[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 107 (Friday, August 5, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 5, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        VOTING RIGHTS IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. 
McKinney] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority 
leader.
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from the 
District of Columbia [Ms. Norton].
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, the O.J. Simpson matter I had mentioned indicates a 
severe gap between black and white perceptions of justice in this 
country. This gap is dangerous when you consider that this country is 
becoming more and more colored, more and more people of color are in 
this country. The notion that you would have a very large number of 
people who, after the passage of these statutes still feel this is an 
unfair country, does not bode well for democracy or stability.
  The best way for people to feel a part of their society is to be 
represented in that society. About the last message I personally would 
want to send to a very alienated black community is that there is no 
room for you on the inside, and we are going to put some people that 
you elected pursuant to Federal statute passed by the Congress of the 
United States, we are going to put them out, and, in the case of 
Louisiana, we are going to bring David Duke back.
  I have to tell you, I know of no way in which I could explain that or 
get people to understand. Well, that doesn't quite say what justice is 
about in America. I mean, the symbolism of it is already so high that I 
dread the notion that I could become more than symbolism.
  In any case, what has kept this from being a country fraught with the 
kind of tensions and violence we see in other nations and on other 
continents is that however gradually people have been able to come on 
the inside, ethnic group after ethnic group came to the country, by the 
way, almost always treated as dogs and rats, the white ethnic groups 
who came here one by one saw themselves discriminated against in 
exactly the fashion blacks were, to tell you the truth. The difference 
is white skin enabled them to move on and move up.
  When you take people, keep them outside of mainstream society for a 
long enough time, you create a dangerous situation in your society. 
When you say hey, come on in and be a part of us and let's help 
straighten out what you don't like, then, of course, you promote 
stability and peace in society.
  The last thing I think we ought to do now is consider, after 100 
years of work, repeating what was done almost as many years ago when 
the blacks in this body disappeared. That should be unthinkable. Far 
beyond what it means for democracy and for hypocrisy, it is dangerous 
to do that.
  What I already hear out there is dangerous. I hear people responding. 
I hear people in my own community responding to people of very extreme 
views, who tap into this sense of alienation. I want to tap into it and 
say come on in here and represent your people right here if you don't 
like it. The wrong message is to say go out there and find a way to 
take care of your problems.
  That is why these districts are in the very best interests of the 
country and bespeak the very best of the American tradition.
  Let me move on. Where do these districts come from? My colleagues, 
you and your constituents created these districts, and I want to prove 
that right now.
  In 1980, the Supreme Court, in a decision called Mobile versus 
Bolden, invalidated, in effect, what most of us had regarded was the 
way the Voting Rights Act ought to be applied. They said very specific 
intent had to be found to have discriminated before you redraw 
districts from which people of color might then be represented.
  This body said hey, wait a minute. The way in which the Supreme Court 
has spoken will mean that it will be very hard for blacks who have in 
fact encountered race discrimination to indeed be included through 
redistricting. So this body, Mr. Speaker, this body revisited its own 
statute and revised its own statute. And it did so precisely because 
its intention was for the Voting Rights Act to be used to remedy past 
and present discrimination.
  Now, let me be clear about what that means. The redrawing of 
districts that take place, bearing in mind that people of color have 
been excluded, is not a permanent redrawing of the districts. It is a 
remedial redrawing of the districts that will last so long as the 
discrimination exists, but passes at least every 10 years, and the 
districts are redrawn.
  So what we are looking at is a district specifically drawn to remedy 
as a legal remedy, not districts drawn because you want to get more 
blacks elected in and of itself. But they are specifically drawn 
because these blacks, or these Hispanics, or this group, has been 
excluded by operation of law, and the only way to remedy that is for 
there to be a remedy which allows members of that group to be elected.

