Congressional Record, Volume 142 Issue 90 (Tuesday, June 18, 1996)

[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H6493-H6499]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

WHAT APPROACH SHOULD WE TAKE TO THE TEACHING OF CURRENT EVENTS AND
AMERICAN HISTORY

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May
12, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60
minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, today we passed the Church Arson Prevention
Act, and I think practically every Member present voted for that act.
It is to the credit of this Congress that this is a bipartisan effort
to deal with a heinous set of crimes and to let the message go forth
from the leadership of this Nation that we will not tolerate such acts.
There is a disease out there that every now and then manifests
itself, and the leadership of the Government has the duty and
obligation to let it be known that we will not encourage it, we will
not condone it, and we will do everything possible to make certain that
those who are guilty are punished.
I want to talk a little bit about the burning of black churches in
the south, but I want to talk about four other things that also relate
to it, although it is not obvious how closely related they are on the
surface.
I want to talk about the recent controversy surrounding the
standardization of a national curriculum for history, especially for
American history.
I also want to talk about the controversy surrounding the invitation
to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to speak at a Prince George's
County school and what happened as a result of that controversy.
I want to talk about a man named Kenneth Johnson, who objected to
Justice Thomas speaking there. Mr. Johnson is a school board member,
and he felt that there was some problems there, and I think Mr.
Johnson's allegations and his concerns deserve to be looked at more
closely.
I also want to talk about the recent Supreme Court decision on the
Voting Rights Act.
And, finally, I want to talk about the extremist budget cuts of the
Republican majority, and I want to insist that all of these things are
related and show how they are related.
I think the overall theme of what I am trying to say relates to a
bigger issue of what approach should we take to the teaching of current
events and of American history. What approach should we take to the
teaching of current events and American history?

What was the controversy in Prince George's County all about? Why did
Kenneth Johnson object as a school board member to Justice Clarence
Thomas speaking at the school in a ceremony where people would not have
a chance to question Justice Thomas; in a situation where children
would be left with the impression that Justice Thomas was being offered
as a role model and that they should pattern their lives after him?
Prince George's County is predominantly a county made up, the schools
are predominantly African-American children. The school where Justice
Thomas was speaking was composed primarily of African-American
children. Kenneth Johnson, the school board member, was saying that
African-American children should not be led to believe that Justice
Thomas was a role model; that that would be really a slap in the face,
considering the kinds of rulings that Justice Thomas has made, the kind
of record Justice Thomas made before he became a Supreme Court justice,
and the controversy which presently surrounds Justice Thomas and the
decisions that he is making.
What does this have to do with church burnings and what does it have
to do with Supreme Court decisions? Well, Supreme Court decisions
relating to the Voting Rights Act are probably Justice Thomas's most
controversial decisions.
The Voting Rights Act is an act which probably makes more sense than
any other effort ever undertaken to remedy the situation caused by 232
years of American slavery. Two hundred thirty-two years of American
slavery was a most criminal enterprise. Probably nowhere in the history
of the world have we had a situation like those 232 years of American
slavery.
We are very critical of Germany in that the current practices of
Germany seek to minimize what happened in the Nazi era; that Germans do
not rush to discuss what happened in the Nazi era. They do not rush to
discuss the holocaust and what happened to 6 million Jews. They do not
rush to discuss what happened to people with disabilities and what they
did to gypsies and other people they labeled as political undesirables.
They do not rush to talk about that and they do not rush to teach about
that.
They have been criticized, and yet American slavery is far more
ancient than the recent history of the Nazi era. The Third Reich took
place in the 1930's and 1940's.

{time} 2030

Hitler was defeated in 1945. But the Civil War ended in 1865, and the
Civil War was a war to end slavery. A lot of people call it different
things. One of the problems they are trying to teach history nowadays
is the fact that people do not want to face up to the fact that the
Civil War was a war to end slavery.
The Civil War ended a cruel and inhuman set of circumstances. It
ended 235 years of forced labor. It ended 235 years of the destruction
of human beings. All of that is part of what we wrestle with when we
try to set a new curriculum for the teaching of history. We had a lot
of controversy in trying to establish a new curriculum for the teaching
of history, especially American history. I sit on the Committee on
Economic and Education Opportunities. I know that for some time now
that the effort has been going forward to develop standardized
curricula in various areas that were almost standardized so that you
could compare the teaching from one State to another and then we could
have a curriculum where we have a body of knowledge and we can expect
all Americans to know.
Immediately there was agreement on a curriculum, a national
standardized curriculum for the teaching of science. Math also, there
was no great controversy over the teaching the math. I even think the
arts came up with a curriculum that was pretty much accepted across the
country, although it was not part of the official process. But when it
came to the teaching of history, a great deal of controversy has
resulted.
One of the reasons is that history has to deal with what is right and
what is wrong. History has to deal with treading on people's holy
ground in terms of what it is that they certify as being legitimate
actions taken by their ancestors. So American history with its
controversial problems with the Native Americans and what happened to
them, American history with its very controversial problems related to
235 years of slavery presents us with a problem.
The problem manifests itself immediately in a current event related
to how shall you handle current events as related to decisions of the
Supreme Court. How should you handle current events as related to a
controversial Supreme Court Justice who is making decisions which
directly impact in a negative way on African American people. How
should you handle the invitation to that Supreme Court Justice to come
to speak to an African American school when he has made several
decisions since he arrived on the court which directly move African
American people in this country backwards from the forward progress
that was being made over the last 10 years. How shall you handle a
betrayal of Justice Thomas.

