[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 27 (Wednesday, March 5, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H758-H764]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                SUPREME COURT DECISION ON VOTING RIGHTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore [Mr. Pease]. Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk primarily today about the 
Supreme Court decision with respect to voting rights in New York City. 
They have of course come down with a decision in New York that obeys 
the Supreme Court decision and the precedent it set. So the courts have 
ordered that one district, the district of my colleague, the 
gentlewoman from New York [Ms. Velazquez], the 12th Congressional 
District of New York, be redrawn; and the courts have said this must 
take place by July 30. The legislature has until July 30 to redraw the 
district.
  I think that this process has been going on for some time now. We 
understood that the Supreme Court, when it made its decision on the 
Georgia case and the North Carolina cases and the Texas case, all those 
cases let us know that it was almost inevitable that eventually some 
district in New York that was being challenged would be struck down and 
the district that has the oddest shape of course was the 12th 
Congressional District, presently held by Congresswoman Velazquez.
  We knew it was coming but nevertheless my neighbors seemed very 
alarmed. In the surrounding area, people are alarmed. The whole city is 
alarmed, asking questions as if this was a brand new situation. So for 
that reason, I find it important to comment. I have been on about four 
radio stations, and the kinds of questions I receive show that previous 
discussions of this matter, and I have spoken on the floor at least 
twice about the Voting Rights Act and the implications of the Voting 
Rights Act, the reason for the Voting Rights Act, the justice of the 
Voting Rights Act, but at home it has not come through because they did 
not feel it concerned them. It was in Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, 
Louisiana, recently Virginia. Now it has come home to New York.
  So it is important, and I think that the fact that Congresswoman 
Velazquez is appealing the decision is important. She knows that the 
likelihood that that appeal will be upheld, the likelihood that her 
appeal will receive success is very slim. She wants to make the point 
that the decision has come down, and it is a district court ruling in a 
matter that they consider consistent with the Supreme Court and the 
inevitability of that is one thing but the justice of it is another.
  It is not just that the Supreme Court that set the process in motion 
was wrong, that it was a 5 to 4 decision. Any 5 to 4 decision should be 
questioned and requestioned. The morality of it, the legality of it, 
all should be questioned, and she did not want to accept that.
  So we set in motion a process of having a dialog in New York that 
should have been going on all along because there is something more at 
stake here than just the redrawing of lines at one time. The whole act, 
the Voting Rights Act and the essence of the Voting Rights Act is now 
in jeopardy because the principle applied to congressional districts is 
also to be applied to State legislative districts and also city council 
districts and any other jurisdiction of the government, same principles 
would be applied. So it is a matter that deserves extensive discussion.
  Now, in the process of this discussion, I want to also talk about a 
few other things that seem unrelated but I intend to put them together, 
I assure you. I want to talk about some good news that has taken place 
in the past 24 hours. The Swiss Government announced that they were 
going to set up a $5 billion fund to compensate or to help victims of 
catastrophes, especially victims of human rights violations, such as 
victims of the Holocaust. Let me just make it clear that this is a 
Swiss Government taking this action, following an action that was 
previously taken by the Swiss banks. The Swiss banks already 
established a fund, I think, of 100-some million dollars, a fund to 
directly compensate victims of the Holocaust.
  Now the Swiss Government, the President of Switzerland has gone 
further, and that act of reconciliation is what I want to talk about. 
Where does reconciliation come in the process of evaluating the justice 
or injustice of the Voting Rights Act?

                              {time}  1615

  What is the Voting Rights Act all about? Why was the Voting Rights 
Act, why is the Voting Rights Act being questioned on the basis of 
race, on the basis of its denial of equal rights?
  Justice Sandra Day O'Connor argues in the majority opinion that we 
cannot draw a district with predominant consideration of race. That 
violates the equal protection clause in the 14th amendment.
  What Justice Sandra Day O'Connor does not tell us is that the 14th 
amendment is not about equal protection for everybody in a colorblind 
society. The 14th amendment is about a remedy of slavery.
  The 14th amendment came about as a result of the need to take care of 
the long pattern of injustices established in 232 years of slavery. And 
when the Civil War was fought and finally won, Congress had to pass 
first the 13th amendment, which freed the slaves. Abraham Lincoln freed 
a certain segment of the slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation, but 
he did not free all the slaves and it was not a constitutional matter.
  A President can issue an Executive order. When he goes out of office, 
the Executive order no longer applies. So the Emancipation Proclamation 
did not free the slaves permanently. It was the 13th amendment.
  Following the 13th amendment was the 14th amendment, which talked at 
great length about slavery. Most people think the 14th amendment is a 
little line about equal protection under the law. That is only one tiny 
part of the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment is about slavery and 
certain steps that the Government had to take to remedy the effects of 
slavery and to deal with the people who are now the descendants of 
slaves.
  So the Swiss Government's action is a process of reconciliation 
dealing with what they did not do 50 years ago, 50 years ago when the 
Nazis invaded most of Europe. The Nazis subjected the Jews to the 
Holocaust, 6 million people being wiped out. They stole their money and 
their goods and so forth. A lot of the gold and the money of Jewish 
victims of the Holocaust ended up in

[[Page H759]]

