mr. Shelton, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF HILARY O. SHELTON
Mr. Shelton. Thank you very much, Congresswoman Jackson
Lee. I also want to thank my other friends on the committee,
including Chair that had to leave, Congressman Cohen, our
Ranking Members Johnson, vice chair, ranking and, of course,
the other distinguished Members of this Subcommittee of the
Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, as well as the
Judiciary Committee for all of its help and all of its work in
moving us to this point.
We are excited about how things are moving on H.R. 40. This
is a bill that we have worked very closely with the late great
Congressman John Conyers of Detroit, Michigan, to look at
issues that tie together many of the challenges that African
Americans and other people of color have this day and, of
course, the experience of the Transatlantic slave trade in the
United States of America.
The NAACP was founded in 1909, about 112 years ago, and has
over 2,200 chartered Membership units located in every State
across the country. We are also on military installations
throughout the world as well, places like Italy, Germany,
Korea, and Japan, as it participated and joining in the very
integration of these armed services as well.
We are a Membership-based association that continues to
advocate for justice and equality for all American citizens and
residents. Throughout the turbulent racial history of our
country, the NAACP has steadfastly opposed institutions and
persons who blocked our Nation's collective ability to reach
our goals. 112 years ago, over 60 persons of variety races,
faith, and political affiliations resolved to end lynching and
race-based discrimination in the United States and just formed
the NAACP. Just 20 years before they founded the NAACP, Black
men began voting and holding elected offices on the State and
national level, including several who served in our United
States House of Representatives and the United States Senate
were from Southern States. The 15th amendment to the U.S.
Constitution and other laws forged the way for the amazing feat
just a few years after the end of legal slavery in this
country.
At the turn of the 20th century, the first Reconstruction
era all too quickly concluded, and many of the hard-fought
gains of elected officials and civil rights advocates of that
time were beginning to erode due to the rise of terror groups
like the Ku Klux Klan, and so-called Black codes placed
stumbling blocks in way of African Americans trying to simply
reach the ballot box.
I am here today to let you know of our strong support for
H.R. 40, originally authored by the great John Conyers, as we
mentioned, and presently shepherded by you, Congresswoman
Jackson Lee. Your great leadership and your stalwart support in
addressing the issues of justice in our country are clear in
your support for H.R. 40.
This legislation is long overdue and should be put into
place this year. My hope is that, as the 117th Congress gets
under way, that you will sign on to this bill as cosponsors
everyone who hasn't joined so far and do all that you can to
ensure its enactment. This legislation is an important step in
acknowledging the inherent cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity
of slavery as practiced in the United States and would help
millions of Americans begin to heal the subsequent emotional
wounds that have been festering for centuries.
In confronting the ugly legacy of slavery, the commission
created by H.R. 40 would examine the impact slavery has had on
the racial and economic inequalities still suffered today. The
commission would also be charged with renewing reparations
proposals to help African Americans regain some of the statutes
stripped away by our forefathers, lost through no-fault of our
own.
Research and academic reports demonstrates that the
enslavement of Africans and the transatlantic slave trade were
appalling tragedies in the history of our country, not only
because of their abhorrent barbarism but also in terms of their
magnitude, organized nature, and the complete negation of the
humanity of the enslaved person. The enslavement of Africans
constituted an immoral and inhumane depravation of a person's
life, liberty, and cultural heritage.
The enslavement of Africans resulted in the extinguishment
of millions of Americans and eviscerated whole cultures,
languages, religions, morals, and customs; psychologically, as
such, the NAACP reaffirms our previous position in support of
reparations and very grateful that we are raising this today,
and, hopefully, we can move to a point of full passage.
The United States, a Nation forged with a revolutionary
struggle for inalienable human rights, natives of Africa were
torn by force until the year 1808 from their homeland and
subjected to the barbarities of institutionalized slavery. In
this post-revolutionary United States, slavery was maintained
by government fiat with violence, depriving African Americans
of freedom of association, privacy, life, liberty, property,
and due process of law in complete abdication of the spirit and
spirit of the Bill of Rights from its inception and
ratification of its enactment and ratifications of the
antislavery amendment of 1865.
Let me just say, Congresswoman, and those who are joining
us, the issue of slavery is one that did not end with the
stroke of Abraham Lincoln's pen and the Emancipation
Proclamation. It did not end in the stripping away of actually
adding to the Constitution by passing the reconstruction
amendments, the 13th, 14th, and 15th. As a matter of fact, many
of the residuals of the transatlantic slave trade sadly as we
look at the disparities in data are still very much with us.
We believe that this is a problem that must be solved, but
like other important problems, in order to solve that problem,
we must first measure it. As we are looking at those life
conditions that affect African Americans and others in our
country, we would look at issues of home ownership, and we
would see that, in wealth development, that African Americans
are less likely to own homes than White Americans, one of the
key bridges to our wealth in the United States, that is
investments to be able to continue to educate and train our
children and to prepare for retirement as we become older and
older.
We know that very well through thinking about the
challenges of the transatlantic slave trade, we know that
issues of healthcare are still very much at a disparity. As we
have gone through this pandemic, we recognize
disproportionately that African Americans, the descendants of
the slave trade in many cases, have no health insurance and, in
many other cases, are under insured along those lines as well.
That is why, as we look at whether it is issues of education
and opportunity for high-quality education and support for our
HBCUs, whether we look at small business development, whether
we look at other health concerns and other life concerns, such
as our criminal justice system, we see that the long legacy of
slavery has been something that has actually had a very
damaging imprimatur on African Americans, the African-American
communities, and our families. We believe that the best way to
solve that problem is to take it on head first.
It is like everything else; we want to do the research. We
want to hold the hearings. We want to formulize a process in
which we can make sure we have the accurate information, and we
can move forward to making our Nation greater still.
So, Congresswoman Jackson Lee, I want to thank you for the
opportunity for the NAACP to testify today. I want to thank you
for your leadership and your continued stalwart support for the
importance of all Americans, and as soon as we look at the
issues that impact the African-American community, you have
been front and center. So we thank you very much for that. I
look forward to any questions we may have in this process.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Shelton, thank you so very much for,
again, your testimony.
It is now time to begin the questioning. I will start by
yielding myself 5 minutes and indicate that each of our Members
will have the opportunity to question these very stellar and
outstanding witnesses.
I will start my questioning with Professor Achiume, and I
hope I have also pronounced your name, but I am going to,
again, put up in the screen, as close as I can, this picture,
Professor. I wanted you to see it. I am not sure if you saw it
before. It is lynching with an audience of White persons, some
smiling men and women. Of course, this is the picture of the
back of a slave that has been brutalized by a whip. It seems
that as the testimony is proceeded, some of our friends who
have been represented by very stellar Members presented by the
minority, seem to confuse the overcomers and the ability to
cite musicians and athletes and academicians and others from
the reparative and the justice element of H.R. 40.
If I might cite to you that Black people in America are
three times the rate of White people with disparities across
all age groups. For example, Black infants are more than twice
as likely to die as White infants, making the disparity worse
than 1850. In addition, when heads of White households who only
have a high school diploma are sitting--are in a class are
almost 10 times more wealth with a high school diploma as a
White high school graduate than Black households with the same
level of education.
This is in the current 21st century. In addition, the gap
between Black and White wealth is as large today as it was in
1968. Can you comment, Professor, on this question as I present
to you, how do you feel the international decade can be
utilized to advance the cause of reparative justice for the
people of African descent in the United States? I would
appreciate it if you would incorporate this glaring disparity
today that continued from slavery of disparities in the life
expectancy of an infant compared to a White infant and, of
course, the gaps of wealth that continue today. Thank you.
Ms. Achiume. Thank you very much, Congresswoman, for this
invitation to weigh in for this. You are absolutely right to
point out that, within the United Nation system, which the U.S.
is a part, we are in the International Decade for People of
African Descent. The purpose of this decade is, in part, to
recognize persisting human rights violations against people of
African descent, including in the United States, that have not
been addressed. Many of these human rights violations are
rooted in racial discrimination, racial discrimination that is
a legacy of colonialism and enslavement.
So, we are in a very important time almost halfway through
the decade and measures like H.R. 40, I think, are an essential
way of fulfilling some of the goals of the International Decade
of People of African Descent.
The images that you shared are truly terrifying and the
statistics that you also shared, I think, are also terrifying
and heartbreaking, and they speak to two things. One is that
reparations is about addressing injustices against individuals.
So, when you show me the image of the people who were lynched,
under the International Convention for the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination, victims of racial injustices such as
those are entitled to reparations for the harms that those
individuals experienced.
Even beyond that, reparations is about undoing structures,
structures of racial injustice that are a result of legacies of
enslavement, such that pointing to individuals who are Black
who have succeeded while people of African descent and who are
descendants even of slaves and pointing to their successes
can't negate the fact that we have persistent structures of
injustice that have to be addressed, including through a
reparations frame.
So, it is important to keep sight, both of remedying
individual harms, undoing structures of injustice that are
connected to legacies of slavery, and taking the opportunity of
taking this action within the International Decade for People
of African Descent.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you, Professor.
Mr. Howard, we have heard that our minority witnesses agree
that African Americans, other indigenous people built this
country. In light of all the various entities that unjustly
profited from the unpaid labor of African descendants, how
might the H.R. Commission address this issue, and how would you
respond to those who say reparations are simply about money?