                              {time}  1730

  Not in perpetuity based on color but as a remedy, and these remedies 
are always temporary. And in the case of voting rights, they last no 
more than 10 years because the districts have to be drawn again. But as 
a former chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which 
had the same jurisdiction in employment, I can tell you that the 
remedies there would use goals to bring in excluded groups and are also 
temporary. And they have to fall away once the discrimination has been 
addressed. So we are talking about a specific remedy for a specific 
wrong.
  We are talking about a remedy that passes out of existence when the 
specific wrong is taken care of.
  Let us go on and see how we know when the remedy should be applied; 
namely, the district should be redrawn.
  Under our amendment of our statute, the Voting Rights Act, in 1982, 
we adopted a test based on the, what we called a totality-of-the-
circumstances standard. I sincerely believe that some courts understand 
this standard and some courts, for whatever reason, do not. The court 
in Louisiana not only did not understand it, in the case of the 
district of the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Fields] which has been 
redrawn in order to favor whites in the population who never experience 
discrimination, they did not just misunderstand it, there is something 
worse going on in Louisiana.
  In North Carolina, they seemed to get our drift. They seemed to have 
read our words. Because in a district that looks a lot like the 
district of the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Fields], at least in the 
sense that it is irregularly drawn in order to remedy the past 
discrimination, the court comes out exactly the opposite way from the 
way the Louisiana court comes out. By the way, that guarantees another 
Supreme Court decision because we have got decisions that clash. 
Somebody has to figure it out, and we are going back to the Supreme 
Court, thank you very much, Mr. Thomas. Maybe he has learned something 
since the last time.
  We are going to keep at this until we get it right, even if it means 
we have to revisit the Voting Rights Act yet again.
  What does totality of the circumstances that lead to the redrawing of 
a district mean? Here is what we said, if I may paraphrase. That in 
seeing whether or not this remedy is necessary, we, the Congress of the 
United States, said, look at any history of official discrimination, 
such as denial of the right to vote or to register to vote or to 
participate in the democratic process.
  Louisiana, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, need I say anything 
more? You can take judicial notice of the fact that the failures there 
are part of our tragic history. Test met.
  Another test we said, that elections in the political subdivisions 
are racially polarized. Another test, that in drawing districts in the 
past, we see that they have been drawn so as to enhance opportunities 
for discrimination against the minority group. Examples of that would 
be drawing districts real large so that minority group gets lost in 
them, for example.
  Another example of a circumstance that you look at is the use of 
processes that deny the minority group access, such as candidate-
slating processes. Blacks were very unlikely to be put on a slate with 
whites. Look at the extent to which the minority group bears the 
effects of discrimination in the way it has been forced to live, as 
evidenced by education, employment, health, indicators of that kind. Or 
look at the extent to which members of a minority group have been 
elected to public office in the jurisdiction. Those are the tests from 
our 1982 amendment of the Voting Rights Act.

  To show you how those tests applied in a particular case, let me take 
Thornburg versus Gingles, a North Carolina case. They looked at North 
Carolina, the situation in North Carolina in the Gingles case. This is 
a court of appeals case. I am sorry, this is a Supreme Court case. And 
they found that there had been discriminatory election related acts in 
North Carolina between the years 1900 and 1970, such as, understand 
they went all the way to 1970, such as the use of a pole tax, a 
literacy test, a prohibition against bullet voting where you vote for 
one person rather than for all six, let us say. And they said that that 
was an indication of discrimination. And there were a number of others.
  Just let me name a few more tha they found. They found that there had 
been historic discrimination in education, housing, employment, health 
services in North Carolina. They found that voting procedures such as 
majority vote requirement for primary elections had been used in North 
Carolina. Well, it has to be the majority vote. If you are in the 
minority, there is some indication in that atmosphere, in that part of 
the country, given its history, that they were not just using majority 
vote primaries for nothing. We have majority vote primaries all over 
the country where there is no history of discrimination and you might 
think nothing about it. But that has to be filtered through the 
particular history, in this case in North Carolina. And so it went.
  I have, Mr. Speaker, emphasized this legal history because it is our 
history, the history of this body, the words of this body, the 
intention of this body. The amendments were done because we were 
dissatisfied with the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court had 
misread us.
  Now, unless we can straighten this out, we are going to have to give 
them some more instructions through yet another amendment of the Voting 
Rights Act. I certainly hope we will not have to do that and that they 
get it right this time and that we straighten out the district of the 
gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Fields] and the several others that are 
under attack that you have heard about today.
  Let me finally say to you, Mr. Speaker, why I think, above all, 
Americans would want to embrace the statute and the districts it has 
finally produced. How many times have I heard conservatives get up on 
this floor and talk about the great progress we have made so why do you 
people need more remedies?
  Well, if you are going to talk about great progress, let us make sure 
we keep the progress intact and do not reverse it. Boy, what a reversal 
this would be. It would be a reversal in a little more than a couple 
years' time. But you would not want to, if you are an American, want to 
reverse the kind of progress I am about to detail, just a few 
indicators.
  In 1965, when this statute was passed, there were all of 300 black 
elected officials in this country. Today, almost 30 years later, there 
are 8,015 black elected officials in this country. In 1965, in the 
States of the old Confederacy, in the South, there were only 87 black 
elected officials. By 1993, my hat is off to the new South, because we 
have grown from 87 black elected officials to 5,492 black elected 
officials in the South of the United States.
  As a student and young woman, I spent some of the best days of my 
life in Mississippi.