Switzerland. It was generally understood for the last 50 years that 
that had happened. Only now is Switzerland, under great pressure, 
finally beginning to deal with that.
  And I would like to applaud the positive step taken by the Swiss 
Government. Was it justice? I doubt it. It is at least a positive step 
in the process of reconciliation. And I will come back to that.
  Most important of all, I would like to show how the Truth and 
Reconciliation Commission of the South African Government is a model 
that even America ought to take a look at, because we have all these 
leftover problems resulting from 232 years of slavery and we are not 
able to deal with the problems in an effective, honest, and just way 
unless we admit that there was a great crime committed; unless we admit 
that there was a great problem created for 232 years; that the 
descendants of African slaves for 232 years they were enslaved and they 
have some problems and the Nation owes them something and we ought to 
talk about that.
  We ought to talk about what we are going to do to rectify those 
problems. And even before we get to rectifying the problems, let us at 
least tell the truth about it. Let us at least have a national 
exploration of what it meant to have 232 years of slavery, 232 years 
where people could not acquire wealth, 232 years where there was an 
attempt to obliterate the humanity of a certain group of people in 
order to make them more efficient and effective as beasts of burden.
  I am repeating myself. I have said this a couple of times on the 
floor before. But I think it is important to review these things, 
because in New York they are just beginning to wake up to the fact that 
we have a problem with respect to the Voting Rights Act. A lot of the 
people I talk to, and a lot of people who called into the radio shows 
said, well, it is only fair that we not consider race, that we not 
consider color. We should have a colorblind society.
  It is hard to deal with that discussion unless we deal with history. 
Now, I am not a historian. I majored in mathematics. I was never that 
fond of history, but I have as I have grown older begun to understand 
and appreciate the power of history. And history is what civilization 
is all about. If we do not remember history, or respect history or 
learn from history, then we are not able to build a civilization. We 
cannot deal with truth unless we have it in the context of history.
  So the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission seems like 
it is a long way away from the Voting Rights Act and it does not seem 
related. It may seem like it is not related to the Swiss Government 
action today, but it is all a part of what I want to talk about today.
  I want to go further and talk about beyond the Voting Rights Act; 
that there is a need for a whole lot of other actions and activities of 
Government that now will never take place unless we begin to look at 
the impact of 232 years of slavery, and, after that, about 150 years of 
special discrimination, oppression.
  The fact that the reconciliation process is gaining momentum, the 
fact that the reconciliation process is now accepted, beginning to make 
an impact, an imprint on our overall world civilization is very 
important.
  It may be that the steps being taken are only tiny steps, but what 
was the liberation of Haiti all about? The liberation of Haiti was 
accomplished because we made promises that we would not punish, we 
would not seek justice, we would just seek the truth and 
reconciliation. Punishment of the people who had thrown out the legal 
Government of Haiti and terrorized the people for 3 years; our 
Government said that should not take place. And Aristide and the 
Government of Haiti agreed. We will not emphasize punishment, we will 
emphasize reconciliation.
  What happened in Bosnia? We had to have some agreement among the 
fighting parties that they would not pursue justice over 
reconciliation. Yes, there is a clause which says that war criminals 
will be sought, but the definition of war criminals makes it pretty 
clear we are talking about a very tiny amount of people. Most of the 
people who participated in the terror, in the war crimes, and the 
devastation of the Balkan countries involved, the old Yugoslavia, parts 
of Yugoslavia, they will not be punished. We are pursuing 
reconciliation there.
  The Swiss Government's action is another act of reconciliation. In 
Uganda, where they massacred a half million people in a short period of 
time, one tribe after another, we are trying to pursue reconciliation. 
Reconciliation is being pursued in Uganda, but the courts are holding 
forth, cases are being tried, they are trying to get the truth of what 
happened. It is important before they go forward.
  What I am saying is that unless we have a bedrock of truth on which 
to build the future, building the present and future gets kind of 
wobbly. We threw away the Voting Rights Act and said no group should be 
treated in a special way. Well, we moved from the Voting Rights Act to 
the set-asides. Set-asides for minorities and women have now been 
discouraged by the Supreme Court because that is treating a group in 
a special way.

  The Supreme Court did say that the Federal Government had a right to 
pursue any remedies it wanted to with respect to past injustices. So 
Federal set-asides were accepted, whereas local set-asides would only 
be accepted if they proved there was immediate discrimination or past 
discrimination that could be proved. It was a complicated way of 
diluting the understanding that if there are injustices that have gone 
on for a long time, Government has a duty to try to correct and adjust 
the situation in order to compensate for those injustices.
  The German Government is made up of people who are living and 
breathing now, citizens paying taxes, many of them were not alive 
during the Nazi era, yet the Germans have steadfastly paid reparations 
to certain identified Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
  The Germans have had to pay for a number of other things, because a 
nation is considered a continuing body and we do not drop whatever is 
happening because it was a group called the Nazis or the Gestapo. The 
German Government has to assume that responsibility.
  The Swiss Government of today was not the Swiss Government that was 
there when they capitulated to the Germans and they acted in concert 
with the Germans in the looting of certain fortunes and a number of 
things that went on, which the Government of Switzerland is not even 
acknowledging today, but they are saying we understand something went 
wrong and today we are going to move forward and try to, in the spirit 
of reconciliation, do something positive.
  The principle of special treatment to deal with special past crimes, 
special past injustices, special past investigations is what I am 
talking about: special treatment in the Voting Rights Act, special 
treatment we need in the emergency funding of education right now.
  The same people that were victimized by 232 years of slavery are the 
descendants of those people, and they are the ones being victimized in 
our big cities right now. They are being victimized because children 
are being forced to go to school in buildings that are unsafe. Not only 
are they not conducive to learning but the buildings have asbestos 
problems, they have lead poisoning problems, they have problems of 
overcrowding which affects the psyche as well as the physical health of 
children. Those things are going on right now in America.
  The need to deal with that on an emergency basis and understand that 
there is a need to do that because the situation results from past 
injustices and past failures must go forward.
  There is a need for more empowerment zones. We came up with a good 
solution, which the Republicans and Democrats both bought into, when 
the President proposed that we have empowerment zones in big cities and 
also in rural areas where we have a large amount of poverty. The 
empowerment zone concept was considered a great step forward because it 
combined the private sector effort with the public sector effort.
  When empowerment zones were first proposed, the number 50 was the 
magic number. For a long time they talked about 50 empowerment zones. A 
good idea that everybody endorsed then, and it is a good idea still to 
endorse. But we went from 50 empowerment zones on the drawing board 
down to 9