What does it have to do with burning black churches? There is an
atmosphere that has been established in the last 5 or 6 years, it has
been growing, escalating, an atmosphere of hate, an atmosphere of
racism, coming in many different forms and directions. Some of that
racism has come directly from the Supreme Court. Nobody has stepped
forward to point a finger at the Supreme Court and said that this is a
racist majority, that these decisions are racist. It is difficult to
say that, when a black man is sitting there, when Clarence Thomas is
sitting there, it is difficult to call it the way it is, that these
decisions are racist with respect to affirmative action, setasides,
school integration, and with respect to the Voting Rights Act.

[[Page H6494]]

Nobody has challenged the fact that the Voting Rights Act decisions
and the other decisions related to segregation and discrimination
remedies, remedies that are being attempted to take care of, to
compensate for years of discrimination and years of segregation. Nobody
has challenged the court's reasoning and the fact that the court seems
to be hell bent on ignoring the intent of the law. The court has
repeatedly used the 14th amendment as the justification for its
decisions that nothing which is race based, nothing which takes race
into consideration is acceptable or constitutional because the 14th
amendment is an amendment which calls for equal protection under the
law. Everybody should be treated equal. So the court has distorted that
equal protection intent of the 14th amendment to mean that we should
have a color-blind America, and the 14th amendment's purpose is to
establish a color-blind America.
I think any sophomore who studies American history, certainly any law
school student can look at the 14th amendment in the Constitution and
clearly state that the 14th amendment, the 14th amendment was all about
correcting the injustices caused by slavery. The clear intent of the
law, the time in which it was established, makes it certain that it was
there to deal with slavery. So because you have Justice Thomas there,
the Supreme Court's logic, the Supreme Court's obvious refusal to
interpret the Constitution in the context of what the framers intended,
what the Congress intended at the time that it initiated the 14th
amendment, what the States intended at the time they ratified the 14th
amendment, the refusal to recognize that is a blatant omission that has
to have a racist motivation.

They are hell bent on destroying affirmative action programs,
setaside programs, and they really want to strike down the entire
Voting Rights Act. Recent decisions related to Texas, related to North
Carolina are moving in that direction. Pretty soon you will have the
Supreme Court probably saying the whole Voting Rights Act must go
because it militates against a color-blind America, where race should
not ever have been considered. The 14th amendment is used as the
rationale for that, and the 14th amendment certainly does not do that.
The 14th amendment is established, was created and conceived, executed
within the context of trying to remedy the past wrongs of slavery.
Mr. Speaker, there was a 13th amendment which freed the slaves. There
was a 14th amendment which gave them, the salves, equal rights. There
was a 15th amendment which gave the slaves the right to vote. If you
want to look at the Constitution, you will see that the 14th amendment
says much more than is usually quoted when the Supreme Court talks
about equal protection. The 14th amendment really goes into other
problems related to slavery. The 14th amendment talks about certain
kinds of property arrangements and criticizes, and makes it clear that
it is concerned with other aspects of correcting injustices done by
slavery.
So I want to come back to the Constitution and the 13th, 14th, and
15th amendments. I also want to take a look at another reference to
race within the Constitution, which came earlier. Article I of the
Constitution refers to three-fifths of all of the persons, which
everybody knows meant slaves, and that is still in our Constitution.
Our Constitution is not without reference to slavery. Our Constitution
clearly shows that we have a problem, America has a problem that should
be remedied. Part of the remedy was undertaken in the 13th, 14th, and
15th amendments to the Constitution after a terrible Civil War has been
fought over the issue of slavery.
The burnings of the black churches in the South relate to the fact
that we still have this unfinished business that nobody wants to take
care of. So from time to time we do things, we get into an era of 4 or
5 years where we are going backwards on race relations. We are saying
and doing things at high levels of government that encourage the people
at lower levels who have problems out on the fringes of society who
believe in violence, who have deep-seated hatreds and prejudices that
they cannot control. They get out of hand because they hear a message
coming from the top that we want to roll back the clock and deal with
these people in a different manner. It happened in Hitler Germany. It
happens from time to time in this society.

Mr. Speaker, the best remedy for it of course is what happened today.
That all the leadership, Republican, Democrats, the Speaker, the
Democratic minority leader, everybody moved in immediately to try to
send another message about the violence that is occurring.
Immediately we want to make certain that they understand that we are
not in favor of those kinds of actions. On the other hand, we are
undertaking from day-to-day activities which send a different message.
When you have extreme budget cuts and those budget cuts fall primarily
on the poorest people in our society and 60 to 70 percent of the
poorest people in our society happen to be the descendants of slaves,
they happen to be African Americans, I mean 60 to 70 percent of the
descendants of slaves happen to be poor. African Americans are in that
category, living in large cities. The hostility toward large cities is
clearly manifest by the kind of legislation that has been promulgated
by the Congress over the past 10 years, hostility toward the cities
where we are taking away resources, destroying programs that help the
populations in the city, the urban population from transportation
programs to programs for housing, you name it.
Clearly everything that benefits people in the cities has been dealt
with in a very negative way over the last 10 years. So these kinds of
policies economic policies, budget policies, coupled with attacks on
affirmative action, attacks on the Voting Rights Act, attacks on set-
asides, when you couple them all together, it sends a message that we
really do not want to deal with atoning for the terrible sins of
slavery. We do not want to deal with trying to compensate for 235 years
of forced labor, brutality, murder, rape. We do not want to deal with
that.