                              {time}  1740

  I was sure that I would never live to see it become a civilized part 
of the world. Now, Mississippi has more black elected officials than 
any State in the Union. That makes me feel like an American, myself. I 
certainly would hope it would make every American feel more American.
  Black voter registration in 1965 was 41 percent. It is 63 percent 
today. How encouraging the Voting Rights Act has been to all of us. 
Surely, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Fields] is proud 
of the fact that Louisiana apparently leads the Nation in black 
registration. Eighty-two percent of all blacks over 18 are registered 
in the State of Louisiana. It would be interesting to know how many of 
those registered after the redistricting took place.
  Here is a State that only had one black, I just got him in my class 
two classes ago, and now it is about to have two, and Mr. Speaker, I 
have to say it will take a long time to really catch up to the 
deprivation that has gone before. While we are catching up, surely we 
do not want to step back. That just makes catching up ever so much more 
difficult.
  Mr. Speaker, I have come forward, even though my own district is not 
endangered--my district in voter registration is, I don't know, perhaps 
60-percent black, 40 percent white, it has a wonderful homogeneity in 
underlying philosophy--but I come forward because these new districts 
have made me a proud American; because I believe we ought to shout to 
the hilltops that this is the handiwork of this proud body, and this 
Congress should take whatever action is necessary to preserve these 
districts.
  Mr. Speaker, I come forward because I see dangerous alienation in my 
own community, because it has taken so long to come to parity, and we 
are nowhere near parity yet, and because I have to have something to 
say to people that indicates that there is hope, and that change is 
coming, and I will not know what to say if these new districts are 
turned back and turned around.
  Of course, Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, I stand with the 
gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. McKinney and my other colleagues whose 
districts may be in danger, because I have a very personal bond with 
them. However, I believe this Congress has a bond with the American 
people that is represented by the action we took to make sure districts 
like this would indeed be formed, and so they have been formed. They 
must not be deformed and turned around.
  Mr. Speaker, we cannot control what the Supreme Court does. We cannot 
control what courts of appeals do. However, we certainly can restate 
what our intentions are, and have been, and we can certainly do what we 
are doing this afternoon, to let the American people know what is at 
stake, know how far we have come, and know that we certainly do not 
intend at this late time in the century to turn around.
  Let us all embrace these districts, let us all take pride in them, 
and through them, in ourselves as Americans.
  Ms. McKINNEY. I would just commend the gentlewoman from her 
eloquence, as usual. Let me just say that politics is not always 
interesting, and certainly redistricting is not the easiest subject to 
comprehend, but the gentlewoman has done a wonderful job in making this 
both interesting and understandable to the people who are with us this 
evening.
  Mr. Speaker, I would also like to go a little further and thank the 
gentlewoman for her work, her life's work, on behalf of democracy, 
freedom, justice and fairness in this country, and also her work on 
behalf of the 11th Congressional District of Georgia. Thank you very 
much.

