[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 18 (Friday, February 25, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          A RESPONSE TO RACISM

 Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, last November Khalid Abdul 
Muhammad made a speech at Kean College in New Jersey that set off a 
firestorm because of its ugliness and words of hatred and abuse. This 
speech has refocused national attention on the vast racial divides 
still evident in our country. Tonight, Mr. Muhammad will be back in New 
Jersey, to make a speech at Trenton State College. We don't know what 
he will say. But, his speech at Kean College and his reappearance in 
our State have sparked a debate on the appropriate response to hate 
speeches.
  Mr. Muhammad's speech was false, racist, anti-Semitic, repugnant and 
a disservice to all Americans, as stated in the amendment the Senate 
approved earlier this month. It was far reaching in its venom. It was 
more than racist and anti-Semitic. It was anti-Catholic. It was 
antigay. It was antiwhite. It was vicious, divisive, and harmful.
  This view of Mr. Muhammad's remarks, which were largely endorsed by 
Mr. Farrakhan, is shared by most African-Americans. I have been 
contacted by many people in New Jersey, including a number of Moslems, 
many of them African-Americans, who reject Mr. Muhammad's remarks as 
inconsistent with their religion and their beliefs. Many secular 
African-American leaders have repudiated his remarks as well.
  Mr. President, how shall we handle future attempts to spread such 
hatred on our college campuses? And how ought we react to the fact that 
much of the audience that listened to that abusive speech applauded it?
  We have to expose the lies. We have to unveil the truth. We have to 
bare the hypocrisy of these accusations and not let their distortions 
stand. The accusations he made should infuriate the fair minded and all 
should reject the filth he spews.
  We cannot prevent Mr. Muhammad or Mr. Farrakhan from speaking on 
college campuses, or from any platform in America. In our democratic 
society, we must respect and protect free speech. The Founding Fathers 
had great faith in an educated citizenry. They provided for an almost 
absolute right to free speech, counting on informed debate to quell 
those words and writings and speeches which were offensive or even 
potentially destabilizing. We've cherished these rights throughout our 
history, and honored them under difficult conditions--even during 
wartime.
  A David Duke has the right to lecture on college campuses. So does a 
George Wallace. So does a Mr. Muhammad and a Mr. Farrakhan.
  But, these liberties also carry responsibilities. They carry the 
responsibility to contest them and to speak out against them. 
Universities do not have to volunteer to give bigotry a platform. But 
if they choose to do so, they have an obligation: to underscore the 
factual and ethical flaws in the arguments to which their students are 
exposed.
  They have a responsibility to live up to the standards of 
intellectual integrity which they pursue and seek to inculcate.
  Students can issue invitations to speakers whose message is 
inconsistent with scholarly findings, intolerant of different points of 
view, and incompatible with a real search for truth. But when they do, 
the university and community of which they are a part have an 
obligation to make sure that their students are exposed to alternative 
views.
  In New Jersey, under the leadership of the Council of Christians and 
Jews, we are planning a statewide forum to explore these issues. A 
number of colleges are already prepared to initiate or strengthen their 
own efforts in this area: The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, 
for example, has an ongoing Community Human Relations Coalition which 
provides a forum for discussing these issues. In my judgment, these 
responsibilities go beyond disputing the premises of hateful speech. 
They extend to probing the issue of why such messages are so well 
received.
  The Kean college audience Mr. Muhammad addressed was made up of less 
than 200 students. But those 200 students are among the expected to be 
leaders in the African-American community. They obviously have academic 
talent. They are getting an education that will prepare them for a 
successful professional and personal life. Yet many responded to Mr. 
Muhammad's speech of hate with cheers of approval.
  We condemn Mr. Muhammad and his message. But we must also reach out 
to the students who were moved by his rhetoric of hate and attracted by 
his words of violence.
  Mr. President, we must figure out why those words fall on receptive 
ears. We have to come to grips with the fact that some of our students 
liked what they heard.
  Why? Why did they like what they heard? The answer is they are like 
other people--capable of prejudice. The answer is that the poverty, the 
racism, the hopelessness, they have witnessed in their communities has 
stoked anger--and it is a small step from anger to hatred. The answer 
is that many have been treated badly--and feel the system leaves them 
out. The answer is that they have seen racist statements made by 
whites--prominent whites in some cases--go unchallenged.
  Mr. President, we need to condemn what was said in the strongest 
possible terms. But, in the end, we have to do more than condemn. We 
have to respond so that we prevent prejudice from taking seed and 
growing and bursting into a deadly bloom.
  We have not found a way to reach the students who cheered Mr. 
Muhammad's speech. We have not been successful in dealing with their 
pain and their anger--which can easily spill over to violent episodes 
of rage and hatred.
  That, Mr. President, is the hard part of what we have to do. We must 
condemn Mr. Muhammad's speech at Kean College. It was unacceptable. It 
was abhorrent and could not be left uncontested. But, we must also look 
ahead. Kean College has already taken steps to sponsor symposiums on 
hate and colloquiums on diversity. When Mr. Muhammad speaks at Trenton 
State tonight, the Mercer County community has plans for rebuttal 
speakers in conjunction with his visit.
  That's good. But, it must be more than a sporadic effort. Unless we 
are resigned to continue moving apart, we need to start moving 
together. We need to make sure that racist slander shrivels under a 
constant light of critical examination. But we must also do more to 
bring our young people--all of our people--together.
  We do that, Mr. President, by talking to one another. By establishing 
frameworks for real dialog; by sitting down at the same table to put a 
human face on the blurred portraits we have of one another. With its 
multiethnic and multicultural population, California has developed 
programs to promote understanding and empathy among young people of 
different ethnic groups. Students in ethnically diverse schools have 
been paired to expose them to other cultural practices and lifestyles. 
Los Angeles mandated a program like this for so-called skinheads 
convicted of bias crimes.
  So, when Mr. Muhammad returns to New Jersey, he will find a different 
environment awaiting his arrival. His words will be challenged, if 
appropriate to do so, and placed in the glare of publicity. His visit 
will be followed by a forum to further promote tolerance.
  Mr. Muhammad can only prevail if we respond to his attacks with 
silence. Or if we respond to his words of hate and violence with acts 
of hate and violence.
  The response of the people of New Jersey and the Nation demonstrates 
that he will not prevail.
  Mr. President, I am proud of the response in my State to these 
events. In New Jersey, we must continue efforts to improve race 
relations and address the root causes of prejudice and ethnic conflict. 
We are one of the most ethnically diverse States in the country. We 
need to learn to live together, work together, and be enriched, not 
embittered, by our diversity.

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