Mr. Howard?
Mr. Howard. Thank you, Congresswoman, for that question.
Yes, NCOBRA has historically stated that there are five basic
injury areas that reparations must deal with. The first is the
injury area of the criminal injustice system. As we know what
happened with George Floyd exposed it and the police terror
around this country exposed what is going on on a daily basis
with Black people in this country. So, that must be addressed.
The second injury area is that of education. The
Congressman, the chair, Congressman Cohen, talked about the
disparity in education. I think that one of the witnesses for
the Republicans also talked about the disparities in education.
Those types of things have to be addressed under reparations.
We have to be restored.
The third area is the wealth gap and the poverty gap. Those
can be--there was a study by the Citibank that stated that $16
trillion could have been infused into the economy if
reparations would have been initiated 20 years ago, $16
trillion, most of that from business revenue of the Black
community if there was access to capital as other businesses
are given access to capital.
So, that is reparations that doesn't actually require a
check. Also, we look at the health disparities, the health
injury area. We know that not only is our physical health--not
only is our mental health and emotional health, but also our
physical health that has been challenged as a result of the
historical traumas that we have experienced.
Historical traumas can affect the ongoing and compounded
trauma that our children are facing. It could also affect the
reason why many of us have these preexisting illnesses that
COVID attacked. Then finally our people--we have to address the
foundational root cause of the atrocities that have been
committed in this country against Black people, and that is
that there is some notion built into the minds of Whites that
they are superior and conversely into the minds of Blacks that
they are inferior or in the minds of Whites that Blacks are
inferior.
So this speaks to the root of the cultural challenges, the
cultural harms that were committed against our people. So, all
of these things have to be addressed under a H.R. 40
commission, not just the aspect of giving cash to an
individual.
Thank you.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you very much, Mr. Howard.
Our Ranking Member Mr. Johnson has yielded. He was present
at the beginning of the hearing, and so we are delighted now to
yield 5 minutes to Mr. Owens. Mr. Owens, you are recognized for
5 minutes.
Mr. Owens. Thank you so much. I think I am going to start
asking my questions in a second, but I would like us to bring
back a little bit of history because I think history is really
important as we talk about our past and where a lot of our
evils have happened, and it has not been an American problem.
It has been pretty specific.
When you think about where slavery began, with segregation,
where Jim Crow, it is always the Democratic Party. I believe we
mentioned the 40 acres and a mule. That was ended by Democratic
President Andrew Johnson. We talked about the KKK. That was a
Democratic terrorist organization that actually was ended at
the end of 1880s but brought back, again by Woodrow Wilson in
1915.
By the way, the lynching that we are talking about,
horrendous, 4,700 people died by the hands of mobs, 1,300 of
those were Whites, Italians, and Catholics because we are
looking at a people that were just angry, evil people that
hated anything that was different from them. So, I think it is
important to keep that in mind.
If we want to talk about reparations, let's look more
specifically in terms of the people that actually did it. It
was not Americans. Americans fought against that. That is why
we end up winning and defeating slavery because so many
Americans decided it was an evil thing to finish up. So, I
wanted to make that point.
Mr. Elder, I have a question. Last year, prior to the
pandemic, the strength of the U.S. economy helped all
Americans, most notably minority Americans. In fact, in CNBC,
in 2019, so the African-American unemployment hit the lowest
ever in the history of our country from a peak in 2010 of 16.6
percent.
First of all, how did that happen? Is that your
understanding, correct those particular numbers?
Mr. Elder. Well, that is right. It happened because taxes
got lowered, regulations got eased, and the economy took off.
When the economy takes off, those who are unskilled
disproportionately improve, just as happened during the Reagan
Administration. During the Reagan Administration, Black adult
unemployment fell faster than did White adult unemployment.
Hispanic adult unemployment fell faster than White unemployment
fell. Black teen unemployment fell faster than White teen
unemployment.
Good economic policies work. Equal rights and equal results
are two very different things, and that is what I think we are
getting confused about here. Everybody is entitled to equal
rights, but nobody is entitled to equal results. One of the
witnesses--I believe it was Mr. Shelton--referred to Africans
as being torn out of their countries. According to Harvard's
Henry Louis Gates, that is not how it happened at all. Ninty
percent of Africans were sold by African chieftains who had
conquered them in tribes, sold them to European slavers and to
Arab slavers.
Speaking of Arab slavers, the Arab slave trade took place
centuries before the European slave trade did and lasted
longer, and the death rate was much, much higher. So, as we
talk about who pays who, this is going to be one of the
greatest generational transfers of wealth back and forth
because virtually every people on the face of the Earth was
involved in slavery. Europeans enslaved Europeans. Africans
enslaved Africans, as mentioned. Native Americans even enslaved
Native Americans. Asians enslaved Asians. In fact, White--
Muslim slavers took more Whites out of the Mediterranean than
European slavers took Black out of Africa to North America. So
figuring out who owes what is going to be a hell of an
achievement.
Now, I have been in radio and TV for some 35 years, and
during that time, I have been unsuccessful in getting some of
these Black leaders on my program. Al Sharpton won't come on.
Jesse Jackson won't come on. Farrakhan won't come on. I will
give Congresswoman Jackson Lee credit because she did come on
my show several years ago. You may not remember it,
Congresswoman, but you did come on several years ago.
One of the leaders I was able to get on was Kweisi Mfume,
who is now back in Congress. He was then the President of the
NAACP, having left Congress. I said, ``Mr. Mfume, as between
the presence of White racism or the absence of Black fathers,
which poses the bigger threat to the Black community?''
Without missing a beat, he said, ``The absence of Black
fathers.''
In 1915, 18 percent of Blacks were born outside of wedlock.
That number now is almost 70 percent. I think most of us would
agree that there was greater racism in 1915 than right now. We
are not having a discussion about whether or not the welfare
State has incentivized women to marry the government and
incentivized men to abandon their financial and moral
responsibility.
It was Barack Obama who said, ``A kid raised without a
father is five times more likely to be poor and commit crime,
nine times more likely to drop out of school, 20 times more
likely to end up in jail.''
Why aren't we having a discussion about the absence of
Black fathers and all of the unintended consequences that flow
through that?
Congressman Owens mentioned the high schools in Baltimore
where zero percent can do math at grade level. Actually, it is
13 public high schools in Baltimore where zero percent of kids
can do math at grade level and another half a dozen where only
1 percent can.
Now, Baltimore is a city where in 2015, Freddie Gray died
in police custody, as you know. The mayor was Black. Number one
and number two running the police department were Black. City
Council, all of Democrat majority Black. Three of the six cops
who were charged Black--
Ms. Jackson Lee. The time of the gentleman has expired. I
will allow the witness to complete his answer.
Mr. Elder. Okay. Thank you.
The judge before whom two of the officers tried the case
was Black. The State attorney who brought the charges against
the officer was Black. The U.S. attorney was Black, and the
President of the United States was Black, and we are talking
about systemic, institutional racism? To me, it is crazy.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you, Mr. Elder.
We are certainly appreciative of your words, and we well
know that all of those suggestions that you have made is
exactly what a commission does. It is fact finding. It prepares
and it develops proposals.
I am delighted now to yield to a longstanding supporter of
H.R. 40 and Chair of the Full Committee, Mr. Nadler of New
York.
Mr. Nadler, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Chair Nadler. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Secretary Weber, to your reference, the State of California
passed legislation to establish a task force to study and
develop reparation proposals for African Americans. How do you
envision the structure and operation of a reparations
commission or task force? Can you highlight the key differences
between the California approach and that of H.R. 40?
Ms. Weber. Well, the California approach is kind of modeled
after H.R. 40, and it was passed last year. We are currently in
the process of selecting the Members of the task force. It is a
task force that is the Governor's task force that will have the
Governor select individuals from--that he thinks should be a
member. It is a nine-person task force. We have two Members--
the Governor will have five. We have two from the assembly and
two from the Senate. So, the task force will basically be the
nine person task force.
Our goal is to try to use not only the experts that are in
the field to inform the task force but also to utilize the
universities of California. I am in charge of the California
archives, as the secretary of State, to use our archives. Also,
research Members have already begun to submit information. The
goal is to collect the information about what role California
played in the whole issue of enslavement and then to begin to
talk about its impact with regards to the disparity of
resources that exist in California.
California is the fifth largest economy in the world, yet
it has the greatest wealth gap of any State. The wealth of
African American is $1 in comparison to $100 of a person who is
White with similar education and background. So when we look at
that, this group will begin to form discussions concerning it.
This is not the first effort at reparations. In the past,
there have been a couple of bills that were passed with
reparations looking at California's insurance policies, how the
insurance industry benefited financially from reparation. It is
also had--so we have our insurance commissioner whose compiling
data and information with regard to that.
This group will then begin--after they have had a number of
hearings, we plan to also have hearings that will educate
California so the people in California understand what has
happened with reparations. Too often we think that the only
thing we need to do is give somebody some money and everybody
is okay.
That is not going to be the issue with the system as deep
and pervasive as slavery has been in California and across the
Nation. Those recommendations will then be taken by the
commission and by the legislature, hopefully led by the
California Legislative Black Caucus that I chaired at one point
and then put into law, put into programs, a budget, those kinds
of things are essential so that we can measure the impact that
is there and begin to repair the damage that has been done.