  We also, Mr. Speaker, have with us another gentlewoman from Texas who 
is in a State whose districts are being challenged, and I yield to the 
gentlewoman from Texas [Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas].
  Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I cannot reach the 
eloquence of my colleague, the gentlewoman who just completed, but I 
think I can bring forth a little bit of understanding as to what we are 
experiencing also in Texas.
  Mr. Speaker, we sat for a number of years waiting to join the rest of 
this Nation for representation. It was a great day when the Voting 
Rights Act of 1965 came. When the census of 1970 came and the 
opportunity in 1972 came, I'm talking about the seventies, 1972, not 
1700 anything, not 1800 anything, but 1972, we were able to elect the 
first black American from Texas to the U.S. Congress.
  It was a joyous time in Texas. All of Texas celebrated. We came to 
the Capitol grounds and celebrated freedom and equality. Thousands and 
thousands of Texans came to Austin, TX, to celebrate Barbara Jordan 
getting an opportunity to come to the U.S. Congress.
  That was not a big deal for white people. After all, they had been 
doing it as long as it has been a nation, and as long as it has been a 
Congress. However, this was an extraordinary occasion for us. Then she 
was followed by Mickey Leland and Craig Washington, and finally, Mr. 
Speaker, because Dallas, with a large number, a concentrated 
population, could not get a seat at the same time, though we had the 
population to do so, we were not able to get it until after the census 
of 1990.
  It was not because the people were not voting. It was because their 
votes were paired off to elect others; not candidates of our choice, 
necessarily, but other candidates.
  Mr. Speaker, in 1992, there was a second opportunity in Texas, and 
maybe there should have been at least five opportunities, but at least 
there was a second one, where the voters in the primary nominated a 
candidate with 93 percent of the vote, and I believe that made that 
candidate a candidate of choice. That candidate went on to win in the 
general election with almost 76 percent of the vote.
  Mr. Speaker, the voters did not stop the person, but now one or two 
people want to take that right away from those voters who elected a 
candidate of their choice.
  Though the approach is not considered to be one of personal attack, 
as has been explained over and over again, how can we explain this to 
young people? How can we explain this to the frustrated young 
population now, that we cannot understand why they do not want to stay 
in school, and why they do not want to follow all the rules of society, 
if they feel that the adult population in this country do not care what 
they think, how their parents vote, whether they have an opportunity?
  Do you think we can instill hope? Do you think that young people of 
color in this country can feel that there is a nation of which they are 
a real part when the representatives that they can talk with, that they 
know understand, they do not have to guess, they do not have to wonder, 
they do not have to ask ``What you people want,'' can represent them in 
the bodies that they watch on television, and the threat is to take 
them away?
  I wish that we had the luxury, Mr. Speaker, to come here, vote no, 
and leave without thinking about it, but we do not. Most of our work 
takes place without coming to this floor and voting, because we are 
inundated with many concerns every day that become our major 
responsibility over and above what we were actually elected to do.
  We do not have the luxury of just being a Congressperson or a State 
senator or a councilman. We have to be the whole show of equality, 
freedom, and opportunity for our people, and not just confined to our 
districts, but all over the country.
  I get mail from all over this country pleading for help, especially 
in States where there are no black elected officials, especially at 
this level.
  Young people in this country watched Thurgood Marshall become a 
Justice on the Supreme Court. That was a great day. This man had been 
one who helped all of us break down the barriers to be a part of the 
mainstream in this country.

