[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 84 (Tuesday, June 17, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3846-H3853]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             RACE RELATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Metcalf). 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, today there was a little bit of history that 
meant a great deal to me. The last bill we passed was a bill sponsored 
by the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Watts], called the Joint Resolution 
Celebrating the End of Slavery in the United States. I think it is a 
small gesture, maybe, but it is a very important one for me. It is an 
important one for a lot of Americans, both black and white, and I was 
pleased to see that not

[[Page H3847]]

a single Member of the House of Representatives who was present voted 
against this joint resolution introduced by the gentleman from Oklahoma 
[Mr. Watts].
  It is a joint resolution celebrating the end of slavery in the United 
States. It reads:

       Whereas news of the end of slavery came late to frontier 
     areas of the country, especially in the American Southwest; 
     and
       Whereas the African-Americans who had been slaves in the 
     Southwest thereafter celebrated Juneteenth as the anniversary 
     of their emancipation;
       Whereas their descendants handed down that tradition from 
     generation to generation as an inspiration and encouragement 
     for future generations;
       Whereas Juneteenth celebrations have thus been held for 130 
     years to honor the memory of all those who endured slavery 
     and especially those who moved from slavery to freedom; and
       Whereas their example of faith and strength of character 
     remains a lesson for all Americans today, regardless of 
     background or region or race; Now, therefore be it
       Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled, that, 
     one, the celebration of the end of slavery is an important 
     and enriching part of our country's history and heritage; 
     two, the celebration of the end of slavery provides an 
     opportunity for all Americans to learn more about our common 
     past and to better understand the experiences that have 
     shaped our Nation; and, three, a copy of this joint 
     resolution be transmitted to the National Association of 
     Juneteenth Lineage as an expression of appreciation for its 
     role in promoting the observance of the end of slavery.

  I want to congratulate the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Watts] and 
the cosponsors of this resolution. It does not appropriate any dollars 
for anybody. It does not command or mandate anybody to do anything. It 
just calls attention to the fact that there are a large number of 
people in the country who have been celebrating the end of slavery on 
Juneteenth, they call it. Even I as someone born and raised in the 
South, went to school in the South, did not know much about Juneteenth 
because I was in the wrong part of the South.
  It is the Southwest and farther out West that they celebrate it 
because they got the news last. They learned last that the Emancipation 
Proclamation had been issued and the people were set free. They did not 
learn it, they did not hear about it and celebrate it until late June 
in that part of the country.
  I learned about it when I moved to the Northeast and there were 
groups that made an issue of having a ceremonial observance on 
Juneteenth, so I learned about it then. I think it is an interesting 
phenomenon to have the Congress recognize it, that this has been going 
on in certain parts of the country for 130 years. The Emancipation 
Proclamation, of course, was issued by President Abraham Lincoln, and 
later on the Congress of the United States passed the 13th amendment 
which in the Constitution ended all slavery forever in this country.
  This resolution was passed as the last item of business today. As I 
said before, not a single House Member voted against it; everybody 
voted for it. I want to thank all the Members who voted for it, and I 
want to thank the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Watts]. It ushers in a 
spirit that is a good spirit and it does not cost anybody anything.
  It is happening at a time when there are a couple of other 
developments that have caught the attention of the American people. The 
President has issued a statement that he is establishing a new 
initiative on race relations in the country. He is appointing a 
Commission on Race Relations, and that has caused some discussion, as 
he wanted it to. The primary purpose of the commission is to stimulate 
discussion, to promote dialogue, to have more people talk about race 
relations in America. I think that is commendable, a commendable act on 
the part of the President.
  At the same time, our colleague the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hall] 
has called for a resolution which would apologize for those who 
suffered as slaves under the Constitution and laws of the United States 
until 1865. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hall] is a colleague. We all 
know the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hall] as being a person of sterling 
integrity. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hall] has never been a person 
who ran for any limelight and wanted to get attention. The gentleman 
from Ohio [Mr. Hall] has been the kind of hard worker, behind the 
scenes, that has dedicated himself to issues like hunger where very few 
people get headlines. Hunger; making efforts to feed hungry children in 
America, efforts to feed hungry children across the world.
  The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hall] picked up the legacy of Mickey 
Leland. Mickey Leland, who had made an issue of traveling all over the 
world in an effort to bring relief to hungry children, was 
unfortunately killed in an airplane crash on the side of a mountain in 
Africa.

                              {time}  2015

  The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hall] was Mickey Leland's successor, and 
Tony Hall has dealt with that issue in every way you can possibly deal 
with it, on an international level, national level, locally here in 
Washington. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hall] has worked to see to it 
that the very basic need of people for food was met. So Tony Hall, you 
know, is a kind of person we all admire and love and appreciate. We are 
grateful for the kind of work Tony Hall does.
  I do not know why Tony Hall decided to sponsor this amendment to 
apologize for slavery. I got a copy of his ``Dear Colleague'' order, 
``Dear Colleague'' invitation, to join, and I certainly would like to 
have my name added to his resolution. If it has not been already added 
by my staff, I would like to have my name added. I want to congratulate 
Tony. His resolution is a very simple one, but it is relevant to the 
President's commission and to the Juneteenth resolution of the 
gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Watts].
  The Hall resolution is a resolution apologizing for those who 
suffered as slaves under the Constitution and laws of the United States 
until 1865. It reads simply: Resolved by the House of Representatives, 
the Senate concurring, that the Congress apologizes to African-
Americans whose ancestors suffered as slaves under the Constitution and 
laws of the United States until 1865.
  That is the simple Hall resolution. He introduced it on July 12, and 
when he introduced it he sent the following letter to those Members of 
Congress he was asking to support it:

       Dear colleague, Generations have passed since the end of 
     slavery, and in that time Congress has done much to address 
     the effects of that legacy. But there was never an official 
     apology for the horrible wrong. Today we are introducing a 
     resolution in which we, on behalf of the United States 
     Congress, apologize to African-Americans whose ancestors 
     suffered as slaves. Our resolution will not fix any lingering 
     injustices resulting from slavery. The reconciliation begins 
     with an apology. We hope this apology will be a beginning of 
     a new healing between the races. No one alive today is 
     responsible for slavery. However, as Americans we share a 
     common history, which includes a long era when slavery was 
     acceptable. Therefore it is fitting for the Congress, as a 
     representative of the American people, to offer this apology. 
     This apology is long overdue, but it is never too late to 
     confess that we were wrong as a Nation and ask for 
     forgiveness.

  On the reverse side of this letter is a copy of the resolution, and 
he asked that anyone who wants to cosponsor it do so.
  I think it is very commendable, and I thank the gentleman from Ohio 
[Mr. Hall]. I congratulate him on his wisdom. Tony Hall is not an 
African-American. Tony Hall is not a member of the Congressional Black 
Caucus. Over the years some of us have cosponsored or sponsored 
legislation asking for the appointment of commissions to study 
reparations, and some of us have sponsored or cosponsored bills which 
have called for reparations to be provided by the descendants of 
African slaves. Some others have called for various kinds of programs, 
programs to be initiated which are compensatory in nature to understand 
the legacy of slavery. And therefore they would, by doing certain 
things through public policy or through public programs, compensate for 
some of the evils and horrors of slavery.
  Now I do not think that either one of these items, the Juneteenth 
resolution of the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Watts], which was passed 
already, or the Hall resolution which has been introduced and sponsored 
but has not

[[Page H3848]]

been passed, and already some Members of Congress have indicated that 
they think that the Hall resolution is a bit too much. It is emotional 
symbolism, the Speaker said over the weekend, emotional symbolism, and 
therefore it is undesirable.
  Well, let me agree with the Speaker. It is emotional symbolism. So is 
the Juneteenth resolution that we passed today.
  The emotional symbolism is very important. It is very important to 
have emotional symbolism. Symbolism is very important. Symbolism is a 
beginning of a process, can be the beginning of a process, that has 
very concrete results.
  The women of Korea who were subjected to enforced, mandated 
prostitution, they were forced into prostitution by the Japanese; they 
were called comfort girls or comfort women, and they are insisting to 
this day that they get an apology. You know, yes, the Japanese 
government agreed to pay some people, some of them could be identified, 
et cetera, but they still are not satisfied that they have not gotten a 
full-scale apology from the Japanese Government.
  This whole matter of apologies has become, you know, a major issue 
with certain nations who feel that they were wronged by other nations. 
You know, perhaps more than apology will be asked for or is being 
requested, but the process begins with the apology.
  You know, why is it painful to apologize? And of course there are 
people who say, well, and I got calls in my office this morning. Some 
people said: ``I did not do anything to anybody, I have never enslaved 
anybody, I would not enslave anybody; so I feel insulted by this 
request for an apology.''
  Well, No. 1, I have not requested an apology from any individual, and 
I will not request an apology from any individual. I think it is a 
little silly to request any individual to make an apology for slavery. 
It is an apology that is being requested on behalf of the Nation, on 
behalf of the Government and everything else that makes up a nation.
  I am not sure what makes up a nation. I am not sure they must fully 
understand what makes up a nation. When we stick out our chest and say 
we are proud to be Americans, what are we talking about? When we say we 
are proud to be American, are we going to dismiss the history or we 
stick out our chests and say we are proud to be Americans, or are we 
very much concerned with history? We are proud of the Constitution. We 
are proud of the Bill of Rights. We are proud of the bravery and the 
courage shown by the men who died on the beaches of Normandy, you know, 
unexcelled courage and unselfishness, thousands of miles away from 
their own land. They did things that are unbelievable on behalf of the 
liberation of people they did not know.
  They were Americans, you know. We are proud of that. When we say we 
are proud to be an American, we call ourselves Americans. We are 
claiming that. We are claiming the good things that Americans have 
done.
  The Marshall plan, which was celebrated last week, and we discussed 
that as being unprecedented, too, in terms of unselfishness. You know, 
this Nation reached out to the war-torn nations of Europe. There are 
cynics who say, well, we only wanted markets for our products, and we 
are only looking for a way to relieve capitalism of its excess 
equipment and materials, whatever. It was an unprecedented unselfish 
act, and we reached out to war-torn Europe. Billions of dollars flowed 
from America to Europe, and we rebuilt the continent. We rebuilt 
Western Europe. And, yes, we stopped communism in the process. But 
one thing that people have not acknowledged or realized, and I did not 
realize it until recently, is that the Marshall Plan was laid out there 
for the Russians, too.