The task force will then obviously not only have staff and
persons working on the budget that will come out of it. So,
beginning in June, this task force will have been formed and
will begin to hold hearings and recommendations that will come
forward. Hopefully, we can share those with you with the
experts that are there. We hope to be able to use the resources
of our institutions to basically set the stage for what really
happens in California that will also be probably a mirror for
what is happening across the Nation.
Chair Nadler. Thank you very much.
Now, Mr. Howard, governments, corporations, industries,
religious institutions, educational institutions, private
estates, and other entities have all played significant roles
in supporting the institution of slavery and its vestiges. In
light of all the various entities that unjustly profited from
the unpaid labor of African descendants, how might the
commission address this issue?
Mr. Howard. Thank you, Chair Nadler. Well, as you stated,
there are four basic components of actors in the crimes of
enslavement. That is the State and local governments, Federal
governments, corporations, institutions like universities, the
church, as well as individual families. So, all of those have
to be brought under question when we go into a commission to
study the harms in which present day African Americans face as
a result of those atrocities.
We know that, like in Chicago, there is a family, the
McCormick family, that has a foundation. The McCormick family
was made wealthy by an invention that was stolen from an
African off their farm. It became the mechanical reaper which
freed millions of Americans from the farm and allowed them to
go into industry. The McCormick family from which the McCormick
expo theater is named after, the largest expo center in
America, they have an obligation. The commission would look at
these foundations, these corporations, these institutions, and
would determine what within their ability do they owe in making
sure that the gaps in wealth, the gaps in education, the gaps
in housing, and health do not continue forward into the future.
They have responsibility. They have been enriched. The
endowment that they share and hold are direct result of much of
the atrocities as committed in the past. So, the commission
would definitely look into those other players as well.
Chair Nadler. How do you think the commission might deal
with the groups like Asian Americans who have suffered
discrimination over the years, like the Chinese Exclusion Act
or the Japanese Exclusion Act and internment of Japanese during
World War II? How do you think the commission could deal with
that?
Mr. Howard. Well, there is ancillary benefit to the entire
Nation when reparations to African Americans are given, are
administered. So, just like every person who comes to America
benefits from the prosperity that was built off of enslavement,
every American also benefits from the struggles that African
Americans fought in opposition to human and civil rights
abuses. If you look at women, if you look at the disabled, if
you look at the immigrant, all of those people no matter what
protected class they are in, they benefit from historical
struggles of African Americans. So, this struggle to be
repaired would also have ancillary benefits for the entire
Nation.
Chair Nadler. Well, thank you very much. I see my time is
expired.
So, I yield back.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chair, thank you so very much for your
participation and your questions.
I now yield to Mr. McClintock, the gentleman from
California, for 5 minutes.
Mr. McClintock?
Mr. McClintock. Sorry. How is that?
Ms. Jackson Lee. There you are. Thank you very much. You
have 5 minutes.
Mr. McClintock. I listened to Chair Cohen speaking
extensively about the three-fifths provision in the
Constitution. I don't think he understands what the debate was
all about. Ironically, he has taken the side of the Southern
States, the Convention. They wanted a full count of every slave
that they held in order to add to their congressional
representation. It was the antislavery States that objected.
They argued that those were held in bondage should not be
counted at all in the apportionment of congressional seats, not
because they were not human beings but precisely because they
were, and that the Constitution should not reward the slave
States with representation in Congress while those States
denied these people their freedom. So, the three-fifth
provision was not a statement that slaves were three-fifths of
a person; it was the result of a compromise necessary to bring
into existence our new Nation, as Lincoln said, dedicated to
the proposition that all men are created equal.
Ironically, Stephen Douglas would agree with Chair's
narrative that the principles of the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution, which gave them life, were
only meant for White people. That is exactly the position that
Stephen Douglas took. Of that position, Lincoln said this
during their debate at Alton, he said: ``At Galesburgh the
other day, I said, in answer to Judge Douglas that 3 years ago
there never has been a man so far as I knew or believed in the
whole world who had said that the Declaration of Independence
did not include Negroes in the term `all men.' I reassert it
today. I assert that Judge Douglas and all his friends may
search the whole records of the country, and it will be a
matter of great astonishment to me if they shall be able to
find that one human being 3 years ago had ever uttered the
astounding sentiments that the term `all men' in the
Declaration did not include the Negro. I believe the first man
whoever said it was Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott
decision. The next to him was our friend Stephen A. Douglas.
Now, it has become a catch word of the entire party. When this
new principle, this new proposition that no human being ever
thought of 3 years ago was brought forward, I combat it as
having an evil tendency if not an evil design,'' end quote.
In fact, in his Cooper Union speech a year and a half
later, Lincoln systematically dismantled this argument by
tracing the votes of every one of the American Founders who
consistently opposed slavery whenever the issue arose. He
meticulously documented that their vision was of a Nation of
free men and women of all races and religions together enjoying
the blessings of liberty and the equal protection of our laws.
That vision was put in modern terms by Martin Luther King
Luther to express the gold standard of racial harmony that we
should be judged by the content of our character and not the
color of our skin. It is the equal protection of the law and
the vision of the American Founders, of Abraham Lincoln and
Martin Luther King of a color blind society that is now
directly under attack by measures like this.
I can't imagine a more divisive, polarizing, or unjust
measure that one that would by government force require people
who never owned slaves to pay reparations to those who never
were slaves based not on anything they had done, but because of
what race they were born.
Fortunately, we have a Constitution that forbids such an
injustice. Some of those provisions were won by hundreds of
thousands of Americans like my ancestor James H. Ewing of the
Third Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He was 24 years old
when he was killed on April 6, 1862, at Pittsburg Landing on
the first day of what became known as the Battle of Shiloh. In
the words of his brother, James gave up his life at the Battle
of Shiloh fighting to save our free government.
Yes, there are racists in our society. There are racists of
all colors in every society. It is the baser side of human
nature. No Nation has struggled harder to transcend that nature
and isolate and marginalize its racists than have Americans.
Racism is the practice of according rights and privileges not
based on equality under the law but, rather, according to what
race a person was born. The measure before us today exemplifies
that practice, and Lincoln was right. It is evil in both its
tendency and its design.
With that, I will yield to my friend, Larry Elder, for any
closing thoughts he might have.
Mr. Elder. Congressman, thank you so much. I agree, of
course, with everything you say. Congressman Cohen did
completely butcher the three-fifths argument, and thank you for
correcting the record. He also referred to a civil rights
warrior named Bayard Rustin. Bayard Rustin was an acolyte of
Martin Luther King. Bayard Rustin was both Black and gay and
did not support race-based preferences.
The Urban League at the time was run by Whitney Young.
Whitney Young supported a 10-year period of time where he
argued for a Marshall Plan for Black people. Again, 10-year
period of time. This is 1965, so it would have long since been
over had the board approved it, but they didn't.
One board member said: Are you crazy? Here we are telling
America to be fair and you are telling, quote, ``us--telling
Americans to,'' quote, ``hire Negroes just because they are
Negroes,'' close quote. We oppose it.
So, this is completely divisive, and I want to quote
somebody who once was asked about reparations, and he said
this, and I am quoting: ``It is easy to make that theoretical
argument, but as a practical matter, it is hard to think of any
society in human history in which a majority population has
said that, as a consequence of historic wrongs, we are now
going to take a big chunk of that Nation's resources over a
long period of time to make that right,'' end of quote.
He said: ``As a practical matter, it is virtually
impossible to do.''
That gentleman was Barack Obama, and he was right.
I also heard one of the witnesses refer to the belief that
White people are superior and their belief that Black people
are inferior. Well, they can believe what they want to believe,
but the facts are that young Black people have higher self-
esteem than do young White people, and much higher self-esteem
than do young Asian people.
So, if the argument is that historical discrimination and
Jim Crow has somehow called Blacks to think of themselves as
less than Blacks, it ain't working. Blacks have higher self-
esteem than virtually any other race in America.
Also, a couple times the police have been hammered. Let me
just mention that a few days ago, a man was in his backyard
minding his own business. Apparently he fit the description
of--
Ms. Jackson Lee. The gentleman's time has expired. Thank
you.
Now, it is my pleasure to recognize a new member of this
committee, an outstanding new member from North Carolina. I
recognize the gentlelady, Ms. Ross, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Ross. Thank you so much, Representative Jackson Lee,
and thank you for your leadership on this issue.
I am from North Carolina, and I have a background working
on civil rights issues here in North Carolina. We heard a lot
today about the history of slavery, the history of racism. I
can tell you that our work is not done.
I want to give a short shout-out to North Carolina, though,
because it is one of nine States that has issued a formal
apology for slavery, and it is one of the States that in a
bipartisan way has come up with reparations for forced
sterilizations.
So, as we think about the history of racism and slavery in
this country, we have to have a conversation about the truth of
the past, about the harms that have been inflicted, and about
the appropriate way for all of us to go forward.
I don't believe that this particular resolution prescribes
a way of going forward, but it is a conversation about what we
need to do. Just as we did in North Carolina when we passed a
bill compensating people for forced sterilization, a terrible,
terrible chapter in our history that is not just in North
Carolina's history, I think we need to think long and hard
about how we address our history, how we address the harms, and
how we can move forward together.