[[Page H760]]

empowerment zones when they finally enacted the legislation, 6 in the 
big cities and 3 in rural areas.
  The President began to talk during the election of our increasing the 
empowerment zones from 9 to 20, which we thought was still too few, but 
in his State of the Union Address he fell back from 20 to talking about 
6 additional empowerment zones.
  So empowerment zones are part of an effort to correct past 
injustices, part of an effort to deal with the special problems created 
by oppression and the victimization of people. And empowerment zones 
should be pushed forward and expanded. We need more of them and we need 
them now, not a trickle-down approach where by the year 2000 we may 
have 20. We need to deal with the problem right now.
  Empowerment zones rightly focus on the poorest areas in the country. 
We have to prove poverty. In my district we have census tracks, which 
are the census tracks from which most of the children with asthma come. 
They are the census tracks from which most of the children who have not 
graduated from high school come. They are the census tracks which have 
the largest numbers of people in the prisons in New York State.
  There is a correlation between extreme poverty. We have census tracks 
with a large number of low-income housing developments. Low-income 
housing developments are there because people need housing, but it 
groups people in low income and there is a correlation between the low 
income and the low education. There is a correlation between the crime 
rate and the health problems. Clearly, it qualifies for an empowerment 
zone.
  There is no problem once we get the opportunity. But if we only have 
nine empowerment zones in the whole country and only six of those 
empowerment zones are urban areas, and the other gentleman from New 
York, Charlie Rangel, was the author of the bill, so he has the one in 
New York City, in Harlem, which is a long way from Brooklyn. Just 
across the river in psychological terms, but Brooklyn, NY, is part of 
New York City. It has 2.5 million people, 2.5 million people.
  If it was a separate city, it would be the fourth or fifth largest 
city in the country. We have problems there which are concentrated. And 
if the empowerment zones were to be distributed in an equitable and 
just manner, we would get an empowerment zone. I have told my 
constituents this is the No. one priority on my agenda, an empowerment 
zone.
  But in the process of trying to get an economic empowerment zone, we 
are up against the philosophy that seems to be prevailing that we 
should not give special treatment to people in need. That same 
philosophy that mitigates against the Voting Rights Act, mitigates 
against the set-aside laws, is now operating in anything where we 
propose to help people in great need, except of course in the case of 
earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes.
  When we have storms or natural disasters, we immediately rush to the 
aid of people. We have appropriated like $8 billion in aid to 
California in the last 3 years, $6 billion for Florida, and $6 billion 
for Midwestern States for floods. Florida suffered from hurricanes.

                              {time}  1630

  We quickly respond and understand people are in special need when 
natural disasters occur, but 232 years of slavery and the byproducts of 
that, the poisonous legacy of that, we do not want to consider. So we 
need emergency education funding, we need economic empowerment zones, 
we need workfare to end and have Federal job creation programs instead 
of putting people on workfare, which is a prelude, a prerequisite for a 
new kind of slavery because you are working people for less than 
minimum wage, no fringe benefits, dehumanizing them. Workfare becomes a 
prelude to slavery if it has no opportunity at the end, if there is no 
job training promise, if there is no attempt to build a situation in 
the economy where jobs will be available, public sector jobs are not 
being created. Then you are moving in a direction of slavery.
  Mr. Speaker, the cruelty of the welfare reform and the immigration 
reform is coming home to my district. My office is packed with people, 
old people who have been in this country for 20 or 30 years, for one 
reason or another did not become citizens, no chance now that they are 
going to be able to meet the requirements, pass the tests, answer the 
questions. They are going to now have to starve because they cannot get 
food stamps, they cannot get any benefits, SSI is closed to them. They 
cannot get into nursing homes when they get sick. All of that goes down 
the drain.
  The cruelty of it is unnecessary. Perhaps the average American 
citizen would not sit still and accept this if they understood what it 
is all about in terms of the legacy of injustices and past failures and 
how that produces a large number of people in this kind of condition.
  As I said before, I want to talk primarily about the Voting Rights 
Act and its impact on New York City in terms of the need to draw new 
lines and the implications of the fact that the courts have now chosen 
to abandon any special considerations in the drawing of those lines, 
special considerations that are needed with respect to race.
  So I have a potpourri of things I am throwing in here that all relate 
back to the same subject. I go a little further, I would like to call 
attention to the fact that the Chinese criticize human rights 
violations in America today. Some of us have voted year after year that 
we should not have most favorable trading status with China because 
China on a massive scale violates human rights. They have got more 
humans in China, so they can violate rights on a scale that makes 
everybody else appear to be playing games. When you have more than 1 
billion people and you violate human rights, you are violating quite a 
number of humans, the rights of quite a number of humans.
  So China has been criticized, but the present administration, our 
administration, the Democratic administration, and I think the 
leadership of the Republican Party also approves it. They place trade 
and business first, and they keep certifying China and allowing it to 
have most favorable nation status.
  Mr. Speaker, China is not grateful for the fact that we criticize 
them but still give them the most favorable nation status. They have 
now fought back and they are criticizing the United States for 
violating human rights. They say we violate human rights by not 
providing for food, clothing and shelter for all the people, for health 
care for all the people, for jobs for all the people. China has slapped 
back at the United States. They have even gone so far as to criticize 
our election process.
  The latest criticism of China is that we are allowing people to buy 
elections, that the large amounts of money that go into our elections 
constitute bribery. That is the charge of the Chinese. I think that we 
should take note. Although I do not agree with the Chinese, I think our 
arrogance in criticizing the rest of the world should be tempered. 
There are a lot of problems wrong here. We need to take a close look at 
ourselves.
  What I am saying is that that is what we need in order to put in 
perspective problems relating to voting rights, problems related to 
appropriations for education, appropriations for jobs, economic 
development, problems related to our fantastic hostility toward the 
poor as expressed in welfare reform, immigration reform. We need to 
take a step back and take a look at the richest nation that ever 
existed on the face of the Earth and say to ourselves, how are we 
really behaving.
  A truth and reconciliation commission would help us do this. If we 
understood ourselves and understood the history of this Nation and how 
it did not come into being automatically, by some magic process and 
waving of the hands of God, there were a lot of things done right by 
our Founding Fathers, and there were a lot of things done wrong in the 
economic sector. Slavery was an engine that built the Nation, helped to 
build the Nation economically. The wiping out of large portions of the 
Native American population also helped to build a new Nation 
economically, but it was built on the blood and bones of people who did 
not deserve what they got.
  So we need to take a step back and look at our history and evaluate 
it. Ken Burns has a documentary that played a couple of weeks ago on 
Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was a