I do not want to be misunderstood that I do not appreciate and am not
grateful for the action taken today. I certainly think we acted in the
most noble way in dealing with the burning of black churches in a
forceful piece of legislation today. I agree wholeheartedly with the
statement made by Democratic leader Gephardt last week when he called
upon the Speaker to take immediate action to vote on a resolution
condemning the burning of African American churches throughout the
South.
Mr. Gephardt stated that we are here today, quoting from his
statement of last Wednesday, June 12, we are here today for a very
simple reason. There is no criminal act, no criminal act more cowardly,
more outrageous, more offensive than the burning of places of worship.
When these acts are motivated by racial hatred, the offense is even
greater. We believe that the U.S. Congress has an obligation to condemn
the recent rash of church fires and then to impose tougher laws to
crack down on the people who perpetuate these crimes.
We are asking Speaker Gingrich to schedule an immediate vote on a
resolution condemning the burnings of African American churches
throughout the South. The American people should know that their
Representatives are united against such baseless acts and are willing
to do everything in their power to prevent and punish them. The next
step is passing the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996, to make it
much easier to prosecute and punish those who burn, desecrate or damage
religious property. We believe this can be done on a bipartisan basis.
When these kinds of crimes occur, it is not just the churchgoers who
suffer; it is our conscience as a Nation. The right to worship in
freedom and safety regardless of race, religious faith or ethnic origin
is the very foundation of our country. We pledge to do everything in
our power to protect that right for all Americans at all times.
I include Mr. Gephardt's full statement for the Record:

Statement by House Democratic Leader Richard A. Gephardt Urging House
Resolution Condemning Church-Burning

``We're here today for a very simple reason: there is no
criminal act more cowardly, more outrageous, more offensive
than the burning of places of worship. When these acts are
motivated by racial hated, the offense is even greater.
``We believe the United States Congress has an obligation
to condemn the recent rash

[[Page H6495]]

of church fires, and then to impose tougher laws to crack
down on the people who perpetrate these crimes.
``We're asking Speaker Gingrich to schedule an immediate
vote on a resolution condemning the burning of African-
American churches throughout the South. The American people
should know that their representatives are united against
such baseless acts, and are willing to do everything in their
power to prevent and punish them.
``The next step is passing the Church Arson Prevention Act
of 1996--to make it much easier to prosecute and punish those
who burn, desecrate, or damage religious property. We believe
this can be done on a bipartisan basis.
``When these kinds of crimes occur, it is not just the
church-goers who suffer--it is our conscience as a nation.
The right to worship in freedom and safety--regardless of
race, religious faith, or ethnic origin--is the very
foundation of our country. We pledge to do everything in our
power to protect that right for all Americans, at all
times.''

I think that we did it today. We passed that piece of legislation,
the Church Arson Prevention Act. It may be interesting to note a few
facts about the church burnings. More than 30 black churches in eight
States from Louisiana to Virginia have been burned in the past 18
months. That is a very important fact. It has been escalating in the
last 2 months, but now more than 30 black churches in eight southern
States have been burned.
The largest percentage of those burnings have taken place in South
Carolina. South Carolina, I will mention later, is a special State in
terms of the kind of discussion that I am putting forth about American
history and the need to confront the issue of slavery and what the
impact of slavery has been on our Nation and what the consequences of
slavery have been on the African-American population. The State of
South Carolina still flies the Confederate flag above its capitol. It
has something to answer. It has some important questions to answer.
What does it do to have the flag, the Confederate flag flying over the
capitol, which is the capitol of South Carolina for all the people of
South Carolina, including the descendants of slaves?
Another fact that we ought to consider is that almost all those
arrested so far, there have been churches burned and there have been no
people arrested. They have not caught any suspects or perpetrators, but
those who have been arrested have been young white men. They have been
typically members of hate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan
nation and the skinheads.

{time} 2045

These are facts that are very important. There are people out there
on the fringes of society who have these deep seated hatreds,
prejudices, and who believe in violence, and they are acting out at
this time, and I say the reason that they are acting out is something
that we should look at very closely. We should not just be content to
pass an act today which is going to deal with what is happening right
now which will contain them. That is important, to send them a message
we are not going to tolerate, they do not have any sympathy in high
places. We also ought to look behind the causes and understand what is
going on in order to prevent a spread, an escalation, of these kinds of
activities out there with respect to the acting out of race hatreds and
prejudices.
Another factor is that experts say that a volatile mix of polarizing
social and economic events, pitting citizens against government and
white against black, has exploded in a kind of domestic terrorism that
has left these churches burning across the South polarizing social and
economic events and political events. The fact that South Carolina has
had a great debate over the removal of a Confederate flag, the fact
that there are economic tensions in that part of the country as well as
most of the country because of the fact that jobs are leaving and there
are fears of losing jobs and all kinds of economic fears of this
generation about what is going to happen to their children; those are
all parts of these events that end up pitting citizens against citizens
and citizens against government, and added to that is a message being
sent that in particular there is an evil related to the Voting Rights
Act, there is an evil related to the set-aside programs to affirmative
action. The messages are being sent that these things are part of a
problem and certain people are being encouraged to focus on black
churches as being the citadels of the movement or the institution which
holds together black communities. When you strike at black churches,
you are striking at the heart of the black community.