There has been some divisiveness. There is divisiveness
throughout our country. There is a clear division of opinion. I
would like to bring us together and think about what we can all
agree on going forward.
We have been able to do that in a couple of ways in North
Carolina. We have been able to do that on racial profiling, we
have been able to do that on innocence issues, and, again, on
compensation for forced sterilization.
So, I am hopeful that we will be able to do that as a
congressional body, too. Again, I thank Representative Jackson
Lee for her leadership and for having us start this discussion
in the 117th Congress.
Thank you so much.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Let me thank Congresswoman Ross for
recounting the history of North Carolina so eloquently and
bringing to our attention, of course, the forced sterilization
and, in essence, the repairing of that heinous Act to the
extent that individuals were compensated.
Let us be very clear, the commission on H.R. 40 is a
commission to fact find, repair, restore, and develop proposals
for reparations that, as Mr. Howard's testimony indicates,
takes many, many perspectives.
Thank you so very much.
I want to make sure, is Mr. Jordan here? Thank you.
Then I will call on Mr. Johnson, Mr. Mike Johnson of
Louisiana, the Ranking Member.
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
You are yielded for 5 minutes. Thank you so very much. Glad
you are here.
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. Thank you for doing that. Thank
you.
I appreciate all of the witnesses' time today, and also Mr.
Burgess Owens for standing in for me. I have had intermittent
internet and power here in Louisiana as you all have in Texas.
A couple of questions real quick. Mr. Herschel Walker has
not had an opportunity to speak up here in the last part of
this hearing, if he is still with us. I just wanted to pitch it
to him and give him an opportunity to see if there was anything
that has been said so far the last couple of hours here that he
wanted to respond to.
Mr. Walker?
Mr. Walker. Yes, I would like to respond. I want to thank
Ms. Jackson Lee. I would like to ask, does she know the year of
those pictures?
The reason I ask that is whenever I get on a subject I do
facts-finding myself, and one of the things I looked up and I
asked my mom is how many African American was alive today that
was in slavery, which was none.
So, I go to some of the older people for experience, and I
remember my mom mentioning, how could we pay for your great-
great-grandfather being burned to death? Or how could you pay
for your great-great-uncle being hung?
I understand that those pictures are horrible, but right
now I think the facts-finding is going to be very difficult to
go back over history when history is not even taught in school
on what we are trying to facts-find.
That is why it is so difficult, because as I was looking up
reparation, which I have been doing for the last year, it is
very, very difficult to find facts on different things of the
African-American history. I think that is what is going to be
very difficult in what we are doing right now.
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. I appreciate that response.
Let me ask you, I know you are passionate about this and
you give a lot of motivational speeches to young people and all
that. Are there better ways that you think to uplift minority
communities and provide opportunities for success than this
idea of direct payments of taxpayer dollars? I mean, just in
general, what do you say to young people to inspire them in
that way?
Mr. Walker. One of the things I say to young people to
inspire them is, first of all, and I say, the hard truth is,
and I say this, and I don't mean to offend anyone, but I say
the African-American community has to come together as a group
to take care of our own. That is one of the biggest problems we
have, we will not take care of our own.
I said, we cannot, as myself, who grew up in south Georgia,
leave that community and leave all the African-American kids
behind without inspiring them that they can be me. I think the
way we do this is we get back to remembering where we came
from.
You have to be responsible. A lot of things we mentioned
today, no one talked about responsibility. I am from the Deep
South. I know about racism. A matter of fact, we talked about
the health, everyone thinks I am healthy, but I was diagnosed
at one time as mentally unhealthy because of being bullied as a
little kid, because of my weight and because of my speech.
The things that happened to me was dealing with race. I
overcame through education, which is one of the major things
that I talk to the young people today, is education is more
important than anything in life, because when you educate
yourself, you are able to see the truth for yourself.
I am not saying that--I think H.R. 40 is absolutely
incredible, but I think the facts-finding is very difficult.
Facts-finding of reparation, I think it is a little bit--I am
confused at the two right now.
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. Very good. I have got 34 seconds
left. Let me turn to Mr. Elder, real quick.
You touched on and began to explain the difference between
equal rights and equal results, and I think a lot of people are
confused about that. I just wonder, in the last 20 seconds or
so, if you want to articulate a little bit more about the
difference between the two.
Mr. Elder. Well, it is really about what Herschel Walker
just now said. It is about personal responsibility.
There are think tanks on the left, like the Brookings
Institution, and think tanks on the right, like the American
Enterprise Institute, and they agree that the way to escape
poverty is to do a handful of things:
1. Finish high school.
2. Don't have a kid until you get married.
3. Get a job, keep a job, and don't quit that job until
you get another job.
4. Void the criminal justice system.
They don't say that this formula only applies to you if you
are White. They say this formula applies to anybody.
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. Very good.
I yield back, Madam Chair. Thank you very much.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you so very much. Your time has
expired.
I think to Mr. Walker and Attorney Elder, that is exactly
what H.R. 40 is, to delve into the facts, to connect the
history.
I would only say that there is something to the heinous,
vile, and vicious Act of slavery that the descendants of
enslaved Africans and those slaves experienced uniquely in this
country. We are grateful that we have 300 organizations that
are supporting that concept, but the fact-finding of H.R. 40 is
just what is its task, to respond to the concerns that have
been expressed.
I would ask unanimous consent to submit into the record the
letter from the LCCR, and we thank them for that letter.
[The information follows:]
MS. JACKSON LEE FOR THE OFFICIAL RECORD
=======================================================================
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Jackson Lee. I am delighted now to recognize Mr.
Johnson for 5 minutes, the gentleman from Georgia.
Mr. Johnson, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. I thank the gentlelady for the time
and for the introduction of this very important legislation.
To my friend, Tom McClintock, who has a revisionist
understanding of the three-fifths compromise, I would want to
set the record straight that the three-fifths compromise was a
way of counting slaves for purposes of apportioning how many
seats in the U.S. House of Representatives the Southern States
would get.
Of course, those three-fifths of human beings did not have
the rights of human beings, they were just counted for purposes
of human beings, but even then it was a discount, three-fifths.
They were treated as slaves, even less than three-fifths of a
person.
To my friend, Mr. McClintock, I am so happy that you can
track your forebearers all the way back and beyond probably
1861, but that was at a point where our Black families had been
torn apart. We can't go back. I can't go back and trace the
lineage of my family further than about the 1880s, and even
then it is not certain.
So, you are so fortunate as a White male to be able to
track your people all the way back probably into the 1700s,
maybe even earlier than that. You have no idea how hurtful it
is for the Black psyche to not have a sense of our history
further back than it is reported by White folks who get it
wrong to keep us misunderstanding of our value to society. I
can't express to you the psychological wounds that still exist
that H.R. 40 would help to get at.
Attorney Elder, in your response to a question from
Congressman Owens you mentioned Professor Gates at Harvard
University, so I assume that you are familiar with Professor
Charles Ogletree, the esteemed African-American professor at
Harvard Law School, are you not? Are you familiar with him?
Mr. Elder. I am aware of who he is, yes.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Professor Ogletree is a prominent
advocate for reparation, and he has stated, quote, ``The
reparation movement should not focus on payments to
individuals. The damage has been done to a group. But the
damage has not been done equally within the group. The movement
must therefore focus on the poorest of the poor. It must
finance social recovery for the bottom-stuck, providing an
opportunity to address comprehensively the problems of those
who have not substantially benefited from integration or
affirmative action.''
My question, Attorney Elder: Do you agree that there are
Black folks in America who are stuck at the bottom due to the
legacy of racism, slavery, and Jim Crow, and that America
should take affirmative action to address employment,
healthcare, housing, and educational disparities that plague
our people to this day?
Mr. Elder. Congressman Johnson, thank you very much for the
question.
Obviously, there are Black people who are poor. The extent
to which the poverty is a result of slavery and Jim Crow is
tenuous at best. The larger factor behind Black poverty is the
absence of fathers in the home, as I mentioned earlier.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Okay. Well, let me stop you right
there, because I do understand.
Mr. Howard, what is your response to my question?
Mr. Howard. Well, certainly there is a direct contribution,
direct connection, as Mr. Elder talked about fatherless homes.
We see that in the Illinois Transatlantic Slave Trade
Commission, the only slave trade commission in the country.
In 2005, an economist Linwood Tauheed stated that Black--he
found out that Black men married at the same rate as White men,
at the same rate as Hispanic men, and the rate in which they
married was determined by their labor force participation. So,
where you had 90 percent labor force participation, the
marriage rate would be anywhere from 8 to 15 points below the
labor force participation.
So, when you come forward to now where you have less than
50 percent labor force participation among Blacks because of
this discrimination, because of racism, because of the separate
development, the apartheid of Jim Crow, you have this 50
percent labor force participation in major cities in America,
you are going to have a 15 to 8 percent lag in two-parent
families, and that is exactly what you have.
So, when Mr. Elder talks about the fatherless homes and the
destruction of Black families, it is directly related to the
inherent anti-Blackness that this country is built upon and
that we still suffer from today and what H.R. 40 must address.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Thank you.
Professor Achiume, a recent Harvard study suggests that
reparations could provide health benefits for not only Black
Americans, but for the entire Nation. How can reparations
eliminate health disparities among Black Americans? What would
these remedies look like?