[[Page H761]]

very complex man, also a very great man, a giant; so ordinary people 
are not expected to be able to really understand the psyche of Thomas 
Jefferson fully. He was the kind of individual who comes only once or 
twice or a few times in a century. He was equivalent in politics to 
Einstein in science as far as I am concerned.
  Mr. Speaker, if there had been no Thomas Jefferson, I do not think 
there would be an America as we know it today. We would have a very 
different constellation. So Thomas Jefferson ranks with Lincoln, 
competes with Lincoln as the greatest American President in my opinion. 
Perhaps Lincoln is greater because he acted decisively in very 
complicated, trying circumstances, and Thomas Jefferson acted 
decisively in some times but he backed away from many other battles; 
and that may be the difference. But historians have ranked Presidents, 
and I think Jefferson, Roosevelt, Lincoln, they all rank in the top 
three, one way or another.
  Jefferson certainly was a great President. Jefferson, however, did 
have slaves. He was a southerner. He was a plantation owner. Jefferson 
also, documents show, had a 38-year love affair with one of his slaves 
named Sally Hemings. Sally Hemings is sort of blotted out of history, 
but researchers have reconstructed enough about her to let us know that 
she had a relationship with Jefferson for 38 years. I think a truth and 
reconciliation commission would help us to unearth that, and we would 
benefit a great deal. It is a love story that I think needs to be told, 
the story of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. It would help the 
Nation a whole lot to know exactly how this great man, why this great 
man maintained a relationship with a slave woman for 38 years. If that 
could happen, I do not think it should be seen as something to be 
hidden or something to be proud of. Obviously it was no passing 
passion. Obviously it was no exploitation of one human being over 
another. You do not do that for 38 years.