  When the Marshall Plan was conceived by General Marshall under 
President Truman, they made it available to the Soviet Union and all 
the countries of Europe. The Soviet Union could have been a part of the 
Marshall Plan. All the war-torn countries were given the opportunity to 
be a part of the Marshall Plan.
  You know, no other nation has behaved that way. When we say we are 
Americans, and we talk about America, you are claiming and bringing in 
all those unparalleled feats of national heroism, of national 
unselfishness, of national implementation of the Judeo-Christian 
tradition in a monumental way. So if you are taking all the good, then 
we cannot turn our backs on the things in the Nation's history which 
are also not so good. We cannot say we are Americans, but we have 
nothing to do with, we do not want to even hear about, the fact that 
the Native Americans were swept off their land in large numbers. They 
were not compensated justly. They were treated very badly, and the 
Native Americans still have not been compensated for all that happened 
to them. We cannot turn our backs on that, say that is not part of 
America.
  We cannot turn our backs on slavery which lasted for 232 years on the 
North American Continent; 232 years it lasted. It was part of America. 
It was part of the process of a nation becoming what it is. Yes, 
slavery did contribute to the economy, it contributed to the building 
of a frontier America, it enriched the Nation. It did a lot of things 
that were good for America, but it was a heinous institution. There is 
nothing probably in the history of mankind which parallels 232 years of 
enslavement of one people by another, dragging them from their homes, 
sailing them across the oceans and dropping them into a new world 
where, in order for them to function efficiently and for them to carry 
out their task and be profitable, they had to be dehumanized. There had 
to be a policy of cutting them off from their traditions of making them 
not speak their language, of not allowing them to form families.
  And I use the word families, you know, with emphasis. Families are 
very important in the history of mankind. The most important 
institution probably that He has ever created are families. But slaves 
were not allowed to maintain families. They could not be a part of any 
family brought over. They could not be a part of any group that came 
over and keep the traditions and the mores and the ceremonies of that 
group because part of the preparation of the slave to be an economic 
force that paid off was to break him loose from his past and not let 
him associate with the people who spoke the same language, not let him 
associate with the people who had the same tradition.
  So right away they were set adrift with no institution, no 
traditions, no past, and then they were not allowed to create anything 
new.
  Slave families were not respected. There was no such thing. In fact, 
the largest slave owners discouraged the forming of slave bonds.
  Slaves struggled to put together their own sense of some kind of 
family. They had a custom for getting married, and since their 
marriages were not recognized and nobody would issue them a marriage 
license or recognize the marriage, they started a custom of jumping 
over the broom. To get married 2 people jumped over the broom. Well, 
they could jump over the broom, and maybe they would be allowed a few 
weeks together. Maybe they would stay in the same place for a few 
years. But the masters and their owners had no respect for the fact 
that they were man and wife in their own eyes, so they might be sold 
away at any time from each other.
  Of course the bond between mother and child was also not respected. 
Very young children would be snatched from the bosoms of their mothers 
and sold away.
  The whole purpose of slavery was to obliterate the humanity of the 
African, obliterate.
  You know, the Nazi Holocaust, you might say, was crueler, more cruel 
in the sense that Hitler and the Nazis actually murdered and cremated 
the Jews. They destroyed them totally, and there is nothing worse than 
being destroyed totally when you are a human being because you are no 
more. You cannot have any hope. You cannot have children who might get 
free in the future who might have a better life. You are gone.
  So to be obliterated, to be completely incinerated, destroyed, is the 
worst thing that could happen to human beings. But also there might be 
a second worst thing, and that is to have your humanity obliterated, 
for the masters to want to keep you alive because you are a machine or 
a work animal, a burden of beast. They want to keep you alive.

[[Page H3849]]