One other factor that ought to be pointed out is that since early
1995 the ATF has probed 25 suspicious fires at mostly white churches.
In addition to predominantly black churches or all black churches,
there have been 25 suspicious fires of mostly white churches.
Now the word ``mostly'' is the one you look at closely. A mostly
white church means that it is a white church that has black members
also. It means that it is a white church that was predominantly white
or almost all white before that has admitted black parishioners or
black members to the congregation. Nothing is hated more in the South
by the racists and by the people who are capable of this kind of
activity than integration. So a mostly white church is a church that
has admitted black members. That is definitely going to be a target;
they are in the same category as the black churches as far as being
targets of hatred. So it is the same phenomena.
I think that if you are going to get to the heart of what is
happening and not have it continue to escalate, you have to go back and
take a look at the history of the South, the history of this Nation and
what is going on with respect to race relations. One of the irritants
that keeps occurring with respect to race relations in this country is
favorable of the perception that favorable treatment of African-
Americans, favorable treatment of the descendants of slaves, is wrong.
This upsets people and angers them a great deal. It is wrong to have
affirmative action, it is wrong to have set-asides, the rewarding of
contracts, it is wrong to have a Voting Rights Act which, in my
opinion, is a very conservative political remedy for a very clear
problem that was identified for decades.
The Voting Rights Act was fashioned as a result of trying to deal
with the fact that for more than a hundred years people of African-
American descent, descendants of slaves, were not allowed to vote in
the south. All kinds of tricks were used. We have to wage all kinds of
legal battles in the courts, we have to have sit-ins and marches and
demonstrations, and on and on it went for a long time before the simple
matter of allowing a black person to go to a poll and vote could be
accomplished, and the Voting Rights Act was an attempt to remedy the
fact that as a result of that denial to vote, a right to vote, you had
circumstances that generated a situation where there was no adequate
representation by blacks in government at any level. At city levels and
State levels and at the Federal level you had grossly inadequate
representation as a result of all of these injustices related to voting
rights that have been perpetrated for more than a hundred years. The
Voting Rights Act was to correct that.
So the Voting Rights Act is part of the remedies that are necessary
to deal with what has happened in American history with respect to
slavery.
When we teach history to children in schools like the one that
Clarence Thomas visited, the school that had an awards night and
invited Justice Thomas; when you teach history to those children, how
do you deal with the fact that most of the history books do not discuss
this 235 years of slavery and the implications of having a population
enslaved for 235 years? Most of the history books do not talk about
slave labor and the fact that slaves had to work for nothing. Most of
the history books do not talk about the fact that for 235 years the
slaves were prevented from acquiring assets.
They were prevented from acquiring property. For 235 years one
generation had nothing to pass on to another generation. Most of the
history books do not talk about that. Most of the history books do not
want to deal with the economic consequences of 235 years of slavery.
A youngster who is black in a school with whites, whites who have a
history of having had assets, property handed down from one generation
to another, most people in America who have assets, overwhelming
majority of people who have assets, have property in the form of homes
or real estate that was handed down from one generation to another or
was sponsored and financed

[[Page H6496]]

by the older generation. Couples have parents who either give or loan
them the money for the mortgage. They have situations where furniture
and property, stocks and bonds, various assets are passed down from one
generation to another. If you have 235 years where you have nothing,
where you are not allowed to own anything, you do not have any
property, you are forced to work for nothing, then you start 235 years
behind, and every black youngster in a school ought to know that your
self-esteem and your sense of self-worth should not be impacted, should
not be affected without taking that into consideration. You cannot
compare yourself with your peers who have the benefits of all of this
hand-down from one generation to another, who had the benefit of what
goes along with assets and property and wealth.
There is a correlation which is clear, and nobody questions it,
between assets, wealth, and education. The people who have more income
get better education. There are recent studies that confirm the
relationship between income and achievement regardless of race. A lot
of statements have been made about the fact that middle class black
youngsters do not achieve in the same way that middle class white
youngsters achieve. Well, when you study middle class and you define it
more closely in terms of real income, and when you make the comparisons
by income and you compare the income on the basis of what was the
income on a steady basis throughout the life of a child, was it there
when they were young and most formative? Did they lose the income as
they got older? There is a study which has been done which has been
very useful in this respect, and they give the big lie to the theory
that income does not impact on all groups regardless of race, religion
or color, including African American children. They are as susceptible
to the impact of income. When they have the income in black families,
they behave in just the same way as children in white families.