Ms. Achiume. Thank you very much for your question. I think
this is why the bill is so important, is because it provides an
opportunity to study exactly answers to questions such as that
and to draw on comparative experiences of other countries.
So, for example, Colombia had one of the most ambitious
reparations program that we are aware of in different parts of
the country, and part of that reparations program included
providing healthcare to people who have suffered extreme human
rights violations.
So, I would say reparations can play a role in addressing
health disparities because they are about undoing structures of
injustice, including structures of racial injustice that
produce health disparities.
I would say that in terms of the concrete solutions that
would be relevant in the United States, the most advisable
thing would be to pursue exactly what I think this bill is
trying to push for, which is an in-depth study that would allow
for responses that would be tailored to different local
contexts.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Thank you.
Mr. Walker, does it surprise you to learn that H.R. 40 does
not include a proposal to make cash payments to Black people in
America?
Mr. Walker. Well, I never thought H.R. 40 when I read was
just about the payment to Black Americans. I said--
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Well, that is what you said in your
statement.
Mr. Walker. Yes, I said that was part of it in my
statement, but I also said education, which in the past we have
not taught Black America, giving them a good education. Which
when Ms. Jackson Lee spoke, this is a facts-finder, which is
one of the questions I put within my statement, that payment is
just one part of what reparation is. It is education--
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. Well, it is not--
Mr. Owens. Point of order. Point of order, please. Point of
order.
Mr. Johnson of Georgia. --payments to individual Black
people.
With that, I will yield back. I am out of time.
Ms. Jackson Lee. The gentleman's time has expired.
Let me call on the next member. Is Mr. Roy present?
Ms. Fischbach?
Ms. Fischbach. Yes, Madam Chair.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Ms. Fischbach.
Ms. Fischbach. Can you hear me?
Ms. Jackson Lee. Yes. Ms. Fischbach, you are recognized.
The gentlelady from Minnesota is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Fischbach. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
Ms. Fischbach. I would like to yield my time to
Congresswoman Owens for however much he may use.
Mr. Owens. I would like to--
Ms. Jackson Lee. The gentleman from Utah is--and I stand
corrected. I think I might have said Colorado earlier, Mr.
Owens. Those are beautiful States. I know you want to be from
Utah. You are recognized for the time the gentlelady has
yielded to you, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Owens. Thank you so much for that. I appreciate it.
I would like to just ask Mr. Elder if he has any comments
to say in response to Representative Hank Johnson's question
that he had asked earlier. I would like to continue his
conversation about that.
Mr. Elder. I do. We have been talking about disparate
outcomes as if the disparate outcomes by definition mean
racism.
There was a young attorney named Barack Obama who joined
with other attorneys and filed a class action lawsuit against
Citibank some years ago. As a result of the class action
lawsuit, the Citibank agreed to grant mortgages to 186 people
who had applied, been turned down, and the applicants argued
that they were turned down because they were Black.
Well, they got the loans and virtually nobody was able to
keep up with the loans. Many of them went into default, which
indicated that the bank was not discriminating against these
would-be Black borrowers.
Also, studies have found that community Black banks often
have a higher turndown rate for would-be borrowers than the
majority banks because they are more thinly capitalized.
So, just because something has a disparate outcome does not
mean that that outcome was the result of racism.
We have also talked a lot about the police officers. A few
days ago, as I started to say, a man was in the backyard of his
own house matching the description of a suspect who was running
on foot, a police officer chasing mistook the homeowner for the
suspect, shot and killed him.
I doubt that very many people know about this, and the
reason you don't know about it is because the cop who shot the
suspect was White, the suspect was White. This took place in
Idaho. Therefore, nobody gave a rip. I assure you if this had
been a Black suspect and a White cop, we would know his name.
The fact is there are more unarmed White people killed
every year by the police than unarmed Blacks. The media
couldn't care less, CNN couldn't care less, giving Black people
the false impression that the police are mowing down Black
people just because they are Black.
It is true that the police are two and a half times more
likely to kill a Black suspect. It is also true that a young
Black man is anywhere from 7 to 10 times more likely to be a
victim of a homicide, almost always the victim at the hands of
another young Black man. That is why the cops are there. The
idea that there is systematic racism against Black people is a
lie.
When it came to the election, the defenders of Biden were
arguing: Where is the widespread evidence of voter fraud? A
fair question. Where is the wide--forget about widespread.
Where is the evidence of police brutality against Black people?
If anything, the evidence shows the police are more hesitant,
more reluctant to pull the trigger on a Black suspect than a
White suspect. It is a fraud, it is a con that is pushed upon
this country, and we need to stop it.
Mr. Owens. Thank you.
To go to Mr. Walker. What is the message that you would
give today to young Black boys and girls that is different than
the message that you received when you were coming up in the
days of true racism back in Georgia?
Mr. Walker.
Mr. Walker. The message I would give today is
responsibility. You have to be responsible.
That is one thing that I learned from my parents, is
responsibility. To get back to--
Mr. Owens. Sorry. For 1 second. Someone has to mute your--
can somebody please mute your--this is another hearing. Okay.
Okay. I don't know, is there anything we can do about that,
guys, to mute the background?
Ms. Garcia. It sounds like another hearing.
Mr. Owens. Okay. Mr. Chair, is there anything we can do
about that or do we just kind of have to wade through it?
Voice. It looks like somebody took care of it now. Go
ahead.
Mr. Owens. Okay. Good. All right.
Mr. Walker, I am sorry. Please continue, Mr. Walker.
Did we lose him?
Mr. Cohen. [Presiding.] I am going to jump in here for a
minute. I have been on the hearing, and I appreciate Ms.
Jackson Lee chairing.
I haven't kept up with the time. Where are we on the time
on Mr. Owens? Can staff tell us?
Mr. Owens, do you know? I don't have the timer.
Ms. Jackson Lee. One minute, Mr. Chair, and 3 seconds.
Mr. Cohen. All right. Mr. Owens, continue. Thank you.
Mr. Owens. Okay. All right.
Well, let me just ask, because--is Mr. Walker still there?
If not, I will just give back my time to--
Mr. Walker. Yes, I am here.
Mr. Owens. Okay. Please finish up.
Mr. Walker. I will go back to Ms. Jackson Lee, who said
that we are in a facts-finding. I go now to, as Representative
Johnson was speaking, facts-finding is where is the education
for African Americans, at the same time we are facts-finding of
why there are serious Black-on-Black crime, because within my
neighborhood where I grew up, I don't experience that in
Wrightsville, Georgia, but in Atlanta, Georgia, or in other
large cities, that is one of the facts that I would love to
solve, to stop the Black-on-Black crime.
Mr. Owens. Thank you. I yield back my time. Thank you.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Owens.
Thank you, Ms. Jackson Lee, for chairing the Committee
while I was gone. We had an organizing Committee meeting of
Natural Resources, and if you don't get there and get to pick
your committees, you are shut out for 2 years. But, I have
listened to most of the Committee at the same time, and so I
have listened to Mr. Elder and I have listened to Mr. Walker
and I listened to Congressman McClintock and all, and I
appreciate the testimony.
Thank you, Ms. Jackson Lee.
I think Ms. Garcia is next.
Ms. Garcia, from your motel room, you are recognized.
Ms. Garcia. Actually, sir, it is a hotel.
Mr. Cohen. Sorry.
Ms. Garcia. The best part is it is heated and I do have
power here at this hotel. No water, though.
Thank you again for holding this very important hearing.
Thank you to all of the witnesses who have taken the time
to come up here today.
I am a very proud--and I am going to repeat that--proud
original cosponsor of H.R. 40, because it is important that our
Nation heals by finding the facts, understanding the lingering
effects of slavery in the United States, and finding solutions,
finding solutions to real conversation and dialogue, and for
finding successful reparation programs.
I want to repeat what Mr. Johnson mentioned earlier. There
is nothing in this bill that talks about payments of checks or
money to anyone. This is a commission to find the facts and
bring us to full healing.
H.R. 40 is a good first step, and I want to personally
thank my colleague and fellow Houstonian, Sheila Jackson Lee,
for bringing this bill forward and to working together with all
of us to make sure that this can come to fruition.
I also applaud the Biden-Harris Administration for
continuing to outline its vision for advancing racial equality
for all Americans who just want to live and breathe without
fear.
I, like many Americans and people around the world,
witnessed a tumultuous period last year of civil unrest and
racial injustice. While I am proud to have joined my Judiciary
colleagues to swiftly pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing
Act, it is clear that much more work needs to be done.
Without question, history has taught us time and time again
that our laws must boldly affirm that Black lives matter.
History has also taught us that we are stronger when we
unite. But, to do so we must first learn, educate, and
eliminate the root causes of racial discrimination in order to
form a more perfect Union. We cannot keep ignoring this as a
country. We must act, and I urge everyone to support this bill.
I want to also reemphasize something that Ms. Masaoka
mentioned in her testimony, and I want to start my questions
with her. She says in her written testimony that this would be
a first step to justice and it would be also a first step for
healing.
It is interconnected, is it not, Ms. Masaoka?
Ms. Masaoka. Yes. I think we didn't quite realize at the
time how important the commission was for Japanese Americans in
1981 because we really didn't know about the camp experience.
We didn't hear the stories from our parents.