                              {time}  2030

  They do not want you to recognize, to have a wife or family. They do 
not want any bonds between two people. They do not want mothers to have 
recognition of their children, and bonds to exist. All that had to be 
destroyed.
  Slavery was a heinous institution. It did not only happen in America. 
There was the African slave trade that also went to South America and 
other places, but for 232 years we had slavery in America. We cannot be 
Americans embracing everything that is good about America and not 
embrace or recognize that the other negative things are also part of 
America.
  When the apology is made, it is not your apology. I do not know how 
you deal with those things. Maybe it is an apology that goes up to the 
ages, across eternity. Maybe it is an apology that only God can hear, 
but it is an apology; thank you for the apology, if we receive it. Do 
not be afraid to apologize. Do not be afraid of the process of 
reconciliation, which begins with an apology. Reconciliation, the 
healing process, is something that we have begun to learn more about 
from strange places.
  The healing process through reconciliation, it is probably being 
exemplified and illustrated, implemented, in no better way than it is 
in South Africa. South Africa and Nelson Mandela are showing us the way 
to deal with reconciliation. Instead of revenge, you have 
reconciliation.
  Where you had a situation where a population of 20-some million 
people was oppressed by a population and a minority of between 4 
million and 5 million people, the whites were about 4 to 5 million 
people, the African-Americans were between 24 million and 29 million 
people, they were the majority. They were oppressed by the minority for 
years. They were the original occupants of the area, the territory.
  The white minority came in with superior technology, et cetera, and 
subdued and oppressed them. They had to fight a violent struggle. It 
was not a non-violent struggle like the one we had here in the United 
States during the sixties. The South Africans had to go to violence.
  Everybody predicted that you would have fire and blood at the end of 
this process, that it could not end, you could not reverse the 
situation and have the black majority in charge and the white minority 
be allowed to live in peace with the black majority. But South Africa 
under Nelson Mandela has proved that this is not the case. South Africa 
is moving forward peacefully. Whites are not fleeing in large numbers 
because they are white and afraid, because they are in the minority and 
afraid. They are building.
  One of the reasons they are doing this is because they set up a thing 
called a truth and reconciliation commission. They went so far as to 
say we will not even punish a murderer, if he was involved in murder 
during the violent episodes that took place. A murderer on either side 
will not be punished if they come forward and if they tell the truth. 
And let us get the record straight, including those people who were 
part of the official South African police, and they were in charge of 
the systematic murder of large numbers of people, they were allowed to 
come forward. And if you confess, automatically your confession means 
that you will not be punished.
  A lot of people on the side of the African-Americans said this is 
ridiculous, this is not justice. But what they were saying is that 
reconciliation is more important than justice. That has a familiar ring 
to anybody who is a member of the Christian religion. If you are a 
Christian, you heard that before.
  It is hard to believe that business about turning the other cheek, 
and if a Roman soldier asked you to carry his bag for a certain 
distance, then offer to carry it further. All this philosophy of 
reconciliation, love overcoming hate and good overcoming evil has been 
a hard struggle for people who say they believe in Christianity. How 
can it be that a Nation can operate on that principle?
  Here is what is happening in South Africa. The Nation is saying it is 
more important that we have love and attempt to bond with you in order 
to overcome the past than it is to have justice, which means somebody 
ought to be punished. We will forego that.
  So here we have all these developments taking place, and there are 
people in the country who are upset because we may follow the 
suggestion of the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Tony Hall and his 
recommendation. We may end up voting an official apology for slavery.
  That upsets some people. Please do not let it upset you. It is a good 
beginning. It is consistent with the Judeo-Christian tradition. It will 
not cost anybody. There will be no appropriation. Taxpayers will not 
have to pay anything. You individually are not placed on the spot, 
because you do not have to admit guilt before you apologize. It is the 
Nation, the Nation, whatever constitutes a Nation, the good and the 
bad, everything that has happened in America, that is the Nation, the 
Nation apologizes. This administration, this Congress, may apologize on 
behalf of the Nation.
  Beyond that, the President's Commission is a good step. Some people 
have said, well, if it does not do anything except talk, if it does not 
do anything except set up dialogue, then what good is it? Dialogue is 
good. In the beginning was the word. Words are important. Discussion is 
important. Human beings are very much influenced by what they hear and 
what they say. Let us not underestimate the power of the word, the 
power of discussion, the power of study.
  Study may produce some new facts. Even Ward Connelly may come to 
agree with the gentleman from New York, Mr. Major Owens, if the facts 
are really laid out. If he understands what the legacy of slavery has 
meant in terms of African-Americans and how the legacy of slavery makes 
affirmative action necessary, Ward Connelly might understand. Or maybe 
in the dialogue I will finally be convinced by Ward Connelly that he is 
right and that affirmative action is an evil. But let us have a 
dialogue. The President's Commission is a first step.
  In case Members do not know, the President announced that he has 
appointed a 7-member advisory board, which some people are calling the 
commission. Hecalls it an advisory board, because commissions in the 
past have been notorious for being ignored by Presidents. So his 
advisory board is closer to him. It is kind of a personal thing.
  The advisory board will provide advice and counsel to the President 
to improve the quality of race relations. The board will advise the 
President on the means to promote a national dialogue on race issues, 
to increase our understanding of the history and future of race 
relations, to identify and create plans to calm racial tension and 
promote increased opportunity in child abuse, housing, and health care 
and to address crime and the administration of justice.
  President Clinton is determined ``to improve the ability of all 
Americans to realize their full potential so we can, as one country, 
equal and indivisible, move forward into the 21st century.''
  The advisory board members will reach out as surrogates for the 
President to create and implement solutions to improve race relations. 
Among the advisory committee members are the chairman, John Hope 
Franklin of Durham, NC. He is a retired historian and educator, a very 
famous historian, the last word on the history of slavery in America. 
Dr. Franklin has once received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He is 
kind of one of the most respected scholars of history in the country.
  Along with Dr. Franklin there are six other people. William F. Winter 
of Jackson, Mississippi, is a former Democratic Governor of 
Mississippi. He was born and raised in the South, Governor of 
Mississippi.
  Linda Chavez-Thompson of Washington, DC is executive vice president 
of the AFL-CIO. Robert Thomas of Corte Carza, CA currently serves as 
president and CEO of Nissan Motor Corp.
  Angela Oh, O-H is the last name, of Sereno, California is an attorney 
with the Los Angeles law firm of Bente, Corson, Daley, Berera and Oh. 
They specialize in State and Federal criminal defense. Ms. Oh received 
a B.A., and she is a lawyer.
  Suzan D. Johnson Cook of New York is a senior pastor of the Bronx 
Christian Fellowship in the Bronx. I served in the legislature with Ms. 
Cook's brother, and I have heard her preach on

[[Page H3850]]