There is a study that recently was concluded by Greg Duncan at
Northwestern University National Institute of Childhood Health and
Human Development which talked about, which is entitled, Family and
Child Well-being Research Network, and it is part of the effort of
family and child well-being research network, and their conclusions are
that when you compare the income and you study it closely and you see
that in the most formative years of life children have a certain
income, those white children and black children who have the same
income in the formative years of life, early years of schooling, they
preform in much the same way regardless of race as they grow older.
When you have youngsters who lose, who do not have the income that
supports a certain level of family life at the early ages, and they
later acquire it when they get into high school, then you do have a
problem. The change is quite significant. Those whose families had
inadequate income when they were in early education situations and
later acquired it when they went to high school, they do not perform as
well. The income is the variable. It is the same among whites who do
not have the right income level that supports the right kind of
nurturing environment at early ages. The same problem results in white
families and with the white children as it does with the African
American children.
Studies like these are sort of widely introduced into the academic
stream, and there is not much said about it. There was a book put out
called the Bell Curve, which was greatly celebrated, and the Bell
Curve was out to demonstrate what scientists have generally disproven
over the years, that there is definitely a correlation between IQ and
achievement and race, and that black people, people of African decent,
are inferior with respect to achievement and with respect to IQ. These
studies will show you differently and show you that there is a factor
of income and a factor of nurturing that goes with income and a factor
of educational level that goes with income that has a great impact on
how children achieve and on their IQ.

So, if you have a situation where for 232 years nothing was passed
down, for 232 years there was no property, income was at a measly
level, then the recent prosperity of African Americans in the middle
class is not enough because they do not come from a tradition that was
handed down that was nurtured where there was books, where there was
wisdom passed all around the table by people who were already educated.
There is a whole culture that comes with income at a certain level, and
the culture was not there to nurture educational achievement and to
nurture IQ.
So the youngster, the child, who is African American in a public
school needs to know that there is a whole history back there you have
no control over. There is a whole history where you were deprived of
the opportunity to pass on assets and property, and for that reason,
for that reason, it is not a great shame for the society to develop
programs which are going to seek to compensate for those 232 years and
the tradition that they failed to hand down for those 232 years and the
property that they fail to hand down. Affirmative action compensatory
education programs become vital if you are going to try to remedy the
evils of 232 years.
Justice Clarence Thomas says no. All of a sudden, although he is the
beneficiary of compensatory programs, all of a sudden they are programs
that might make people too reliant or too dependent. He has benefited
in many ways, but now he joins with a group of racists on the Supreme
Court to interpret the 14th amendment to mean that you cannot take race
into consideration in trying to foster programs which are seeking to
remedy and to compensate for and to counteract 232 years of slavery,
and 100 years after that, by the way, of very intensive pressure.
There is an article that appeared in the Washington Post this past
Sunday by Lynn Cooper, and that article talked about slavery that
existed long after the Civil War, after the Emancipation Proclamation
and after the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, slavery that was
permitted by governments in the South, slavery that never was
sufficiently challenged by the National Government, the Federal
Government. He talks in great detail. It is a long article this past
Sunday, June 16, in the Washington Post Sunday Style section by Lynn
Cooper. It gives concrete examples of what happened as the share
cropper system and the peon system and various other systems developed,
which endured for almost 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

{time} 2100

So all of these things become a part of what history should teach,
and if it fails to teach, it denies a basic ingredient to the public
discourse and the public dialogue which one day might get it all
straight and be able to deal in a more intelligent way and a more
sympathetic way and a way which is more in the national interest and
than we are presently doing.
If you do not look at history and acknowledge the truths of history,
you are going to make decisions which are going to be distorted and
continue to warp the public discourse and the public decision-making
process. We are in that period now. We are right now in a period where
the Voting Rights Act is about to be struck down, and yet that is
probably the one piece of legislation which is most crucial to the
correction of the 235 years of criminal slavery and the aftermath of
that slavery.
The Voting Rights Act does put, not only in the Congress but in the
State legislatures and in the local councils and local governments, put
in place people who represent the descendents of slaves and who will be
able to take action on an ongoing basis to have a point of view which
is going to help correct some of the numerous problems that still exist
in our society as a result of those 235 years of slavery.
The church burnings are there because at the top the Supreme Court is
saying, blacks, you have been too arrogant. Blacks, you have demanded
too much. Blacks, you do not deserve special treatment. Blacks, you are
taking away from other people. The Supreme Court sends down that
message.
The Congress of the United States says, blacks, you do not deserve to
have programs which provide aid to poor people. A large percentage of
your people are poor, but that is a crime that you have committed,
being poor. Being poor has nothing to do with 235 years of slavery.
Being poor has nothing to do with schools that for a long time were not
equal. They were separate but not equal, schools that right

[[Page H6497]]

now are still in horrible shape in our urban centers, where most black
youngsters go to school All this has nothing to do with your condition.
All this has nothing to do with the crime rate. All this has nothing to
do with the high rate of blacks on welfare. Let us dismiss all of this.
Let us not accept it as being there. It is not real.
In South Africa they have a truth commission. The truth commission
has been appointed, not to get revenge, and not even to punish many
people who are still living who committed gross and obvious crimes
during the period when apartheid existed. They just want to tell the
truth. They want to get it out. Nobody is going to be punished in many
instances, but just tell the truth as to what is happening with the
police and oppression, what is happening when people were put off their
land by trickery and by various devices that were developed by the
government. Tell the truth, no vengeance.
I said before on a couple of occasions here, especially in connection
with Haiti, that reconciliation is more important than justice.
Reconciliation sometimes is the only thing possible. You cannot get
justice. In Haiti, they do not even have the resources to build jails
and prisons for all the people who murdered people over a 3-year period
after President Aristide was kicked out of Haiti. Five thousand people
were killed, 5,000 people brutally murdered. Other people were
tortured. All kinds of things happened.
But if they put their meager resources to work building prisons,
trying to set up a court system, and paying attention only to getting
justice, they would have nothing left over to build an economic system,
to develop jobs and do other kinds of things that have to be done. They
have to give up. There will be no justice. Reconciliation is what
President Aristide is forced to preach.