                              {time}  1750

  He was somebody we could be proud of. We have not had that 
representation on that court since him, and I do not see it in the 
future. But that was an example of how we can encourage young people to 
have aspirations, to give them reason to stay in school, to give them 
reason for following the law because somebody is going to help it be 
fair. But when it is not going to be fair, when they do not see the 
fairness, when they see that they get the worst of everything, hope is 
injured. Hope right now has less life than it had 25 years ago, because 
they see less progress. Yes, we have had some, but it is being rolled 
back. They see the attacks. They fear the coming of a new 
reconstruction, just as we do. We do not feel safe. And we know that we 
work every day, day in and day out, to try to relieve some of the 
burden, to look for opportunities, to try to do it within the framework 
of law, to try to do it with the rules that were written before we got 
here. We are trying hard, because we fought for this Nation. We have 
more than our share of the population in every war. We are proud to be 
Americans. But when we come home, it is difficult to tell our young 
people that there is something to look forward to when we never really 
feel that we can grab hold to a bit of equality and hold onto it. It is 
fleeting. If we just slacken any pace of vigilance, it disappears. That 
is what we are trying to convince the people, that we are an integral 
part of this Nation, but it is not fair unless we be an integral part 
of every level of what governs this Nation. We do not want to see the 
negative. We are here every day working against that. But we cannot 
convince any young person that there is hope when there is no 
opportunity. We cannot just bear the responsibility without having some 
results. We have got to have a part of all of it. We are only looking 
for fairness. We have not even asked for equality, because if we had 
equality in Texas, for example, we would have five Members that are 
black in this U.S. Congress. But we are getting attacked because we 
have two. I do not believe that any person in cloth with any sense of 
fairness can turn this clock back. I fail to see the logic. I do not 
think it is written anywhere in any law book. I think when they decide 
that we do not deserve to represent people, they will write new law 
that has never been written, that can never be validated.
  In 1971, the Congressional Black Caucus was founded. In 1992, there 
were 26 Members. But in January 1993, we went to 40, and the attacks 
started. There have been lots of articles written about the clout. We 
recognize that we do not control any major voting here. All we try to 
do is speak out on issues of what we consider to be right. That is what 
is being attacked. You cannot attack our numbers without attacking what 
we stand for, and all we stand for is justice and equality.
  We speak for voices that will not be heard otherwise. All of those 
voices do not live in our districts, all of them do not look like us. 
Sometimes I wonder, what would public education do in this Nation 
without voices like mine speaking out? Yet my people cannot even get 
the equality in the distribution of the funds. It is most unfortunate 
that this cannot be understood. I believe strongly that if the American 
people stopped to recognize what we are trying to say and tried to 
understand what we are trying to do, that every American that finds 
themselves in this great Nation would agree that all of its people 
deserve representation.
  There are so many Americans, not black Americans, not just Hispanic 
Americans, not just Asian Americans or native Americans but other 
Americans as well that would never have their causes expressed and 
advanced without a very small minority of the voices in bodies like 
these. I believe it was intended when the Constitution was written that 
all of the people in this Nation be represented. That is simply all we 
are asking. We have not even asked for our fair share. We have simply 
asked for those that we can go to the right arenas and negotiate, 
whether they be in State legislatures or in the courts. We have not 
taken up arms and held guns and shot and threatened. We have tried to 
go to the right arenas and use the mechanisms placed in position to 
govern this kind of deliberation, to get the rights we feel we deserve. 
That is all we are asking. We have defended this Nation. We will 
continue to do that. We are invested. We love this country.
  But tell me, how do you explain to young people the love you have for 
a Nation that continues to reject you? How do we continue to explain 
it? How do we explain to young people that, yes, it is worth going to 
school when their parents go and they cannot get an opportunity even 
after they go?
  Those are the kind of messages that we need to share with our 
colleagues. This is the kind of representation that we bring. We bring 
that message with sincerity and commitment. We sincerely believe that 
we have a role and we feel that the attack that is going on now to 
eliminate us from this body is grossly unfair and will not be 
tolerated.
  I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for this time, and I plead to the Members 
on both sides of the aisle to speak out against this unfairness and let 
this Constitution and this country be a living document.
  Ms. McKINNEY. I thank the gentlewoman for her wonderful eloquent 
words and her fight on behalf of that which is right in this country.
  I would like to submit for the record the remarks of President Lyndon 
Baines Johnson on August 6 when he discussed the triumph of the Voting 
Rights Act. I would just like to read a phrase from it where he said:

       They came in darkness and they came in chains and today we 
     strike away the last major shackle of those fierce and 
     ancient bonds. Today the Negro story and the American story 
     fuse and blend.

  Let us make sure that that continues to happen.
  I would like to yield now to my friend and colleague from North 
Carolina, Mr. Watt.
  Mr. WATT. I thank the gentlewoman from Georgia for yielding time and 
for organizing this important special order this afternoon to celebrate 
the anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
  This is an important undertaking and she and my colleague Cleo Fields 
from Louisiana are to be commended for organizing this event.
  Mr. Speaker, let me talk for a few minutes about the 1965 Voting 
Rights Act and start by expressing my delight at the three-judge 
panel's decision in North Carolina this week which affirmed the 
configuration of congressional districts in North Carolina and once 
again affirmed the fact that I am the beneficiary of the 1965 Voting 
Rights Act.