a couple of occasions. She is one dynamic minister and a very deep and 
profound person.
  Thomas H. Kean of Madison, NJ, is a former Governor of New Jersey. 
The Governor is held in high esteem by both Democrats and Republicans, 
of course.
  As a consultant to this group is Christopher Edley of Cambridge, MA, 
who is a well-known professor at Harvard Law School since 1981 and a 
codirector of the civil rights project.
  Mr. Speaker, this advisory board has become the target of a lot of 
journalists and other people who have already talked about a do-nothing 
advisory board, because most commissions and advisory boards do not do 
anything.
  I think that the President has not laid out lofty goals for it. It 
has a very practical agenda. It should be given a chance to do what it 
can do, and that is to stimulate discussion and dialog. It is an 
embryonic enterprise. It is an embryonic enterprise, and it does not 
depend on what the President does for it to develop and grow into a 
full-bodied enterprise. It can be a full-bodied enterprise if all of 
the rest of us take a positive approach to it.
  In the private sector, the legislators and various other leaders 
across the country all can decide on other ways to do what the 
President is trying to do. This is a time when we do not have 
demonstrations in the street.
  There is no reason why the President should take on this task. He 
does not need it to calm down the waters, to meet a crisis. This 
President certainly cannot be accused of using this commission to try 
to change public opinion so he can get reelected. He is not running for 
reelection. It is a noble cause, a noble exercise.
  It is not going to be easy. There are going to be obstacles. He is 
not going to win a popularity contest by promoting a commission or an 
advisory board to deal with race relations. But his sights are much 
higher than what the commentators and the columnists are saying. His 
sights go beyond a dialogue about race as it affects African-Americans. 
The President's sights go beyond the concerns of the gentleman from 
Ohio, Mr. Tony Hall and an apology for slavery.
  I am all in favor of the apology for slavery. I support the gentleman 
from Ohio, Mr. Tony Hall. It is a positive step. I do not agree with 
Jesse Jackson. On Sunday he said on television, he trivialized it. It 
is wrong to trivialize it. It is a good step for us. Let us not make it 
into something that it is not, though. Nobody expects any miracles from 
it. But it is a good first step, the apology for slavery.
  But the President is looking beyond. The President is looking at the 
whole diversity problem in America. At the core of the diversity 
problem in America may be relationships between African-Americans and 
other Americans, but that is only a small part of the bigger problem. 
The bigger problem is diversity.
  We are a very diverse Nation already. We are becoming more diverse. 
As he said before, by the year 2050 there will be no majority in 
America. No one group will have a majority. There will be many 
components to make up the total population of America. We have to learn 
to live with that. We ought to be proud of that fact, as the President 
is. He has referred to it many times.
  Even in my district, in New York, I used to say it was good to live 
in New York because if you wanted to see samples of all kinds of 
people, you could just take a trip up to the United Nations, which is 
located in New York, and you could go to the United Nations and you 
would see all kinds of people from all parts of the world.
  I also said the United Nations had a school. If you want to send your 
child to a school and have them exposed to young people from all races, 
religions, nationalities, let them go to the United Nations school.
  There are schools in my district which do not have all the nations of 
the world represented, but they have a good, good sample, I assure you. 
We have Cambodians, we have Pakistanis, we have Koreans, we have 
Laotians, we have a whole array of people from the West Indies, we have 
the South American countries. It is amazing to go into a school in my 
district, and the range of nationalities that you will find in a 
district just in the center of Brooklyn. It is not near the United 
Nations, but almost anywhere in New York City now you have a wide range 
of people who are from many different backgrounds, ethnic groups, 
countries, and religions.
  America will have to run to catch up with New York City, but you can 
go to California and find another range of people equal in diversity 
maybe from different backgrounds, many coming from more Asian 
countries, but eventually all of America is going to look this way. We 
ought to be proud of that. The President said it offers opportunities 
of many kinds. He is proud of it. That is what he is looking at, the 
future. We ought to try to stay with the President's vision.
  Of course, none of this is unrelated: The President's vision and his 
advisory board, the resolution of the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. J.C. 
Watts, the Juneteenth resolution; the gentleman from Ohio's, Mr. Tony 
Hall apology for slavery, none of it is unrelated to what we are doing 
here in the Congress. None of it is unrelated to the basic business of 
this week and this month.
  The taxes and the budget and the appropriations coming, all of it 
would be better served if we had had better dialogues in the past on 
the issue of race and diversity, certainly on the issue of slavery and 
the implications of slavery, the legacy of slavery.

                              {time}  2045

  Large numbers of people who were victimized by slavery never got off 
the plantations. They had to settle and become sharecroppers and live 
in a system which was not as bad as slavery but in many cases, in the 
early days after freedom, they could not afford to leave because there 
were armed guards that forced them to stay on the plantations. They did 
not know where to go.
  So you had large numbers of people held in bondage in the South for a 
long time until World War II, when the need for large amounts of labor 
in the cities of the North allowed them to come in large numbers into 
the cities of the North.
  So you have a large number of people who moved directly from the 
worst rural situation in the South to the crowded cities of the North. 
As long as the war was on and the factory needed labor and you had work 
for everybody, in many cases lots of overtime, they prospered and they 
did well. They did like other Americans. They married, had children. 
They moved in some cases out of the cities into the suburbs. They 
bought homes. All kinds of great things happened.
  But then the cities economies collapsed and you have, as a result, 
numerous problems related to the massive unemployment that resulted, 
problems in terms of disintegration of society, where you do not have 
jobs and you do not have income. I am oversimplifying a little bit, but 
jobs and income are at the heart of all the problems in the African-
American community.
  If you had jobs and income on a regular basis, you could revitalize 
those communities and end all the other problems and all the other 
controversy, the welfare controversy, the controversy about children, 
girls having babies out of wedlock. There are a whole lot of things 
that would fall in place. The appeal of drugs as an escape mechanism, 
all that resulted from the collapse of the economies of the inner 
cities.
  So what we do with respect to the tax bill and the budget and the 
appropriations bill does relate to the legacy of slavery; our refusal 
to recognize that the inner cities have a special problem, our running 
away, we have run away from the problem for several reasons which I 
will not go into.
  One of them is that we have the other body that is made up of people 
who are elected by statewide office, and they do not have an allegiance 
to the people of the cities who are congregated in the big cities in 
large numbers. We have neglected the cities, and we still are.
  I am very concerned about an economic empowerment zone for central 
Brooklyn. An economic empowerment zone for central Brooklyn has to be 
part of the legislation before the Committee on Ways and Means. It is 
part of the tax package. They have to create more economic empowerment 
zones before we can compete for one, and in that discussion it looks as 
if they are jettisoning any discussion of new economic empowerment 
zones. That is a