It probably makes a lot of sense. The deep philosophy of
Christianity, that vengeance belongs to God and turning the other
cheek, a lot of things that have been ridiculed about the Christian
religion, makes a lot of sense in the context where if you are in a
situation where you do not have the capacity to get justice, then
certainly life must go on and reconciliation becomes the only
possibility.
I think Abraham Lincoln when he said malice towards none understood
that very clearly; that to seek justice would have led to more chaos,
guerrilla warfare, all kinds of confusion, but the malice towards none,
and the fact that the Congress in the next 10 years proceeded to
absolve all of the people who rebelled against the central government
from any crimes, to give back property that had been threatened, all
kinds of things were done to smooth it all out, going to an extreme.
The malice towards none led to wiping out, taking a position of
amnesia, that there was no crime committed. There were no crimes, there
are no victims.
The 40 acres and a mule was promised by the Freedmens Bureau. The
Freedmens Bureau was a social program, the very first social program
the Federal Government ever financed. It probably had the shortest
life, also. It endured for about 10 years a little less than 10 years.
But the Freedmens Bureau was attached to the Union Army, and they at
one point started experiments where slaves were given 40 acres and a
mule in order to farm the land that had been owned by the Confederates,
people who supported the Confederacy. That was an extensive measure
that probably went to the extreme.
President Johnson wiped all that out with a decree, and Congress
later on gave back all the lands. They went from one extreme of taking
everything away from the southern plantation owners to giving
everything back to them and making no provision for the slaves who had
labored for 235 years for no compensation. So we went from one extreme
to another, and then we went into a period of amnesia, wiping it all
out and acting as if it does not exist, so much so that when the
Confederate flag is flown now, people do not understand why the
victims, the slaves or the descendants of slaves, should be upset in
South Carolina.
Why should they care about the Confederate flag being flown? After
all, brave men died. We do not want to trample on memories and deeds of
the brave men who died under that flag, but we do not think you are
acknowledging history properly if you insist those brave men's flag
must fly over the State Capitol and be the flag that has to be honored
by the victims who, in large numbers their descendants still exist.
In fact, South Carolina, the State where you have the most church
burnings, also happens to be the State that had the largest slave
population. There is a book called Slavery and Social Death by Orlando
Patterson which breaks out the populations for slaves in this country
during certain periods when they were counting, and it talks about the
fact that each State had a certain percentage of the population that
was a slave percentage.
There were times in America where certain States had more slaves than
other States, and South Carolina probably was in the worst shape. South
Carolina is the State which has the most church burnings. South
Carolina is the State which has a Confederate flag flying. There has
been a lot of controversy about it. The oppressive previous government
of South Carolina before the Civil War, everybody has amnesia about
that, does not want to acknowledge that. They were heroes, the flag
must be flown.

In 1708, 57 percent of the population of South Carolina were slaves,
according to the records that were offered in this very thorough book
called ``Slavery and Social Death'' by Orlando Patterson, published in
1982 by Harvard University Press. If you would like to get it, it is in
the Library of Congress, and I am sure it is in other libraries.
South Carolina in 1708 had 57 percent of its population that were
slaves. In 1720, 64 percent of the population of South Carolina was
slaves. In 1830, they still had 54 percent of the population who were
slaves. In 1860, 57 percent of the population were slaves. These are
official counts that the States themselves used, because each State
benefited by properly counting its slaves, or sometimes maybe
overcounting them, but they were willing to offer these figures, and
they were verified to some extent by national census takers. In 1860, 5
years before the end of the Civil War, 57 percent of the people of
South Carolina were slaves. More slaves existed there than other
people.
This is significant because if we look at the other Southern States
we find similar patterns where large percentages, and at one point
Virginia had as much as 45 percent of the population who were slaves.
Mississippi had 55 percent in 1810, and Louisiana had 51 percent in
1830; you know, populations of slaves greater than the other people,
and yet all of these victims and their descendants are sort of not to
be regarded in the present situation which exists where we want to
ignore and forget about the existence of slavery.
What am I trying to say? It is kind of complicated, but what I am
trying to say is that all these various items that I have talked about
here relate. The burning of the black churches is a symptom of a
disease that runs in the blood of America. Every now and then that
disease breaks forth, and the boils and the canker sores show
themselves. They will get worse if you do not take action.
We took action today to start reversing that, but the disease has to
be dealt with. We are not dealing with the disease when we have Supreme
Court decisions which strike down the Voting Rights Act. We are not
dealing with the disease when we attack affirmative action. We are not
dealing with the disease when we go after set-asides for Federal
contracts. We are not dealing with the disease when we have extremist
budget cuts which cut programs that benefit the descendants of slaves
who live in big cities on a regular basis. The hostility shown by the
Congress and its policies are aimed at that population.
We are not dealing with the disease in the blood of America. We are
not dealing with the disease when we fail to teach history that at
least tells the truth and states the facts so you would have a chance
of getting at the truth. We are not dealing with the disease when we
allow black children to accept a Supreme Court Justice like Clarence
Thomas as a role model without challenging that. It was challenged, and
that is part of what I want to talk about, because it all relates.
When Justice Thomas was invited to speak to an awards ceremony at a
school in Prince Georges County by a

