[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 19 (Tuesday, March 3, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H746-H753]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           DEVELOPMENTS DURING AND AFTER BLACK HISTORY MONTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Blunt). 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, there have been a lot of developments over 
the past 2 weeks, and I had meant to speak last week and was unable to 
because of the sudden adjournment that took place last Tuesday, but I 
think what I wanted to talk about is still pertinent.
  I wanted to talk about the closeout, the ending of Black History 
Month. February was proclaimed as Black History Month or African-
American History Month for 1998. But since that time there have been a 
number of developments which I think are relevant to what I had to say 
at that time, so I am going to try to blend in some of these additional 
developments that have taken place with the statement that I originally 
wanted to make in connection with Black History Month.
  Some relevant developments include the conclusion of a peace mission 
to Iraq, which I think is relevant to what I have to say. Another 
development is the issuance of a report last week by the Milton S. 
Eisenhower Foundation and the Corporation for What Works. It is called 
``The Millennium Breach,'' in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of 
the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. The National 
Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders was better known as the Kerner 
Commission Report.
  The Kerner Commission Report was a report commissioned by President 
Lyndon Johnson to study the riots that took place in the sixties and to 
develop a set of recommendations for the Federal Government. I like to 
call it the Kerner-Lindsey Commission Report, because Mayor John 
Lindsey, who was at that time Mayor of New York, was also appointed as 
Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois' vice-chairman, sort of. I know that 
Mayor John Lindsey did a tremendous amount of work on that Kerner 
Commission report.

[[Page H747]]

                              {time}  1945

  So the Kerner-Lindsey Commission report stands as a report which I 
think is as great in the refusal to recognize as it is in its value. It 
has a great value, but if we had a way to measure the volume of the 
abandonment or attempt to ignore it, then it would be far greater than 
its value.
  From the very beginning, the Kerner-Lindsey Commission report was 
snubbed by the President himself. President Lyndon Johnson, when they 
gave him the report, he refused to comment on it publicly. He accepted 
it, nodded his head, and that was the end of it as far as he was 
concerned.
  By that time, President Lyndon Johnson was greatly burdened by the 
problems of the Vietnam war and domestic issues. He had had enough in 
terms of their disturbing his focus on that war. Issues related to 
civil rights, et cetera, he had given some time and attention to, and 
he was upset by the fact that there was not more gratitude and that all 
of these riots had broken out in the summers that led up to the need to 
commission the Kerner Commission report. Finally, when it was given to 
him and the recommendations were made, he did not care to deal with it.
  The basic recommendation was that we were evolving toward two 
societies, one black and one white; that the conditions that existed in 
the black communities were very different from the experience that was 
taking place in the white communities; and that we needed a series of 
programs to address the fact that we were evolving into two sides. 
There were two different sets of opportunity, and those two different 
sets of opportunities were spawning different reactions and creating a 
situation in the black community which led to those explosions. By that 
time, nobody wanted to deal in a rational way with what was happening 
and the Kerner Commission report was tossed aside.
  So I want to congratulate the Eisenhower Foundation. It established a 
continuation committee at that time, and every 10 years they have 
updated and commented on what has happened since the Kerner Commission 
report, and this is the 30th year anniversary. Mr. Speaker, I think 
that their recommendations here are worth taking note of, especially in 
connection with the closing out of Black History Month.
  Black History Month this past year probably saw a greater number of 
observances and recognitions of the basic attempt to highlight 
achievements of blacks and the fact that blacks exist as a major part 
of the American experience than ever before. Carter G. Woodson founded 
Black History Month many years ago, and he would have been proud of the 
depth and the breadth of the recognition and the activities that took 
place during the past month.
  And every year that has been the case, more and more activities take 
place in relation to Black History Month. More and more corporations 
have advertisements which indicate their recognition of Black History 
Month. More and more programs are on public television, and even on 
commercial television they include more and more programs on black 
history as time goes by.
  So I am pleased with the observance of all of these micro items, 
these micro activities of black history taking place more and more. 
That is a step forward. I applaud that progress.
  Black History Month was supposed to be a month in which we bear 
witness to the progress, the richness and the diversity of African-
American achievement. Carter G. Woodson created and promoted Negro 
History Week. This week was selected because it included the birthdays 
of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. In 1976 the week became a 
month.
  It is time for Americans to reflect on the history and teachings of 
African-Americans whose contributions are still too little known, and 
that is basically what has been taking place. There are those kinds of 
items in the mass media and schools and churches, and Carter G. Woodson 
is to be applauded for having launched this, because it was launched at 
a time when there was a determined effort to ignore any positive 
achievements of American blacks, former slaves.
  My problem with what is happening is that it does not go far enough. 
I am pleased with the micro items, as I am sure Mr. Woodson would be 
pleased. The recognition of various people, of positive achievements of 
various individuals and personalities, various movements, all of that I 
am quite pleased with.
  I would like to go further and say that in future Black History 
Months we focus more on macro experiences and relate those macro 
experiences to what is happening now. In other words, I think it is 
important to look at macro phenomena related to black history, certain 
macro phenomena, and see how they have an impact on what is happening 
now.
  What is the impact of knowing more about black history on our current 
argument related to affirmative action? What does a greater knowledge 
of black history have to do with that present situation where there are 
clear forces lined up on both sides, some against affirmative action, 
and we have a movement underway to get referendums and to reject and 
repeal all laws, regulations related to affirmative action? What light 
can knowledge of black history throw on this debate?
  Then of course there are other people who say that affirmative action 
needs to go but they are ready to provide more ``opportunity 
programs.'' An opportunity program is defined as being different from 
an affirmative action program because an opportunity program would 
create opportunities on the basis of disadvantaged status.
  In other words, all low-income people, all poor people, black, white, 
any other ethnic group or race, would be eligible on the basis of the 
fact that they need the opportunity. Extra help should be given them 
because they are poor. Extra help should be given them because the 
circumstances under which they were born placed them at a great 
disadvantage. So there are people who are rabidly against affirmative 
action, who will tell us that they are all for opportunity programs.
  I would like to talk about how the knowledge of some basic facts and 
basic phenomena related to black history and the 232 years of slavery 
that were experienced by our ancestors, black ancestors, how that 
throws a light on that argument too. Because what we find is that many 
of the people who say, ``I am against affirmative action but I am all 
in favor of opportunity,'' when we confront them with a set of 
recommendations for opportunity programs they are quick to retreat. It 
becomes ``big spending.'' Opportunity programs equal big spending.
  In fact, we took out something called ``Opportunities to Learn.'' We 
took it out of the law in 1996 in the appropriations process. In 1996 
we had a thing in the education law, the Elementary and Secondary 
Assistance Act, which said that the Federal Government would encourage 
standards for opportunity to learn in our schools.
  We have standards for tests, we should have standards for opportunity 
to learn. We had standards for curriculum. The one standard that they 
took out was the standards for opportunity to learn which, translated 
into common-sense English, it was only a statement that the Federal 
Government would use its influence. Nobody was mandated to provide 
opportunities to learn. It would use its influence to encourage States 
to have certain standards with respect to opportunities to learn.