[[Page H3851]]

big blow to the hope that I have raised in my community about the 
possibility that they will create more economic empowerment zones and 
we can compete with other cities in order to get an economic 
empowerment zone which combines government grants with private sector 
tax writeoffs. It was supposed to be a model that was approved and 
recommended by both parties. It has not so far emerged in the 
deliberations on the tax package.
  So what is going on on the floor this week, next week, for the rest 
of the summer, between now and the time we adjourn is very much related 
to the situation that we are discussing with respect to apologies for 
slavery, discussions of race relations, et cetera.
  It is important that we understand that an apology can indeed be 
positive. It can indeed drain a great amount of emotion from the issue 
of slavery. For young Americans on both sides of the fence, the 
descendants of slaves and the nondescendants of slaves, to hear a 
national apology discussed may have a great effect on their attitudes, 
because there is a lot of tension. The younger generation does not get 
along better than the older generation. There is a lot of tension out 
there. There is a lot of bitterness among African-American youth about 
the fact that they are in the position they are in, and they blame 
slavery. They need to know more about the history of slavery. They need 
to know that if you really discuss slavery, you also have to discuss 
the heroics of white Americans in the abolitionist movement who brought 
an end to slavery. You have to discuss the heroics of the soldiers of 
the Union Army who fought to set slaves free. White soldiers, white 
abolitionists and white soldiers, the freedom of black Americans was in 
the hands of whites. Abraham Lincoln was white.
  Any African-American youth that wants to hate all whites needs to 
know and reflect on the fact that slavery was created, yes, by the 
worst elements of the white society and community, but slavery also was 
ended by the heroic efforts of whites. The commission, if it does no 
more than to begin the discussion among ordinary people of these kinds 
of things, it would be very useful.
  If I was President, I would do it another way. I would not go this 
way. But this is the President's idea. Since he originated this idea, I 
applaud him for doing it any way he deems necessary. I am convinced 
that he will take it and move forward with the results after the 
commission or the board advisory group ends in a year. So I applaud the 
President for this use of the bully pulpit. He could use the bully 
pulpit, the high visibility of the White House, he could use it for a 
number of purposes. He could line up a whole list of issues instead of 
the issue of race relations, but he has chosen this one and I applaud 
that.
  Compared to what is needed, the President's commission is a minuscule 
effort, just a beginning, but little marbles make big boulders roll. 
They can even set landslides and earthquakes in motion. Let the chain 
reaction begin. Any open discussion, I think, is a step in the right 
direction.
  The power of the White House bully pulpit is about to be displayed in 
dimensions that we have not seen since FDR's speeches during World War 
II. This highly visible process of dialogue, debate, study and 
reflection on race relations and diversity in America could have a 
monumental impact on the next few years and the opening years of the 
21st century.
  It was W.E.B. DuBois who warned that race and color would emerge as a 
major problem of the 20th century. We now know that DuBois was right. 
However, DuBois did not go far enough. Not race or color alone but the 
inability of human beings to cope with diversity, ethnic differences 
within races, religion, language and regional differences, diversity is 
the major problem now and diversity will continue as a gigantic 
challenge for the 21st century.
  Racial diversity is the largest and most obvious challenge of the 
Homo sapiens species, we human beings, the deeply rooted and 
instinctive animal fear of outsiders, strangers, of different ones is 
manifested most directly and abundantly in the reaction to racial 
differences.
  We say that children have to learn hate, but we are oversimplifying a 
bit. Children are subjected to this discomfort in any situation where 
strangers  appear. So it is natural that strangeness creates discomfort 
among animals. They do not associate with strangers. They identify, 
they are familiar by smell. Among animals they do not associate with 
animals that do not look like them. Even among cows, tests have shown 
that brown cows stay with brown cows and white-faced cows stay with 
white-faced cows.