                              {time}  1800

  As Members maybe recall, the U.S. Supreme Court had suggested that 
the districts in North Carolina may be subject to attack or at least 
subject to question because they said, and I had some trouble 
understanding this, that while an 80- to 90-percent white congressional 
district was an integrated district, a 51-percent black district was 
somehow akin to racial apartheid. I never understood that. It seems to 
me that a district that was 51 percent black and 48 percent white would 
be a lot more integrated than a district that was 80 percent white and 
20 percent black.
  So it seemed to me that the congressional districts that were 
majority black in North Carolina were the most integrated districts 
that North Carolina had, but for some reason the Supreme Court said 
these districts were suspect.
  I am delighted that the three-judge panel has seen fit, despite the 
rigorous guidelines that were given by the Supreme Court, to uphold the 
congressional districts in North Carolina. So I want to start by 
expressing my appreciation to those North Carolinians and my colleagues 
here who stood with us in that fight.
  But as you know, that fight goes on in Texas, that fight goes on in 
Georgia, in Louisiana, in Florida, and continues as we speak in North 
Carolina, because they will not rest this case at the end of the three-
judge panel's decision. The case will be appealed.
  So I want to spend 1 minute or 2 talking about this 1965 Voting 
Rights Act and the basis for it. My colleague, Eleanor Holmes Norton, 
from the District of Colombia, talked about one of the bases for 
passage of the Voting Rights Act. She talked about this concept called 
racially polarized voting. I want to spend a little bit of time talking 
about this concept of racially polarized voting in plain everyday 
English that my colleagues and the people of America can understand, 
because when I talk about racially polarized voting, people look at me 
and say well, that should like one of those legal terms. Let me just 
say that racially polarized voting simply means that there is a history 
of white people voting for white candidates. Let me repeat that. There 
is a demonstrated history of white people voting for only white 
candidates and refusing to vote for black candidates.

  What does that mean? That means if you go to North Carolina right now 
in the year of our Lord 1994 and you take a poll, 30 percent, 35 
percent of the white citizens in North Carolina will tell you honestly 
under no circumstances, under no conditions would I vote for a black 
candidate. I do not care how good that black candidate is, I do not 
care if he can walk on water, I do not care, I would not consider 
voting for a black candidate.
  Now play that out to the next level and understand that 78 percent of 
our population in North Carolina is white. If you have 30 percent to 35 
percent of those people who say that they under no conditions will vote 
for a black candidate, how then in an at-large election can a black 
candidate ever be elected? It cannot be done, and that is what we talk 
about when we talk about this historical pattern of racially polarized 
voting. It means that the majority, who is white, because they refuse 
to even consider the qualifications of a black candidate would never, 
ever elect a black candidate.
  Some of my news media friends, and some of my colleagues do not 
understand that, and I do not beat up on them because when they talk to 
me they say they do not understand this because they do not know white 
people who carry those attitudes. We all deny that we know people who 
would refuse to vote for the most qualified candidate whether that 
person was black or white. It is alien to our concept of fairness, and 
so the newspapers and the news media, my news reporter friends say oh, 
that cannot be so. All of my friends tell me that if the black 
candidate is more qualified than the white candidate they would vote 
for the black candidate. I say to them you go down into North Carolina 
and you take a poll and 30 percent to 35 percent of the population will 
tell you under no circumstances, regardless of how qualified, would I 
vote for a black candidate.
  So there is a need for something that will equalize the playing 
field. That is all the Voting Rights Act does. All it says is draw 
districts in such a way, for the time being at least, that it will give 
a black candidate an opportunity to be elected, not an assurance, but 
factor out that 30 percent to 35 percent of the population so that at 
least a black candidate has a fighting chance of being elected.
  That is all the Voting Rights Act does, gives people of color the 
right to select on an equal footing the candidate of their choice.
  Let me play this out one more level talking about racially-polarized 
voting and the whole notion that somehow we should be color blind. If 
30 percent to 35 percent of the population has already indicated they 
refuse to be color blind, even though that number is reducing gradually 
as time goes on because of the world in which we live, why should we 
wait until that 30 percent to 35 percent of the population changes its 
attitude before we allow black America to have representation in the 
Congress of the United States? We should not have to wait for their 
racist attitudes to change. The voting Rights Act says we do not have 
to wait, we would like to give you an opportunity to serve in the 
Congress of the United States.
  I want to submit that that is not different than what the people said 
in South Africa when they were setting up the government over there. 
Imagine, if you would, that the people of South Africa came to the 
United States and said we are going to set up a government in South 
Africa that does not guarantee the white minority representation in 
their government. Do you think there is any American who would not 
have stood up in abject outrage at that notion? They would have said, 
``Oh no, that's not fair.'' The white minority has been in control for 
all of these years, but when you create a new government, if it is 
going to be fair, if it is going to be a democratic government, you 
have to at least make sure that all of the people in South Africa have 
an opportunity to be represented in that government.