So, for the people, as I said, to actually share their pain
and their experiences, and for us, their children, to hear what
they had to say and continue to hear what they have to say, it
was a process.
It was a process that--our community doesn't like to speak
about pain. They didn't want those things to be brought out.
But they did. We are still actually working on healing as a
community, even 40 years later, from that. It opened the door,
and it helped us to understand what happened and why our
parents were the way they were, why we felt the way we did
about ourselves, and why our children may also feel the way
they do.
So, yes, it was a first step towards healing.
Ms. Garcia. Well, and I wanted to ask, Ms. Weber, in terms
of the California commission, you say in your written testimony
that you can't wait until the Federal Government does what we
need to do. So California now has their bill in place.
Do you think that other States need to do that to help
build a bigger groundswell of support, or do you think that
both can work parallel?
Ms. Weber. I think they can work parallel, as we plan to do
with regards to the Federal bill. No State should be held back
because the Feds have not moved forward. This has been a very
long journey of 40 years of trying to get this bill passed,
H.R. 40, and through Congress. You are a much larger
institution with a tremendously diverse population and being
represented.
In California we had really no opposition to forming a
reparations commission. In fact, we had bipartisan support for
it, and we have gotten overwhelming support from organizations
and others who are eager for us to have a conversation about
reparations, about the history of California, California's role
in enslavement, and to begin to talk about addressing a lot of
the issues that we face.
We recognize the fact in California that slavery in itself
has been so insidious that it has sometimes created issues. We
mentioned that with the George Floyd issue in California, that
because of what had happened with the lynchings and the
burnings, we had pretty much seared the conscience of White
America when it comes to the pain of African Americans. We have
to basically recognize that fact, that we can actually see harm
done, see the devastation, and not really respond to it as we
do to other groups.
I listened to the colleagues talk about unemployment and
the unemployment statistics and how it has gone down. Well,
anything that is large, when it moves, is going to have a
greater percentage of movement than something that is small.
So, if you have got unemployment of 3, 4, 5 percent in your
State, and we have always had double-digit unemployment of
African Americans in this country, well, when it moves, it is
going to look significant. It is going to look like a 50
percent drop. Yet, it is still a double-digit unemployment and
an injustice that continues, as we recognize in California.
So, we plan to move forward. We are moving forward. I
shouldn't say we plan to. We are moving forward. We hope that
at some point what we do will be informative to the Federal
Government. But, obviously, if the Federal Government decides
that it is going to do this, we hope to be able to complement
it with what is happening in California, because California is
so far away from the South we think that it doesn't have an
impact and yet it really does.
Ms. Garcia. Thank you.
I see my time is up. So, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Ms. Garcia.
Our next panelist is Cori Bush.
Representative Bush, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Bush. Right. St. Louis and I thank you, Chair Cohen,
for convening this important hearing.
I want to say thank you to the leadership of Representative
Sheila Jackson Lee on this. I really appreciate you.
I come as one, but I speak as many. I bring with me today
my family, James E. Bush, Vera Bush Whitley, Ulysses Blakney,
Clifton Blakney, and generations of Black men and women who
have labored on this land, who have fought for this country,
and to whom our country is deeply indebted.
My story is a story of survival. It is a story of my
ancestors who were enslaved in Mississippi and South Carolina.
It is a story of the great migration, the mass migration of 6
million African Americans out of the rural South.
When White farmers traveled to the West in search of land,
they were granted 160 acres of free land through the Homestead
Act. My family was denied the promise--denied the promise--of
40 acres and a mule in the aftermath of the Civil War and the
start of Reconstruction.
My story is the story of a great-grandfather who served
this country in World War I and a grandfather who served this
country in World War II, only to be discarded by their
government as they suffered through trauma and the wounds of
war. When White solders came back from fighting abroad, they
were given housing preferences and education subsidies. My
grandfathers, Ulysses and Clifton Blakney, were denied those
benefits.
My story is a story of men and women who fled violence, who
were stripped of their rights and protections, who were left
out of GI Bills and New Deal subsidies. The violence my family
withstood from one generation to the next was not isolated. It
was systemic, it was structural, it was political, backed by
legislation passed by this very body to deny descendants of
enslaved people economic and social opportunity.
Underlying the generational trauma and exploitation is a
government that abandoned its role to protect its own citizens,
a government that refused to even acknowledge the humanity of
my ancestors, a government that to this day refuses to
acknowledge or atone for the wrongdoings of White supremacist
violence. The Federal Government must account for its ongoing
role in perpetuating, supporting, and upholding White
supremacy.
Secretary Weber, as you mentioned, State governments and,
in some instances, private institutions unjustly profited from
the unpaid labor of descendants of enslaved people. Why is it
still necessary for the Federal Government to play a central
role in restoring the harm of slavery and its aftermath? What
can the Federal Government learn from States' efforts?
Ms. Weber. Well, clearly, the Federal Government oftentimes
protects the laws in the various States that have been put
forth. You have the ultimate authority to determine the
legality of issues that are there. So, oftentimes we appeal to
the Federal courts and, obviously, have those courts reject the
issues and, therefore, perpetuate the kind of injustices that
do continue to exist.
The Federal Government has a significant role. The laws
that were created in this land and endorsed by the Supreme
Court, the separate but equal laws, all of those things, to
enforce the kind of treatment and racism that exist, the
refusal to basically try individuals who have engaged in
lynching in this country, the violation of people's human
rights.
We have whole books with pictures of people who list
individuals face forward, looking at you, knowing who they
were, and no one has ever been tried for any of the lynchings
found in the books that we have, enormous books, without
sanctuary, where every example is an example of lynching that
occurred face forward, where people who took pride and made
postcards out of lynching that existed, and as a result, no one
has ever been tried for any of those lynchings that were there.
So, when we look at it, the Federal Government has a
significant role to play. We hope that when we look at the
things that are there, like the insurance industry is regulated
by the Federal Government, it is regulated by States but also
by the Federal Government, and so it condones the behavior and
the discriminatory practices that existed in the various
States.
We hope in California to be able to demonstrate not only an
ability to look at the injustices, to see what has occurred,
but also to fashion a response to it that is deeper and long
term.
As pointed out, we have never talked about money; but,
obviously, money isn't everything. It is not about giving
money. It is about making sure that the programs that exist
basically can effectively address this longstanding situation
that has been in African Americans' life.
So, the Federal Government has a significant role to play,
and we hope in the States--and we will do our part as a State,
as a large State with resources, to begin to address the issue.
Others should also be looking carefully at themselves. Surely
we hope that the Federal Government will support the efforts
and the recommendations we make concerning what the States
should do and maybe even the role the Federal Government should
play in assisting the State in accomplishing its goal.
Ms. Bush. That is my time. Thank you, and I yield back.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Representative Bush.
I now recognize myself for 5 minutes.
First, I want to say that what I mentioned earlier in my
testimony, in my first 5 minutes, I mentioned seeing these
movies that were Chadwick Boseman's movies. I mentioned the one
about Thurgood Marshall and how awful Thurgood Marshall was
treated by racists, and his legal partner, Mr. Friedman, by
anti-Semites. I thought about it, and I missed the main point
of the movie.
The defendant in the case was treated the worst of all. He
was illegally charged with rape because he was an African-
American worker for a prominent socialite woman, which they had
consensual sex. For an insightful moment by Thurgood Marshall,
he would have been probably sentenced to death.
That happened so many times in our country's history but
for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Thurgood Marshall, which
should have been the cause of the United States Government and
the Justice Department, but it wasn't. The Justice Department
for African Americans was Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund.
Mr. Hilary Shelton of the NAACP, I want to ask you a
question. We had Mr. Ta-Nehisi Coates testify in our last
hearing, and he said at that hearing 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.
Yet, many of my colleagues across the aisle agree with the
sentiment captured in remarks by Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell, who said, quote, ``I don't think reparations for
something that happened 150 years ago from none of us currently
living or responsible is a good idea. We tried to deal with our
original sin of delivery by fighting a Civil War, by passing
landmark civil rights legislation. We elected an African-
American President''--who he tried to defeat from day one.
My own response to Mr. McConnell's remarks is that African
Americans have had to struggle to obtain what for others has
been unquestionably understood as a God-given right. Just like
Ms. Bush mentioned when her ancestors came home from the war,
they didn't get things that were given to White men who fought
for our country and women who fought for our country, White
veterans. African Americans didn't get that. They were God-
given rights to everybody else but not for African Americans.
They had to depend on legal actions and protests and
legislation.
In light of that argument, did social and economic
discrimination, Mr. Shelton, against African Americans abruptly
end with the Civil War or abruptly end with the civil rights
legislation passage or at the election of Barack Obama?
Why should Federal or State governments bear any
responsibility for the economic and social damages imposed on
descendants of the enslaved, Mr. Shelton?
Is Mr. Shelton not with us? If not, I will answer my own
question.
It did not end with the Civil War. It did not end with
Baker v. Carr. It did not end with Republicans like Everett
Dirksen, Charles Percy, William Schaeffer, Nelson Rockefeller,
Wayne Morse, and George Romney. It did not end. It continues.
It continues to this day, discrimination against people in
economic terms, in social terms, with health deserts and food
deserts, and people who don't care. Benign neglect at best, it
can be said.
