[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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