  Obviously Sally Hemings was a very exceptional person even though 
history has blotted out a lot of what she was, and we do not know 
because certain Jefferson letters and documents are mysteriously 
missing, et cetera. But Ken Burns' documentary on Jefferson has 
titillated a lot of discussion. Certainly my interest, which started 
like 10 years ago, in Thomas Jefferson has been renewed. This is a part 
of our history that a Truth and Reconciliation Commission should take a 
look at. We may be proud and learn a lot from an examination of the 
intimate life of Thomas Jefferson as well as the rest of his life.
  I think that factual history has a major role in this process of 
reconciliation. Factual history would make us understand more about 
what 232 years of slavery meant. Factual history, as we examine the 
facts more closely, if we funded a commission and they looked at it 
more closely, you might understand what I mean when I say that 232 
years of slavery was an obliteration process, an attempt to obliterate 
the humanity of a set of people to make them more efficient as workers, 
as beasts of burden. The facts of history would help us understand 
that. The facts would lead us to do some of the things that have been 
done recently in the study of the children of Romania.
  In Romania, the Communist Government of Romania decided that children 
were better off raised in orphanages. Large numbers of children were 
put into orphanages. They could have found families in many cases for 
them, but it was a policy of the Government: Maximize the number of 
children in orphanages; let the State raise them.
  What you have is a kind of small Holocaust related to little 
children. Large numbers of American families have attempted to adopt 
some of those Romanian children since the wall went down in Romania and 
the dictator who started all this was executed by the people of 
Romania. They have gone in, large numbers of Americans wanting to adopt 
children. In many cases the children were physically beautiful, a 
little malnourished and pathetic looking but physically beautiful, and 
they have run up against a very interesting problem. Many of them have 
found when you try to transport children of Romania into America, give 
them the nurturing and do everything that a parent could do, and most 
of these are middle-class people because it costs about $10,000 to go 
through the process of getting them adopted, so they have some means. 
They take care of the kids very well. They run up against the problem 
of the children cannot do certain things, that something has happened 
to them that makes it impossible for them to relate in the usual human 
ways. Some of the parents have had to give up the children, have just 
found that it is impossible.
  Psychiatrists have been brought in to study the situation. They have 
actually taken photographs, taken x-rays of the brains of the children. 
They have found a pattern where parts of the brain atrophy, they shrink 
because of the lack of human contact. These people were put in places 
where they were in pens. They had only other children there of their 
same age, very little human contact except to feed them. And often they 
were not fed on time and deprived. But the big thing is the lack of the 
human contact has led to a condition that can be documented. The brains 
have been affected on most of the children.
  There are a few exceptions, which is a testament to the human spirit 
and the human endurance that is there, but the majority of them are in 
a situation where they do not come back. You cannot deal with the 
problem that the brain has already shrunk. They have documented 
evidence of this. I saw it on public television. I watch a lot of 
public television, and I saw it. They actually had the graphs and the 
charts, the picture of the brain, et cetera.
  I asked myself, what happened to the brains of all these slave 
children who were put in situations where they were taken care of in 
the same way, only in worse conditions. They did not have pens. They 
were put on dirt floors. They were put on floors that in the wintertime 
only were covered with straw. They were fed like pigs. They would put 
the milk and the cornbread together and spread it in a trawl the way 
they feed pigs. They went through all these kind of inhumane 
conditions, they were sold back and forth from their parents, all kinds 
of things happened. What if we were to really get a thorough 
documentation of what that phenomenon was like and then begin to 
understand what impact it had on generations, to have all those babies 
who became adults, who went through that process.
  Mr. Speaker, how much of that is a part of the problem that we are 
experiencing? And what a great thing it was that the human spirit of 
most African-Americans who are alive today, they are still alive 
because their ancestors overcame those kinds of conditions. But that is 
just one horrendous example. Why do we not have an economic study of 
what it means to have a slave family, 232 years ago, that is about 
seven or eight generations we are talking about. And each generation, 
because they are slaves, cannot pass anything on to the next 
generation.

  There have been studies that show clearly that most wealth in America 
has been accumulated from inheritance. One generation passes money down 
to the next. They invest that or they find ways to expand on that, they 
pass it down to the next. So wealth in America is primarily, and 
probably all over the world, is primarily the result of inheritance. 
Bill Gates is a great exception. There are a number of people who have 
sort of broken out of the mold, made billions of dollars due to 
technological advancements. They are very fortunate. But in general, 
studies have shown that wealth is a product of family, inheritance.
  Two hundred thirty-two years went by where African-Americans and 
their descendants inherited zero. Nothing. They are different from the 
immigrants who came here who might have had a suitcase full of clothes. 
You had wealth if you came with a suitcase full of clothes.

                              {time}  1645

  The African Americans came, and an attempt was made to deprive them 
not only of everything they had--they were automatically deprived of 
every physical thing they had, but their language was considered a 
problem. So they were divided up in ways which placed people who spoke 
different languages together in order for them not to be able to 
generate conspiracies. They were in every

[[Page H762]]