  If you leave them alone in a normal situation, the immediate reaction 
is always that you are worried about what is different. So let us 
understand that differences are a danger. People instinctively react to 
differences in a negative way. All the more reason why we should make 
certain that those early reactions of discomfort are not translated 
into hate. They have to be taught to hate, yes. To translate that 
discomfort into hate, they have to be taught that. And we have to make 
a concerted effort to see that the opposite happens, that they 
understand that people who are different are going to rouse some 
feelings of discomfort and, therefore, they have to work at overcoming 
discomfort.
  Civilization is a process of confronting these deeply rooted 
instincts. Civilized men and women wrestle with their primitive and 
base instincts every day and in many other ways. If we get hungry and 
we pass a place which is serving food and we do not have money to buy 
any food, we do not reach for the food because we are hungry. 
Civilization restrains us in numerous ways, our instincts, our 
appetites are restrained. Our instincts with respect to strangers and 
people who are different have to be restrained and guided. Civilized 
men and women wrestle with these problems and they will solve them. 
What the President's initiative will do is call upon us all to struggle 
harder to control and redirect our fear and discomfort with racial 
differences.
  To confront racial frictions and tensions, the systematic attempt to 
promote greater understanding and tolerance with respect to race is 
merely the first step. This is an obvious first step and it may be the 
easiest first step. But we ought to take this first step.
  I think clearly we can see all around us that some of the bloodiest 
conflicts since World War II have not pitted one race against another. 
We can understand in Korea, Cambodia, the Gulf War, Vietnam, Somalia, 
Haiti, Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Angola, Liberia, 
Rwanda, Zaire, Sierra Leone, the world has witnessed people who appear 
to be of the same race but they get locked into intense conflicts.
  Perhaps the war between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries 
could be classified as a war between different races, however it is not 
so simple. The problems of space, land, water, history and religion far 
outweighed the physical differences between Israelis and Arabs. Only in 
South Africa can you easily identify the scene as one of clearly racial 
conflict.
  Racial conflict is what occurred there with Caucasians against the 
original Africans or whites against blacks. But ethnic differences 
among black Africans sparked the massacres in Rwanda, ethnic 
differences among people who are of the same color, same race. Ethnic 
and religious frictions exploited the demagogues who also continue to 
fuel conflict in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia.
  Ethnicity and tribalism still threaten the unity in the Congo. 
Ethnicity and tribalism are at the heart of the Congo instability and 
the oppression of Nigeria. Even South Africa lingers under the deadly 
shadow of tribalism while it struggles for reconciliation between the 
two races. The problem of reconciliation between whites and blacks in 
South Africa is not nearly as difficult as some of the struggle between 
tribes that are taking place at this point.
  So the President has his eye on the whole problem of diversity in the 
world. The President has said that America is an indispensable Nation. 
We have to provide leadership in many ways. He does not mean just 
leadership in the area of military security. He wants to provide 
leadership in terms of where the world should go on this whole issue of 
how we live together.
  The problem of the 21st century will be intolerance to diversity and 
the President wants to provide leadership on that problem. We want to 
be a

[[Page H3852]]

multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and politically diverse 
America, and we want to serve as a role model. That is what this 
President is saying. I applaud him for his ambition. I applaud him for 
attempting to leave this kind of legacy.
  Let me quote the President in his own speech at San Diego. A few 
quotes will bear out what I am saying.
  Consider this: We were born with a Declaration of Independence which 
asserted that we were all created equal and a Constitution that 
enshrined slavery.
  That contradiction was there.
  We fought a bloody Civil War to abolish slavery and preserve the 
Union, but we remained a house divided and unequal by law for another 
century. We advanced across the continent in the name of freedom, yet 
in so doing we pushed Native Americans off their land, often crushing 
their culture and their livelihood. Our Statue of Liberty welcomes 
poor, tired, huddled masses of immigrants to our borders, but each new 
wave has felt the sting of discrimination.
  In World War II, Japanese Americans fought valiantly for freedom in 
Europe, taking great casualties, while at home their families were 
herded into internment camps. The famed Tuskegee Airmen lost none of 
the bombers they guarded during the war, but their African American 
heritage cost them a lot of rights when they came back home in peace.
  To be sure, continuing to quote the President's speech in San Diego, 
To be sure, there is old, unfinished business between black and white 
Americans, but the classic American dilemma has now become many 
dilemmas of race and ethnicity. We see it in the tension between black 
and Hispanic customers and their Korean or Arab grocers; in a resurgent 
anti-Semitism even on some college campuses; in a hostility toward new 
immigrants from Asia to the Middle East to the former Communist 
countries to Latin America and the Caribbean, even those whose hard 
work and strong families have brought them success in the American way.
  We see these tensions continuing.
  First, we must continue to expand opportunity. Full participation in 
our strong and growing economy is the best antidote to envy, despair 
and racism. We must press forward to move millions more from poverty 
and welfare to work; to bring the spark of enterprise to inner cities; 
to redouble our efforts to reach those rural communities prosperity has 
passed by. Most important of all, we simply must give our young people 
the finest education in the world.