The fact is we have a problem in this country, and we need
to deal with it, and we need to make amends. Reparations is not
necessarily money, as Mr. Johnson pointed out. It is a study.
It is not just slavery, which some of the witnesses have
talked about, nobody here alive, there are no slaves alive. It
is about slavery and the consequences of slavery. It is about
Jim Crow and what happened through Jim Crow and separate and
unequal, Plessy v. Ferguson, that bled into this country's core
and was not challenged by most people.
I have seen it when I was a young person in Memphis. I saw
discrimination, and I couldn't understand it. The first hero I
had was an African-Cuban baseball player, Minnie Minoso, who
befriended me when nobody else did when I had polio and was on
crutches and trying to get autographs at a ballgame, and he
befriended me. I went to my dad, I was just 6 years old, the
nicest guy, the only guy that put his hands, heart out to me
was the Black player, the only one, and people didn't get it.
It has been for years.
We have a problem in this country which we need to study.
As Charles Ogletree said, it could be programs that are good
for people beyond Black people but other people who have been
systematically oppressed or not given opportunities. We should
not fear a study, and it does not deal simply with slavery. It
deals with the aftereffects of slavery and what that has done
to the American society and the American soul.
As far as what I said about the three-fifths compromise, I
was right. It was using Black people for the political power of
southerners who wanted to have that power mostly to keep
slavery legal. So, their use was being perpetuated against them
in the Halls of Congress to keep slavery and keep them in
bondage.
So, yes, we needed a war because the South left the country
over slavery, and that is exactly what happened, and we are
still dealing with it, and we need to have a study of what we
can do to give people a proper share at the table.
In football terms, it is like getting to the 3-yard line
and you think you have got a chance to score. The White team is
on the 3-yard line. They are in the red zone all the time. The
Black team has been for years back on the other 3-yard line
with 97 yards to go, and nobody cared. They got to play with
inferior uniforms, they got to play without helmets, and they
got to play without technological advances, to have coaches up
in the stands to tell them what to do.
They were on the 3-yard line and they want to keep them
there. The other team had helmets and shoulder pads and all
kind of walkie-talkies to know what the other team was planning
to do and keep them on the 3-yard line, and we want to say it
is all equal, it is all fair, let's just start now. You can't
do that. It is patently unfair.
With that, I want to yield the remainder of my time and
whatever other time she needs to Congresswoman Sheila Jackson
Lee.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chair, I think you have eloquently
crafted what we are doing today.
I wanted to personally thank each and every witness for
their stupendous testimony.
H.R. 40 is large enough and right enough to be able to hear
from Mr. Walker and Attorney Elder. It will be able to hear
from a potpourris of voices. That is what H.R. 40, the
Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals, is all
about.
So, I want to be able to try to capture, Mr. Chair, where
we are going and why it is important to go.
Thank you for the historical perspective of Mr. Johnson and
yourself about the three-fifths. Might I add one other point?
The three-fifths was in the Constitution. Was any other race of
people listed as three-fifths in the constitutional document?
So, when this precious document was formulated that has
given us this wonderment of democracy, then we, descendants of
enslaved Africans, were not a whole person. The reason, of
course, is the North didn't want the South to overseed them
with Members in the United States Congress. It seems
interesting that we are facing that aggravation even today.
Let me give you these stark points so that you can
understand when I held up the pictures of those who had been
harmed. It is the very point that we are making. They were in
the late 1800s and in the 20th century. That is the concept of
which H.R. 40 is based on, the continuing disparities and
violence against African Americans and other indigenous people.
When the question was asked about other people, I know from
my grandmother, when you lift one boat, you lift all boats.
My father, Ezra Jackson, was the baby son of my widowed
grandmother. Three uncles went to World War II. I can assure
you, when they came back, they did not have access to the GI
Bill. They were redlined. They, frankly, went home to live with
Mother.
The youngest son was a brilliant cartoonist, an artist. He
was asked to work for the major cartoons, comics on Madison
Avenue in New York. When the White soldiers came home, this
young man was relieved of his dream and never again for another
30 years was able to work back in that industry. He was
summarily fired because of his skin color.
So, H.R. 40 is the presence of a continuing sting of
disparities. It is the evidence of the fact that school
populations of Black and Brown children receive $23 billion
less in funding than White school districts. It is the evidence
that end-of-life care for Black Americans is $7,100 more
expensive for Black individuals. It is the fact that Black
people are more than six times as likely as White people to
languish behind bars for possessing drugs for personal use,
even though Black and White people use drugs the same. In fact,
the concept of mass incarceration was on the backs of Black men
and women in the State and Federal prisons.
So, I just want to raise this question with Ms. Masaoka,
because we thank the Japanese Americans for their strong
support of H.R. 40. We apologized to them for the unnatural
internment that they faced in the 1940s of patriotic Japanese
Americans. We have received 300 letters from Japanese Americans
in support of H.R. 40. We are aware of the fact that Japanese
Americans under a Republican President had the Civil Liberties
Act, which was signed into law by President Reagan, and
received a reparation.
Would you share with us the fact that this legislation,
H.R. 40, if I might use the term, is mainstream and is relevant
to today as it was relevant to you and the Japanese Americans
in 1988? Shortly thereafter, John Conyers introduced this bill,
and I am glad in his leaving the Congress he was kind enough to
pass to me his legacy and ask me to carry this bill.
Ms. Masaoka, if I have got it right, would you share with
that point about the support of Japanese Americans and these
300 letters and the feeling that came over you in 1988 to
receive the Civil Liberties Act signed by a Republican
President?
Ms. Masaoka. I think that our community mobilized very
quickly to submit those 300 letters. I am really proud of our
community because I think we understood and understand the
lesson of redress and of the Civil Liberties Act, and that is
solidarity with others.
To communicate the fact that you said, yes, it is
mainstream. We won redress in 1988, and we didn't think we
could, but we did with support of the whole country, enough to
pass. We thank the African-American community and other
communities who came in solidarity with us.
This government paid redress out of its Treasury to people
that were victimized in 1942. So, it is something that can be
done and should be done.
We wholeheartedly support H.R. 40 and want to continue to
support and see that it passes because it is the passage of the
Civil Liberties Act of 1988 meant a lot to our community. It
meant that we could hold our head up high, to say that our
government apologized, was accountable, and that we were not--
it was an injustice, it acknowledged that, and continued to
educate people today around that injustice.
Thank you.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
Let me have my last question to Ms. Heath.
The Harvard study has reaffirmed the fact that documented,
peer-reviewed document that indicated that, in fact, if
reparations had been implemented before COVID-19 we might not
have had this definitive and deadening and deadly imbalance.
So, we know that, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control,
Black people get COVID-19 at a rate nearly one and a half times
higher than that of Whites, are hospitalized at a rate of four
times higher, and three times are likely to die from the
disease.
I would be interested, Ms. Heath, in how might the
commission assess the impact of poor water, poor sanitation,
healthcare infrastructure on African-American communities?
Should there be a focus on environmental and health impacts on
children?
As you speak, I just want to again hold up the back of a
slave that was brutally beaten by his master. So that pain,
that brutality continues.
Ms. Heath, would you answer that question, please?
Ms. Heath. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman.
You are absolutely right. Thank you for citing and lifting
up the Harvard Medical research's study that reveals if
reparations were administered, the gaps of infection as well as
gaps would have been closed for the Black community, but more
broadly for the U.S.
I think that speaks largely to this stage of slavery and
the denial of healthcare, which came in the institution of
slavery, but thereafter in the form of other Federal policies,
segregationist policies, such as redlining, which happened in
239 cities across the U.S., which basically divided communities
along race and class lines, and made those resources
historically have been disinvested in those communities,
particularly low-income and Black neighborhoods.
So, we absolutely need to look at healthcare-specific
reparations remedies. As you know, the same disease is going
around and affecting all of us, but some of us are dying and
being affected more, and that means we are looking at life
expectancy rates within the U.S. and Black people being 4 years
less likely to live.
There is also rates of asthma, heatstroke, diabetes,
obesity, maternal healthcare, and access to prenatal care that
would help assist in terms of preventing preventable diseases
and preventable deaths.
So, that is why we need healthcare reparation specific,
because Black people are living in poorer neighborhoods,
attending lower-resource schools, as well as lower-quality
healthcare facilities and hospitals with higher rates of
ambulance use because there is no access to a broad range of
practitioners that are dealing with these healthcare issues.
So, there is going to have to be a wide range of look at
discrimination as a result of several Federal government
policies.
Mr. Owens. Point of order. Point of order. The gentlelady
from Texas has gone over her time, whatever time. Is it
possible I could get 2 minutes to conclude also?
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Cohen, Chair Cohen, I--
Mr. Cohen. Yeah, I have got a menagerie of devices here.
Mr. Owens, you will be recognized for 2 minutes afterwards.
Mr. Owens. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Mr. Cohen. Ms. Jackson Lee, are you about finished?
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chair, Mr. Howard wanted to comment.
Would you be kind enough to indulge Mr. Howard who wanted to
comment?
Mr. Cohen. I will indulge you. Thank you.
Ms. Jackson Lee. All right. Thank you. I know Mr. Owens
will have his time as Ranking Member.