way deprived of any heritage, traditions, folkways, mores. All that was 
deliberately blotted out.
  So what if we really studied that seriously, had a commission which 
had some funding, and were to see the impact of it? What impact would 
that have on our policy making, our attitudes toward policy making? We 
might discover some good things, you know, in the process.
  There was an article I read recently which talked about the south's 
hidden heritage. We discovered some positive things and some of the 
stereotypes that we have might be overcome, because there was an 
article that was in the New York Times on February 16 of this year, 
1997, by Eric Foner. I picked it up and I saw the name Eric Foner, and 
I was very interested in the article because I have a book in my office 
by Eric Foner. It is a study of mulattoes, the mulattoes and the impact 
of mulattoes, the offspring of the slave holders, the slave owners and 
slave women, and he has a long catalog of various mulattoes and what 
happened to them and their impact, et cetera.
  So Eric Foner's name attracted my attention. He is a teacher at 
Columbia University, teaches history there, and he is also the curator 
of an exhibition at the South Carolina Historical Museum. At Columbia 
University, New York, he is a teacher, but he is a curator of an 
exhibition at the South Carolina Historical Museum. That is an odd 
combination which I found very interesting. And his article is about 
the south's hidden heritage.
  If we had a truth in reconciliation commission we might find out 
things like this, and they may contribute a great deal to the dialog 
and the reconciliation process. He points out in his article, which I 
will not read in great detail, but he points out that Mississippi, 
which is often singled out as being an example of the worst race 
relations and the worst historical--historically the worst of the slave 
States, that Mississippi had more Mississippians who fought for the 
Union than for the Confederacy. That is an interesting fact, it is an 
odd fact; it is a fact, I think, which if it was placed into the hopper 
of a reconciliation process may do some good, you know.
  He points out that during the Civil War 200,000 African Americans, 
most of them freed slaves, fought in the Union Army. Tens of thousands 
of Mississippi slaves were recruited in the Union forces. Several 
thousand whites from Mississippi also fought under the stars and 
stripes. In fact more Mississippians fought for the Union than for the 
Confederacy.
  And he goes on to talk about other Civil War monuments in the south 
that celebrate the south's history one way or another. He talks about 
the fact also that Gen. James Longstreet, a famous general for the 
Confederacy, General Longstreet has no monuments to him in any southern 
towns because after the war was over General Longstreet supported 
rights for the newly freed slaves, so his name up to now is mud among 
his compatriots in the south.
  A truth in reconciliation commission might appreciate that fact, 
might unearth the achievements of General Longstreet after the war, and 
it might lead to General Longstreet being a positive force in a dialog 
and the development of reconciliation in America.
  What am I going on with this potpourri for? It is all about trying to 
make the point that the Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act 
is a landmark decision, it is a dangerous harbinger of things to come. 
If we do not deal with the distorted notions behind it, the philosophy 
of it, and understand what it is all about, we are in danger of losing 
other kinds of policy institutions.
  We fought hard for certain institutions to be put in place. We fought 
hard to get the Voting Rights Act, we fought hard to end segregation in 
the schools, we fought hard to get set-asides established so that in 
Government contracts a small percentage, a tiny percentage of contracts 
were awarded to minorities and to women. A lot of that is being rolled 
back. Affirmative action is being challenged, and a lot of the same 
arguments that are used by the Supreme Court in its promulgation of 
this wrong decision are used in all of those cases, that America should 
be a colorblind society.
  Everybody is equal. Therefore you cannot take steps to remedy 
anything on the basis of past injustices. You must treat everybody 
equally. That may be a dream that will take place some day, but it is 
not a fact and a reality now, and the fact that we close our eyes makes 
the process of building a great Nation more difficult. We may have 
serious problems if we continue to go down this road, but we will not 
acknowledge that schools in inner-city communities which have the 
greatest bulk of the descendants of African slaves need special help. 
Empowerment zones in inner-city districts need special help to create 
jobs and create opportunity. We cannot run away from that 
responsibility.
  In the Supreme Court decision, I think I pointed out Supreme Court 
decision that was related to the Georgia case, and was used as the 
backbone and the ultimate decisionmaking as within the context of the 
Supreme Court decision for all other cases, including the recent case 
of New York. Nydia Velazquez's 12th District has been subjected to the 
same reasoning that was used in the Georgia case, and therefore at this 
point I want to go back to a statement I made on this floor before:
  The Georgia case was a case decided by a five to four configuration. 
Five members voted for it, and four members voted against it. Ruth 
Bader Ginsburg wrote the opinion for the minority; Justice Kennedy 
wrote the opinion for the majority. Justice Kennedy based his ruling on 
another case which said that you can not have any consideration of race 
when the Government is involved. Justice Ginsburg challenged this and 
said this is not so self-evident, it is not common sense. It was not 
obvious to Justice Ginsburg, and I will repeat what I said on the floor 
before:
  The law, as the law is made and the intent of the constitutional 
amendment as examined, it is not at all clear to Justice Ginsburg that 
the 14th amendment is primarily concerned with being colorblind and not 
concerned with remedying past wrongs, which the full, legal immigration 
of the African Americans, the former slaves and their descendants into 
American life, require.
  Let me read a few excerpts from Justice Ginsburg's dissenting opinion 
directly. Quote:

       Legislative redistricting is a highly political business. 
     This court has generally respected the competence of State 
     legislators to attend to the task. When race is the issue, 
     however, we have recognized the need for judicial invention, 
     the judicial intervention, to prevent dilution of minority 
     voting strength. Generations of white discrimination against 
     African Americans, as citizens and voters, account for 
     that surveillance.

  In other words, the courts did get involved with redistricting after 
hundreds of years of, say, you know, we are not going to draw lines. 
Legislatures can do a better job with that. They got involved only 
because there was an injustice that continued from one generation to 
another in representation for minorities, in most cases for the 
descendants of African slaves.
  In other words, what she is saying is that we have generally kept our 
hands off the judiciary. The judiciary kept its hands off the 
reapportionment process. There was a series of cases that established 
clearly that it was better to leave the State legislatures alone to do 
this, and the only regular systematic intervention of the courts came 
in the case of the Voting Rights Act. They upheld the Voting Rights Act 
as being constitutional originally and proceeded for a long time to 
accept it and support it.
  We reauthorized the Voting Rights Act for 25 years. I think it has 
about 15 more years to go because the Congress, after having tested it, 
reauthorized it 2 or 3 times for 2 years, 4 years, 5 years; finally 
decided to reauthorize it for 25 years. But to quote Justice Ginsburg 
again:
  Two years ago in Shaw versus Reno this court took up a claim 
analytically distinct from a vote dilution claim. Shaw authorized 
judicial intervention in extremely regular reapportionments.
  To continue quoting Justice Ginsburg:

       Today the court expands the judicial role, announcing that 
     Federal courts are to undertake searching review of any 
     district with contours predominantly motivated by race. 
     Strict scrutiny will be triggered not only when traditional 
     districting practices are abandoned, but also when those 
     practices are subordinated to and given less weight than

[[Page H763]]

     race. Applying this new race as predominant factor standard, 
     the court invalidates Georgia's districting plan even though 
     Georgia's eleventh district, the focus of today's dispute, 
     bears the imprint of familiar districting practices. Because 
     I do not endorse the court's new standard and will not upset 
     Georgia's new plan, I dissent, says Justice Ginsburg on the 
     occasion of the court case that set the precedent for what 
     has been decided now in New York. Nydia Velazquez would not 
     have been ordered to redraw lines in this case, if the court 
     had not ruled on the Georgia case in this manner.
  To continue quoting justice Ginsburg:

       We say once again what has been said on many occasions. 
     Reapportionment is primarily the duty and responsibility of 
     the State through its legislature or other body rather than 
     of a Federal court. Districting inevitably has sharp 
     political impact, and political decisions must be made by 
     those charged with the task. District lines are drawn to 
     accommodate a myriad of factors geographic, economic, 
     historical and political, and State legislatures as arenas of 
     compromise, electoral accountability, are best positioned to 
     mediate competing claims. Courts with a mandate merely to 
     adjudicate are ill equipped for this task. The lines have 
     been redrawn in New York City, have been ordered redrawn 
     because the court which is ill-equipped with the task is 
     interfering with the process, and they have never done that 
     before. She points out geographic, economic, historical, 
     political and number of factors go into drawing the lines of 
     a district, a congressional district, State Senate district, 
     assembly, all under the same process. It is a political 
     process.

  Barney Frank offered the other day when I was looking for examples of 
strangely shaped districts, oddly shaped districts that have nothing to 
do with the Voting Rights Act, Barney Frank offered his district. It is 
one of the oddest shaped districts in the country. It is in 
Massachusetts. Had nothing to do with the Voting Rights Act. 
Historically there have been stranger creatures drawn as districts than 
anything that we have seen put forward in these voting rights act 
cases, but suddenly esthetics becomes important. The odd shape, if it 
had something to do with race maybe, requires strict scrutiny.
  I quote Justice Ginsburg again. Federal courts have ventured now into 
the political thicket of reapportionment when necessary to secure to 
members of racial minorities equal voting rights, rights denied many 
States including Georgia until not long ago. The 15th amendment which 
was ratified in 1870 declared that the right to vote shall not be 
denied by any State on account of race. That declaration for many 
generations was often honored in the breach. It was greeted by a near 
century of unremitting and ingenious defiance in several States 
including Georgia. The defiance in Georgia and several southern States 
was open, well known, poll tax, lynchings of people who tried to assert 
their right to vote. You wanted to vote at one point, you had to recite 
the constitution without stopping. In one State they require that you 
tell how many bubbles there are in a bar of soap. They came in with all 
kind of ridiculous questions for black voters who were seeking to vote.
  So that is legendary. We know about that. What you do not know is 
that in places like New York, New York City with a large black 
population, they have for years, for many decades, drew lines where 
they went to the black community and put the pin down in the middle of 
the community so that a large black community would be a part of four 
different districts. They would have no power in any one of those four 
districts because they are only a small part of all those districts. It 
was a pattern repeated over and over again in big cities like 
Philadelphia, Chicago, all across the country.

                              {time}  1700

  So the politicians had the power to do that and they did it and they 
were allowed to do it.
  The 15th amendment, ratified in 1877, said the right to vote shall 
not be denied by any State on account of race. That declaration for 
many generations was offered under the breach. After a brief interlude 
of black suffrage enforced by Federal troops but accompanied by rampant 
attacks against blacks, Georgia held a constitutional convention in 
1877. Its purpose, according to the convention's leader, to quote the 
convention leader of the Georgia Constitution in 1877, was to fix it so 
that the people shall rule and the Negro shall never be heard from. 
This is part of the history that Justice Ginsburg quoted in order to 
deal with the Georgia case.
  She continues, in pursuant of this objective, Georgia enacted a 
cumulative poll tax requiring voters to show their past as well as 
current poll taxes paid. One historian described this tax as the most 
effective bar to Negro suffrage ever devised.
  In 1890, the Georgia General Assembly authorized white-only 
primaries. Keeping blacks out of the Democratic primary effectively 
excluded them from Georgia's political life. The victory in the 
Democratic primary in those days was tantamount to election.
  Early in this century Georgia Governor Hoke Smith persuaded the 
legislature of Georgia to pass the Disenfranchisement Act of 1908. As 
late as 1908, they passed the Disenfranchisement Act of 1908. True to 
its title, this measure added various property, good character and 
leadership requirements that as administered served to keep blacks from 
voting. This result, as one commentator observed 25 years later, was an 
absolute exclusion of the Negro voice in State and Federal elections.
  I am citing all of this to let my colleagues know that this is the 
Georgia case that is the decisive case, the basis for striking down 
districts in Virginia and Texas, in Louisiana and Florida, and now in 
New York City. If my colleagues want to know the history, if my 
colleagues want to know the other side, this is the other side argued 
by Justice Ginsburg. She did not agree with Justice O'Connor, she did 
not agree with Justice Clarence Thomas, and she wrote a brilliant 
statement that every person in New York who is concerned about justice 
ought to read.
  Disenfranchised blacks have no electoral influence; hence, no muscle 
to lobby the legislature for change, and that is when the court 
intervened. She is saying that the court intervened and the Voting 
Rights Act was created because the processes were being used to exclude 
and to oppress a particular group. It was a violation of the 15th 
amendment.
  Justice Ginsburg makes it quite clear that the equal protection 
clause does not rule out extraordinary measures being taken by the 
Federal Government to deal with past wrongs and to compensate for what 
happened in 232 years of slavery and the period of disenfranchisement 
that followed. She argues, Justice Ginsburg argues, with the basic 
principle that is established by Justice O'Connor in Shaw versus Reno, 
she argues against that principle; she does not accept that premise.
  But then Justice Ginsburg moved to another area and she showed that 
the 11th Congressional District that was being challenged in Georgia 
had better lines, less crooked lines, less strange lines; the shape was 
better, more rectangular than most of the other Georgia districts.
  So the district of the gentlewoman from New York [Ms. Velazquez] has 
been called the Bullwinkle district in New York. It is called the 
Bullwinkle district because it looks so strange; somebody says it looks 
like Bullwinkle. It is a big joke. But I assure my colleagues that 
throughout history there have been many Bullwinkles and Bullwinkle's 
relatives that never have been challenged. We also know that right now 
across the Nation, of the 435 districts drawn, some of the strangest 
safe districts have nothing to do with the Voting Rights Act, they have 
nothing to do with race.
  So I come back to my original concern. People of New York, people of 
my district understand this Voting Rights Act is in jeopardy; the fact 
that a colleague of mine has been ordered to redraw her district. The 
question has been asked many times, how will this affect you? It will 
affect me immediately because I have some boundaries with the 
gentlewoman from New York [Ms. Velazquez]. I am on the boundary of 
people who do have boundaries with her. So they may, in the process of 
redrawing the district, impact upon my district as it is now.
  There are several plans that have been proposed, very modest plans. 
Some involve adjustments where they move the lines around a bit and a 
few districts will be impacted and that is it. That is one scenario. 
The problem could be resolved with the simple scenario of adjusting 
lines in a few districts. Another scenario is that since the State 
legislature has ordered the redrawing of all of the lines; not all of