                              {time}  2100

  The President proposes remedies and the commission, we can see, is 
headed in a certain direction.
  On many occasions I have stood right here talking about the answer, 
one of the key answers to the problems of the inner city, which 
generates large numbers of people who are forced to go on to welfare, 
which generates large numbers of babies being born out-of-wedlock, 
which generates a large amount of unemployment. Even the jobs 
available, they are jobs that people cannot qualify for.
  One of the answers, of course, is education, and the commission 
certainly is probably going to end up recommending a great deal about 
education. I would like to go further than the President. I think some 
of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus would like to have 
this commission aiming its sights higher.
  We have talked in past years about reparations, and I want to join my 
colleague, the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. John Conyers, who is the 
oldest member of the Congressional Black Caucus, join him again this 
year in sponsoring a bill which calls for the commission to study 
reparation proposals for African-Americans. He introduced this in 
January of this year.
  This is the description of the Conyers Commission: This legislation 
forces the United States to acknowledge, after over 100 years of 
silence, the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity 
of slavery in the United States and the 13 American Colonies between 
the years of 1619 and 1865. The legislation requires that an official 
inquiry be made into the lingering negative effects of the institution 
of slavery on living African-Americans and on the United States larger 
societies.
  A commission will be established to examine the institution of 
slavery, studying the impact of subsequent and continuing 
discrimination against African-Americans resulting directly and 
indirectly from the institution of slavery, not only during that time 
in which it was legal and Government-sanctioned but during the periods 
of reconstruction, desegregation and to the present date. The 
commission will make recommendations, among others, as to methods of 
recompense for the descendants of slaves.
  This is a bill which is out there. It has been introduced. The 
gentleman from Michigan has introduced it every year since November 
1989, and it is part of the dialog. We could go that far.
  I think reparations, in terms of individuals, is out of the question. 
There was a time when, shortly after the Civil War, General Armstrong, 
a Union general, proposed that every slave family be given 40 acres and 
a mule, and he actually started the process and gave out a few mules 
and acres. Of course, the Congress, under Andrew Johnson, came behind 
him and said ``No, you cannot do that.''
  So 40 acres and a mule was promised. If we were to take the promise 
of the 40 acres and a mule, which was to compensate people that had 
been slaves for 232 years, and if we take the value of 40 acres and a 
mule and try to translate that into what it means now, we would have 
some very wealthy descendants of slaves.
  That is impractical. We are not looking for cash handouts, but we 
could have ``opportunity to learn'' standards in schools, so that every 
school had a first class school building. We would not have the problem 
of asbestos and lead poisoning and broken windows and roofs that are 
leaking and boilers that still burn coal in the inner city where 
descendants of slaves go to school.
  We could compensate by guaranteeing a first-class education in terms 
of facilities, in terms of the best teachers, in terms of the right 
amount of equipment, in terms of the supplies that are needed. Just 
take the inner-city schools and make them the way the suburban schools 
look and act and operate. Give them the same that they have, and we 
would compensate for the past by guaranteeing equality of opportunity 
through education.
  There is a great argument for affirmative action, and the President 
challenged everybody who does not favor affirmative action to come up 
with something different. Well, opportunity to learn is the answer. If 
we really provided everybody with an opportunity to learn, we would not 
need affirmative action. It would clearly not be necessary in future 
years.
  But we will not do that. Our schools are in worse shape now in the 
inner-city communities than they were 10 years ago, and there is 
nothing on the horizon to make them any better. We just took out of the 
budget bill the $5 billion for construction. So this discussion is 
relevant when we talk about the legacy of slavery, apologizing for 
slavery, and we look at the inability and refusal of the Congress and 
the Government apparatus to come to the aid of children in the inner 
cities just in terms of providing them with decent schools. We can see 
where the two things are not unrelated. Let us understand that we have 
a long gap there.
  If we study slavery and look at what happened in the breeding farms, 
what was a breeding farm all about, where young ladies were required to 
have babies? They did not eat if they did not have a baby. Were the 
breeding farms regulated by the States? Were females in breeding farms 
below the age or 13 protected from having to produce babies? How many 
months of rest were females given before they were required to get 
pregnant again on breeding farms? Were there any regulations?
  All these kind of things, the horror of it. There were day care 
centers on plantations. They deposited babies in huts with the oldest 
slaves who could not do anything else, and they took care of babies in 
large numbers, the same way they did in the orphanages in Romania.
  We found that the kids in the orphanages in Romania, because they had 
no constant contact with human beings, their brains had actually 
atrophied. Their brains had shrunk. They took photographs of the brains 
of the Romanian children brought over here who had problems, and they 
found their

[[Page H3853]]

brains had shrunk. They could not establish human contact in a certain 
way because of what had not happened to them in terms of human 
interaction.
  So millions of slave babies over the years were put into hovels with 
a few human beings caring for them. What did that do to their brains? 
These are some of the things we should look at as we study slavery, as 
the commission looks at the past and connects the past with the 
present.
  What about property inheritance? A slave could not inherit. Did any 
State allow slaves to inherit anything? When a slave died, the few 
belongings they had, could they pass them on to anybody? They could not 
even recognize their own children, so they did not know any children 
they had. So where did their little bits and pieces go? When a slave 
died, he could not pass anything on.
  The primary way in which wealth is accumulated in America, or 
anyplace, handed down from one generation to another, no matter how 
small it is, a few pots and pans, a wagon, a mule, the little house, 
maybe an acre, maybe a big farm, things that had been handed down over 
the years were not there to be passed down. For 232 years nothing could 
be passed down.

  So is it any wonder that African-Americans are the poorest people in 
America, even poorer than the immigrants that came over, who brought 
some tools with them in a bag, who brought some know-how with them, who 
brought contacts? They had contacts with relatives who lived here. They 
had more than the slaves ever had.
  All of that can be put in perspective if we really begin to talk 
about it and look at it, and we will see there is a need, there is a 
need to treat African-Americans and maybe native Americans different 
from the way we do other people, to try to make up for what did not 
happen in the past and for some of the negative things that happened in 
the past. All of this should be put on the table and examined.
  We do not want the equivalent of 40 acres and a mule. Forty acres and 
a mule might translate into, the mule might be, in 1997 dollar terms, 
that might be a jet plane by now. One might have enough money to buy a 
jet plane. The 40 acres might be the size of an airfield.
  So we are not going to deal with those kinds of solutions, but we 
ought to think about our inability to formulate a policy which provides 
opportunities to learn for all children; our inability to get a 
construction program going, $5 billion is all the President asked to 
stimulate construction which would help inner-city communities; our 
inability to pass a Ways and Means bill which would provide for the 
establishment of a lot of empowerment zones in cities. All these are 
directly related to the fact that we have no sense of the past and no 
sense of where we can go in the future.
  We are the richest Nation that ever existed on the face of the Earth. 
We have a lot of options and opportunities. We have a lot of wealth. We 
helped Europe a great deal with the Marshall plan. Billions of dollars. 
We should help the inner-city communities where descendants of slaves 
live in large numbers with the same kind of generosity.
  We should put it all together. The President is on the right track, 
and I hope we will all step in line and be positive about race 
relations and what it means in the context of today's America.

                          ____________________