                              {time}  1810

  And we would have stood up in complete outrage if the people of South 
Africa had come forward with a plan that did not assure the white 
minority representation in their government. So why in our own country, 
why in our own country are so many people saying, ``Why can't we just 
be color blind? We don't need to assure the black minority in this 
country representation in their government.''
  Can we have one standard for South Africa and a completely different 
standard right here in our own country?
  There is nothing sinister about a Voting Rights Act. It is completely 
and utterly democratic. It says to our Nation that we believe in 
democracy, we believe in everybody having an opportunity to be 
represented in their government, and that is what democracy is all 
about, I thought.
  So I want to say right now that when the time comes for the 
reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act next year, I do not want 
anybody to come and tell me all of a sudden we are going to be color 
blind in this country. If you are going to come and tell me to be color 
blind, I want you to go down to North Carolina and tell that 30 percent 
of the population who says, if you polled them privately, ``I won't 
vote for somebody black,'' and if you do not draw districts that take 
that into account, then the 70 percent of the population is being color 
blind, but that 30 percent, I submit to you, is not being color blind.
  If we are all going to play by the same set of rules, the democratic 
rules that give all of us the pride to stand up and say we live in a 
democracy, then I submit to you that we have got to reauthorize the 
Voting Rights Act again.
  Now, some of my friends asked me, ``Well, how long has this got to go 
on? Isn't this a transitional remedy?'' Sure, it is. I would like to 
transition out of it tomorrow as soon as we get rid of all of these 
people who refuse to take qualifications rather than color into account 
in selecting their candidates. I am ready to phase it out.
  As soon as we do not have any more discrimination in this country, we 
can do away with affirmative action. As soon as the polls in North 
Carolina show that every citizen says, ``Oh, yes, I can vote for the 
person regardless of their color, based on their qualifications,'' as 
soon as that occurs, I am ready to phase it out.

  I have got two young sons, not young sons; they both are old now, 26 
and 21. I would love nothing better than to think that that day will 
come in my lifetime, and certainly, if not in mine, sometime during the 
course of theirs. But until that day, Mr. Speaker, until that day, as 
long as we have this racially polarized voting that I have talked 
about, we must, if we are going to have representative democratic 
government, have a vibrant and enforceable Civil Rights and Voting 
Rights Act.
  I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to me, and I thank her for 
her efforts to further the cause of not black America, not Hispanic 
America, but of democracy, of democracy in this country.
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina, 
who has demonstrated how in the middle of a fierce and sometimes 
personal battle, one can remain calm and balanced, sure-footed and 
strong.
  I would like to take this opportunity to thank the tremendous work of 
Judge Leon Higginbotham, Jr., who serves as special counsel to the 
Congressional Black Caucus.
  He has written a brief for the Georgia redistricting challenge, and 
that brief begins with the words of Congressman George White of North 
Carolina, the last African American elected to Congress during 
reconstruction, and in his farewell address to Congress, he says:

       I want to enter a plea for the colored man, the colored 
     woman, the colored boy, and the colored girl of this country. 
     He asks no special favors but simply demands that he be given 
     the same chance for existence, for earning a livelihood, for 
     raising himself in the scales of manhood and womanhood that 
     are accorded to kindred nationalities. This, Mr. Chairman, is 
     perhaps the Negro's temporary farewell to the American 
     Congress, but lest me say, Phoenix-like, he will rise up 
     someday and come again. These parting words are in behalf of 
     an outraged, heartbroken, bruised and bleeding, but God-
     fearing people, faithful, industrious, loyal people, rising 
     people, full of potential force. The only apology that I have 
     to make for the earnestness with which I have spoken is that 
     I am pleading for the life, the liberty, the future happiness 
     and manhood suffrage for one-eights of the entire population 
     of the United States.

  After George White departed from Congress, decades passed where not 
one African American legislator held a seat in Congress.
  As I said earlier, in 1868 in Georgia, 33 were expelled for no other 
reason than the color of their skin. Let us not fool ourselves and 
think that it cannot happen again, because it can.
  It is up to us. It is up to you, my friends, to stop it, and we can. 
Let us let freedom ring. Let us make freedom ring, and, please, let 
your voices be heard on Capitol Hill in support of the Voting Rights 
Act. Let your voices be heard in newspapers and on the radio in support 
of the Voting Rights Act.
  And pay close attention to the state of democracy in our home areas. 
Support us as we fight these attempts to expel us for no other reason 
than the color of our skin, and next year, when the extension of the 
Voting Rights Act comes up, let us all support the extension and its 
strengthening.

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