Mr. Howard, may I pose to you a question that responds
directly to the picture that I am holding of a brutalized slave
who shows the welts of the beating of their master. You note
the term that I use, that that was the terminology that a slave
was subjected to. They were the slave and then there were the
masters, and that is what we had here in this country of which
we have never received an apology or a response.
I am going to yield to you and say we are not asking our
neighbors to do anything. We are saying to the Federal
Government that it was sanctioned. This is a legal commission.
We will go through legal process of how we address these
issues.
Would you just address this? Then I will close. Mr. Howard,
do you want to address this now?
Mr. Howard. Thank you, Congresswoman Jackson Lee.
That picture, most people may have seen that picture and
some may have not, but that is a picture of a man by the name
of Gordon. Gordon received that beating at the time of the
Civil War. After he healed, he escaped enslavement and found
his way to a Union Army camp, and it was there at that Union
Army camp where that picture was taken after his examination to
be enlisted into the Union Army to fight for the freedom of 4
million other of his enslaved brothers and sisters who were
enshackled in America.
After joining the Union Army, Gordon went out on patrol and
was beaten a second time and left for dead, but found his way
back again to the Union Army and participated in one of the
first major battles in Louisiana that was won by Black Union
soldiers.
So, it is in that spirit that we continue to struggle to be
repaired today, in the spirit of Gordon, and I just wanted to
lift up his name.
Thank you, Congresswoman.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you.
Let me conclude my remarks by thanking Secretary Weber,
Professor Achiume, Mr. Howard, Ms. Masaoka, Ms. Heath, and Mr.
Shelton, and conclude my remarks with these simple statements.
We have a wonderful group of Members. I want to acknowledge
Congresswoman Bush in my closing remarks, and the reason is
because she had great experience in Ferguson. I went there when
Michael Brown was brutally killed and racially profiled. It
wasn't in 1855. It wasn't in 1822. It wasn't in 1799. It wasn't
even in the 1950s. It was in the 21st century. Mr. Brown was
racially profiled, a young man headed to college playing
football, racially profiled.
When we pierced the veil of that city, Ferguson, we found
out that the whole community had been racially profiled. The
whole city was basing its income, its revenue on fines and fees
from African Americans, continuing disparities, and I say
continuing remnants of slavery.
So, I thank Congresswoman Bush for her leadership in that
fight. I am glad she is here, but that is a very prime example
of what continues to happen in the 21st century. I believe good
Americans--and they are everywhere; this is a good country; it
is a special country; it is a country that loves democracy;
will welcome H.R. 40 and the healing reparative aspects of this
commission, and so the final question to all of us is, why we
can't wait?
Robert F. Kennedy asked the question when he was asked:
When people ask me why, I ask why not. That is what we are
saying today. When people ask us why, I say, why not? When they
ask us what time, I say, why we can't wait.
I am delighted to have this opportunity.
I yield back.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you very much.
Mr. Owens, you have been patient and if you would like 2
minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, even 5 minutes, you have got it.
First down, 10 yards to go. You are recognized, Mr. Owens.
Mr. Owens. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I love the football
analogy. It is something I still relate to years later.
First of all, I want to thank Mr. Elder and Mr. Walker for
their time, and just give a minute or two, just to quickly--if
you have any conclusions that you might want to give, so I can
wrap this up on my side. Mr. Walker, first. Anything that you
want to quickly add before we close us out.
Mr. Walker still there?
Okay.
What about Mr. Elder? Is he still there?
Mr. Elder. I am, and thank you so much. I do have a few--
Mr. Walker. I am here now.
Mr. Owens. Okay. All right. Go ahead, Herschel.
Mr. Walker. I didn't hear your question, and I am in Texas,
and I am in and out sometime.
Mr. Owens. Just if you have any--like a minute conclusion,
anything you just want to wrap up with before we close this
out, Herschel.
Mr. Walker. Well, I think I would like to know, yes, one of
the major things I ask here is, as I said earlier, I think it
is very, very important, but we go back to our Constitution
where I asked the question, why have we not held our
Constitution to what it promised to all men? I think that is a
major question because that is a who, why, and who is
responsible. I think once we can figure out who is responsible
for not holding the Constitution to what it promised to the--to
all men, we solve the problems, and we heal the Nation by
healing all races, not just healing one. Because we demonize
one group, and I think that is going to be--that is a problem.
Because I do believe in forgiveness and going forward together,
as Martin Luther King mentioned about brotherhood, kinship.
Mr. Owens. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Walker.
Mr. Elder.
Mr. Elder. Just a few quick things. It has been mentioned a
couple times that reparations are owed to Blacks for 400 years
of slavery. Well, America was founded in 1787 and slavery ended
in 1865, so that is substantially less than 400 years.
It has also been mentioned that America has yet to atone
for slavery. Well, remember that Lyndon Johnson launched the
so-called war on poverty in 1965. He specifically talked about
the need to redress past grievances for Blacks. Since then, we
have spent over $22 trillion in payments to fight the so-called
war on poverty.
Also, Mr. Cohen mentioned the wonderful story about Minnie
Minoso. I remember Minnie Minoso. He was a great ball player. I
would like to give you a story too and conclude with this. I
was in law school in 1974. In 1975, I am visiting my aunt who
lives in Southfield, Michigan, right outside Detroit. She and I
are talking. The doorbell rang. A gentleman comes. He is about
40 years old, a friend of my aunt's. He came in, and he sat
down as my aunt and I were talking. I was talking to my aunt
about the classes I was taking, what I intended to do after I
got out of law school. I looked up, and this 40-year-old Black
man was crying. I thought maybe I had said something to offend
him. I looked up, and I said, ``Excuse me. Did I say something
that bothered you?'' He said, ``no, no, no. I just wanted to be
a lawyer too, and I had the potential to do it. I didn't take
responsibility. I got caught up in too much jack-assery, and I
blew my opportunity.''
I went to school with a lot of young Japanese kids, Korean
kids, and Chinese kids. They all had something in common. They
busted their butts in homework. You look at a graph of who does
homework in America--Blacks are outdone by Hispanics, who are
outdone by Whites, who are outdone by Asians.
There is a reason that Japanese Americans, Chinese
Americans, and Korean Americans make more money per capita than
do White Americans. They work hard. They don't complain. They
take responsibility, and I would urge all Americans to follow
that example.
Mr. Owens. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Elder.
I just want to wrap up with just a little bit of history
real quick, guys. I was real blessed, again, to grow up in a
household where my dad had returned from war. I am not sure
what the other experiences were on the call here, but the
experiences of my dad and his brothers was that they came back
from war, and they were able to take advantage of the GI Bill.
They actually--he came back. He could not get his post-
graduate degree in Texas, where we grew up, because of Jim Crow
laws. I ran across a box of letters when he passed away 8 years
ago of rejection letters across this country, but what that
generation did, they looked at that kind of rejection as
motivation. He continued until he got to Ohio State, where he
got his Ph.D. in agronomy. His brother got his Ph.D. in
economics. He went on, and 2 or 3 years later is in Africa
doing a researcher.
Now, I want to ask you, how many White Americans in middle
of 1950s were living in Liberia, Africa? I was a 5-year-old kid
at the time--with their parents doing research, traveling
around the country. It is because that Nation, that generation
took advantage of every opportunity they had, and they never
felt sorry for themselves. They were out to win by commanding
respect from those who needed to see them win.
So, dad came back. He was 40 years of professor, Florida.
A&M very successful entrepreneur, researcher, a great
mentor, and the most important thing he taught us that you work
hard, you work harder than the next guy, you start harder than
the next guy, and you win in that process.
That is the message we have to give. I would ask that our
Congresswoman Jackson Lee, instead of showing something 200
years ago, how about showing a picture of my dad, that
generation of great men and women who really went through the
toughest of time, grew up in the Depression, went through this
true segregation, the KKK, and they did not let it stop them.
They led our Nation, as I mentioned before, in all the
categories of success because they understood that their kids
deserved to see success to pass that bridge. We need to take
the time instead of opening up past wounds, what is happening
today to our kids? What are the policies that is happening in
California that makes it such a high misery index in everything
you can think of--education, families, and crime?
California is a place that should be showing up all of us
in terms of a liberal Democratic State of how the policies
work. The policies are not working. At the end of the day, it
is the policies that we have to look at, not the past. Because
together we put the right policies where everybody has the same
opportunities for life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, and
we can show everyone how great our country has always been in
terms of opportunities and where we are going in the future.
So, please use my dad's picture, and I will send it to
anyone who needs it in terms of what we are doing today,
instead of what happened 200 years ago from strangers we don't
know. He is an example. Larry's dad could say the same. I could
go across the board. Anybody that grew up during the 1950s and
1960s understands what the Greatest Generation looked like, and
they were not people who felt sorry for themselves, and they
would be upset to hear that they have been looked at as victims
today because they were victors in a big way and a great
example of what the American Dream is really all about.
With that, I yield back.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Owens. I appreciate your
testimony. I appreciate all the Members of the Committee and,
particularly, the witnesses. They have given their
perspectives. We have had a complete discussion of this issue
and people supporting and against and for the reasons, and it
is good that we have such hearings. I thank everybody for
appearing. It is an important hearing.
Without objection, all Members will have 5 legislative days
to submit additional questions for the witnesses or additional
materials for the record.
With that, I declare this hearing concluded and adjourned.
Bang. Done.
[Whereupon, at 1:12 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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