[[Page H764]]

the lines, but redrawing of the lines for her district, the State 
legislature can choose, if they wish, to redraw all of the lines in the 
whole State. They have that option. They can choose to draw lines as 
far away as several thousand miles, in Buffalo, on the border of Canada 
if they wish. They have that option. Being told by the courts to redraw 
lines mean they have an option.
  Some people in the State legislature, powerful people, the Governor 
is powerful, the majority leader in the senate, they are powerful 
Republicans, they may try to get revenge on the Democrats who won in 
districts that were primarily Republican, who had a large percentage of 
Republicans, and they may try to draw boundaries in ways which impact 
on those districts. Some Democrats may choose to want to make some 
adjustments and get even with some of their enemies by redrawing some 
lines somewhere.
  Mr. Speaker, the scenario that does not make sense is also possible. 
It does not make sense to do that. The wild scenario of drawing lines 
throughout the State is one possibility. The scenario of common sense 
is to just make adjustments downstate in the area of New York City.
  Now, I say all of this because it is important if people have 
questions, they want to know is my district in jeopardy? Why am I 
concerned about this? I am not concerned primarily because it impacts 
on my district at all. I am concerned about the future of the Voting 
Rights Act. I am concerned about the principle of effective Government 
policies to focus on problems that exist as a result of past Government 
behavior, past wrongs that were done, past official policies.
  When the Constitution was written and they made slaves, they did not 
even refer to slaves. They said other individuals would be counted as 
three-fifths, other Indians would be counted as three-fifths of a man. 
We enshrined in the Constitution a grave error, and the policy 
decision, the wrong policy decision was perpetrated from then on.
  We failed to include in the Declaration of Independence the long 
section that Jefferson wrote condemning slavery. It was taken out as a 
compromise. So we failed again in our public policy to deal with the 
problem. Later on, Jefferson attempted to pass a bill which banned 
slavery in all of the States that would be added to the Union and it 
lost by 1 vote in Congress. It lost by 1 vote. We failed in public 
policy again. It went on and on until you have the blood bath of the 
Civil War.

  So we have a responsibility to correct the results, the by-product of 
past Government failures. What the Swiss are doing finally, in their 
offering of a fund for $5 billion is saying that we accept some of that 
responsibility in the case of what happened with the Jews in the Second 
World War. The Swiss are setting a great example.
  I was speaking to some bankers this morning at a breakfast and I 
said, look, you bankers who worry so much about the Community 
Reinvestment Act and the small amount of money you put into big cities 
and minority neighborhoods, you worry about every penny and you nickel 
and dime us to death. Why do you not look at the example now being set 
by the Swiss? Why not have the American millionaires and the tremendous 
amounts of accumulation of American wealth in America respond to some 
human needs in America in the same way the Swiss now begin to respond? 
It took the Swiss 50 years.
  Switzerland is a beautiful little country; I have been there twice. 
It is amazing how clean it is, how orderly it is; law and order is 
fantastic in Switzerland. Switzerland has a very educated population. 
In Switzerland the people dress nicely, they look nice and they act 
nicely, but that does not govern morality. There is no correlation 
between sanitation and cleanliness and morality.
  They behaved abominably. They behaved like the worst of humanity by 
operating in cahoots with the Germans to take the wealth of all of 
these helpless people. They denied entry into Switzerland to people who 
were running from the terror of the Holocaust. They did terrible 
things. Some people have said, well, they have $5 billion they are now 
willing to put up. That is not enough. They want justice. Let us 
calculate how much they have earned and all the money they stole and 
make them pay up.
  I do not think we should ask for justice, it has taken so long to 
this point. Reconciliation is greater than justice, reconciliation is 
more important than justice. Justice we may never have. Steps have been 
taken toward reconciliation; let us accept those steps.
  I think I have said before that sometimes it seems that civilization 
is not going forward. Terrible things have happened in a nation like 
Germany, with large numbers of educated people, leaders, the history of 
producing the greatest musicians in the world, the greatest scientists, 
the greatest mathematicians. A nation like Germany created also some of 
the greatest crimes against humanity on a scale that no other set of 
terrorists have ever been able to accomplish in the world.

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