[[Page H6498]]

teacher, a school board member, once he heard about it, it happened to
be a school in the district that he represented, once he heard about
it, he challenged it. He said, given the fact that this is a
predominantly black district, these are children who are black, they
ought to know more about Clarence Thomas and the kinds of decisions
that he is making, and we ought to have a way to communicate that if he
is going to come to the school. An awards ceremony where he comes and
makes a presentation and nobody has a chance to talk about him or he
talk and answer any questions, so forth, that is not the appropriate
arena for having a controversial figure like Clarence Thomas come and
interact with black children.

I think this was a most appropriate challenge by Kenneth Johnson of
the Prince Georges County Board of Education. I think Mr. Johnson was
right in questioning. I do not think this was a matter of questioning
free speech prerogatives of Mr. Thomas or the people who wanted to hear
Mr. Thomas who were adults.
However, we always apply free speech differently when we are dealing
with children. We do not allow free speech to predominate on our
airways or in any arena, books. Nowhere do we say that free speech
should be the order of the day when we are dealing with children. We
make exceptions for children. If children should not see pornographic
films, if children should not read pornographic passages in books, if
children ought to be protected from pornography, if one of these days
we are going to get around to properly protecting children from
violence on the screen and violence in books and so forth, children are
in a different category.
We do not protect adults. It is pretty clear. The Supreme Court says
you do not have a right to apply those same standards to adults but you
do have a right for children. So children should be protected against
political fraud. They should be protected against the situation where
they are asked to accept someone as a role model when that person is
taking actions which directly are detrimental to them and their parents
and to future generations.
How do you handle that? I think Mr. Thomas should clearly have been
allowed to come to speak once he had been invited, but I think that the
school board and the people responsible should have taken the
responsibility of setting up an alternative forum of supporting Mr.
Johnson and having it known exactly what Mr. Johnson was concerned
about.
There is the bigger issue of how is Mr. Thomas going to be handled in
the curriculum in the future. He can be handled in one way in the
curriculum, and standardized curriculum across the whole country. You
can handle it straight factually: He is a conservative, he is a man who
turned his back on affirmative action that helped him, he is a man who
is very hostile to policies and programs that promote opportunities for
his own people, opportunities that are designed to correct the past
injustices of slavery and discrimination and oppression. You could say
factually that is the case.
But there should be an addendum to that curriculum in areas where
black children are being taught. There should be clearly an opportunity
to have a greater discussion of what that means. There should be a
clear way to discuss the fact that large percentages of the black
population have branded Justice Clarence Thomas as a traitor to his own
people.
What does it mean to be a traitor? Benedict Arnold was a traitor.
Everybody accepts that. Benedict Arnold was a traitor. I do not think
that necessarily the British schoolchildren of that time would call
Benedict Arnold a traitor. Benedict Arnold may be called a hero in
England in the service of the king. Benedict Arnold might have been
given some great justification for his actions. The king and the people
who supported keeping the American colonies as part of the British
Empire might have argued that Benedict Arnold was a champion of law and
order, that the colonists had no right to rebel against the lawful
government of England.
They could argue that, and make a case for it, and make him a hero in
the schools for the children of the British back in England. clearly he
was a traitor here, because we had already taken another course. Right
and wrong had been defined by the Declaration of Independence.

{time} 2115

Thomas Jefferson talked about certain inalienable rights. He talked
about self-evident truths. He did not deal with the fine points of
English law. If he had continued to try to negotiate with the King and
negotiate with the British, we would still probably be a colony of
England. But he called upon higher powers and declared that there are
some self-evident truths, that there are some inalienable rights. There
is a right and a wrong.
This Nation said when Abraham Lincoln was mourned and lifted up as
one of the greatest Presidents of the United States, there is a right
and a wrong. Abraham Lincoln who presided over the war against slavery,
he represents the right. The whole civilized world looks to Abraham
Lincoln as a person who was right in a controversy that some people
want to still argue about. It was right to end slavery in America. It
was right to go to war and have the bloodiest battle ever fought by
Americans, fought on the soil of America, to get rid of that slavery.
America would be in a very different position if two nations existed,
one slave and one free, at the time Hitler came to power. We might have
had on our very continent allies for the kind of philosophy that Hitler
was advocating.
All kinds of things could have happened if the rightness of Lincoln's
position had not been enforced by a challenge to the Confederacy.
There is a right and a wrong internationally. Lincoln is a great
hero. The Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, the first Prime Minister
after Communist rule was overthrown, visited the White House and Mrs.
Bush, upon the occasion that the Congressional Black Caucus was
visiting the White House, she explained that when he came into the room
where Lincoln had stayed and where the Emancipation Proclamation was
signed, he looked at the Emancipation Proclamation and he broke down in
tears.
Here is a man from Czechoslovakia, a man who had been under Communist
rules, had been in prison, his great idol was Abraham Lincoln, and the
Emancipation Proclamation, which was a Presidential Executive order
that set the slaves free, brought him to tears immediately.
So internationally, in the court of international morality and
justice, Abraham Lincoln was right and the other folks were wrong.
Slavery was wrong. We have made that decision. Our textbooks are to
reflect it that way. We are to recognize that that is the national
norm.
If slavery was wrong, then remedies to correct the aftermath of
slavery, remedies to correct the residue of the criminal actions of
slavery, they have to have some kind of validity. The Voting Rights Act
has to have validity. The Constitution has to have interpretation and
must not be distorted by a racist Supreme Court that refuses to
recognize that race in the Constitution is mentioned.
We are mentioned several times, starting with article 1, where they
talk about three-fifths of all other persons, they are clearly
referring to slaves. Everybody knows the intent of the Constitution.
Nobody has challenged the fact that three-fifths of all other persons
means three-fifths, that each slave, male, should be counted as three-
fifths of a person when you are counting the population of America. And
they correct that when they get to the 13th and 14th amendment where
they set free the slaves in the 13th amendment.
The 13th amendment states: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,
except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject
to their jurisdiction. That is the 13th amendment.
The 14th amendment, which is the subject of controversy, the 14th
amendment which is being used by Sandra Day O'Connor and her colleagues
on the Court as justification for calling for a colorblind America, the
14th amendment has section 1, section 2, section 3, section 4, and
section 5, and

[[Page H6499]]

I want to submit for the Record, just to have people reminded, the
whole 14th amendment.
Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record the whole 14th amendment.

Amendment XIV \1\

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United
States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens
of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No
State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified July 9, 1868.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the
several States according to their respective numbers,
counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding
Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election
for the choice of electors for President and Vice President
of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the
Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of
the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male
inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and
citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except
for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of
representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion
which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the
whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such
State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative
in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or
hold any office, civil or military, under the United States,
or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as
a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States,
or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive
or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution
of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or
rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the
enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of
each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United
States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for
payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing
insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But
neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay
any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or
rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the
loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts,
obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by
appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 1 states:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Who are they talking about particularly, specifically? The 13th
amendment that came before freed the slaves, but the 14th amendment is
talking specifically about slaves, or people who were just freed from
slavery, and the 14th amendment is there primarily to deal with the
descendants of slaves.
To argue that it is there to promote a colorblind America is to
distort the Constitution, to throw out any concern about what the
Congress meant when they wrote this, what the States meant when they
drafted it. We never do that on any other laws. We are always looking
for the intent of the Framers, what the law says. All that is
important. Why all of a sudden is it not important that the 14th
amendment was drafted, written, ratified in response to correcting the
ills of slavery, establishing the fact that these people who have just
been set free shall also have equal right, equal protection under the
law, these people are the people who were slaves and their descendants.
Section 2, this is in the same 14th amendment. If you want to
challenge my contention that the 14th amendment is about slavery and
correcting the ills of slavery, take a look in section 2, section 3 and
section 4. Take a look at what they say. They are talking about
situations which are related to correcting the upheaval, the situation
that resulted as a result of rebellion against the United States.
In Section 2, I will not read it all, they state: ``But when the
right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President
and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress,
the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the
Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such
State, being 21 years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in
any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other
crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the
proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the
whole number'' except in rebellion, participation in rebellion.
When the 14th amendment was written, they still had rebellion of the
Confederacy on their mind. Section 2 makes it clear that they had that
in their mind.
I will read all of section 3:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress,
or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any
office, civil or military, under the United States, or under
any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member
of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a
member of any State legislature, or as an executive or
judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of
the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or
rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the
enemies thereof.

They were concerned about the carryover and what was left over from
the situation of the Civil War which was fought to end slavery.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United
States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for
payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing
insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But
neither the United States nor any State shall assume or
pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection
or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for
the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts,
obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

The 14th amendment was not concerned and preoccupied with colorblind
America. It was preoccupied with slavery, the Civil War, the aftermath
of the Civil War, with dealing with people who had rebelled against the
Federal Government. I offer this in the hope that somebody would go
back and reread it, and especially the Supreme Court Justices who dwell
on one section and refuse to accept the 14th amendment in its total
context. It is distorted and twisted.
Kenneth Johnson did a great service when he pointed out that Justice
Thomas is a part of this process of distorting the 14th amendment in
what results in a racist series of decisions by the Court to roll back
the clock and end various constructive kinds of things that have gone
forth as a result of interpreting the 14th amendment in the proper way
and understanding that the 14th amendment was the chance to deal with
the problem of slavery in the proper context.
Mr. Speaker, I was going to also give an example of how a recent
book by Daniel Gohagen called ``Hitler's Willing Executioners''
confirms the kind of situation I am talking about where if you fail to
deal with underlying prejudices and hostilities in a society, it will
blossom forth in a diseased way and sometimes it will get out of
control. Certainly, if the central government and leaders of government
condone it and encourage it, it gets out of control.
I would like to end my remarks by saying, by taking actions against
the church burnings in a forceful way today, we have shown that the
leaders of this central government will take firm action against such
activities and elementary and rudimentary efforts have been taken to
stamp out this disease. We need to go further and try to get to the
root causes.

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