  Mr. Speaker, that meant in addition to setting standards for 
curriculum and giving tests to see if the young people lived up to 
those standards, we would also make certain that the young people who 
are taking those tests had an adequate supply of books, that they had 
teachers who knew their subject matter, that they had buildings which 
were adequate in terms of being conducive to learning and certainly 
safe and without health hazards. That was a frightful thing, and many 
governors throughout the Nation were the ones who put a great deal of 
pressure on both Democrats and Republicans to get rid of that language 
because although it was not mandatory, just to have it around, the 
governors found uncomfortable. The people who make decisions found it 
uncomfortable because it meant they would be on the spot in terms of 
providing resources, which means money. We have to have the money to 
provide the resources to guarantee that before we give a child a test 
to see if he has lived up to certain

[[Page H748]]

standards of curriculum that we have set, that we have also provided 
him opportunities to learn.
  So they backed away from it because it looked like it would cost a 
lot of money. It will. We have to have decent physical facilities. The 
President's construction initiative would cost a great deal of money, 
and that is necessary to provide the opportunity. If we provide 
telecommunications facilities for schools and we provide computers and 
we wire schools for the Internet, that costs additional amounts of 
monies. We are providing those opportunities for the poor who would 
normally not have those opportunities.
  We have the schools already in the suburbs, the schools of the 
future. They have the state-of-the-art communication, the computers, 
the Internet hookups. We have the best schools in the world in certain 
parts of the country. But in other areas we have youngsters who would 
benefit from certain opportunity standards, but we have backed away 
from it and they are getting less and less instead of more and more.
  So it becomes critical to confront those who advocate opportunity 
versus affirmative action, to put their money where their mouth is. 
Live up to it. Let us have real opportunity programs.
  In this report done by the Eisenhower Foundation to update us on the 
Kerner Commission report and where we are in relation to that report, 
they have a set of recommendations and some budget figures to go with 
those recommendations. So we are back to square one in terms of here is 
what is needed to provide opportunity, focusing on opportunities for 
minorities in big cities mostly, but the same thing is true of 
disadvantaged people in any part of the country, poor people.
  So when we confront people who say we do not want to spend that much 
money to take care of the needs of the disadvantaged or the poor, it 
will break the government, we will go broke and big spending programs 
have brought us to the point of disaster in our economy, we still 
confront people like that despite the fact that we are enjoying an 
unheralded, unprecedented era of prosperity.
  The index of the most favored stock index is above 8,000. I listened 
to the gentleman from Michigan talk about Social Security. Part of what 
he is saying is what a pity it is that people live so long. How awful 
that it is we are confronted with a dilemma because we are living 
longer and that places a burden on Social Security. People did not use 
to live so long when Social Security was first conceived. They had a 
much shorter life span.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, when Social Security was first conceived we did 
not have a stock market index up at 8,000. Unprecedented wealth is 
being accumulated in America. Why should we worry about people living 
so long because that is going to place a burden on the Social Security 
system. Let us make sure that the wealth is utilized to guarantee that 
the elderly people do not have to worry and be ashamed of living long. 
That is at the heart of the matter.
  If we cannot agree that the wealth of the Nation should be dedicated 
to making life comfortable for the elderly, then we can see how 
difficult it is to agree that some of the wealth of the Nation should 
be dedicated to creating maximum opportunity for all those who need 
opportunity.
  Why should African-Americans among the disadvantaged be treated with 
any special favors, is the way most people put it. Why are they poor in 
the first place? Why have they not made it? The people argue that 
expenditures for opportunity should not be made because they all had a 
chance to make it, all Americans have a chance to make it, and if they 
are poor it is because there is something wrong with them. Why did they 
not make it? As a community, why are the African-Americans so far 
behind the other people who came over here or were brought over here?
  Immigrant groups that came later than the slaves have fared much 
better economically and they are not so dependent. The percentage of 
people who are poor among other ethnic groups is not as great as the 
percentage of groups of people who are poor among African-Americans, we 
hear. There is something wrong with African-Americans.
  Well, let us take a look at a piece of history, a phenomenon of 
history, not a single achievement or micro achievement of one group or 
one individual. Let us look at the phenomenon of 232 years of slavery.

                              {time}  2000

  I have talked about this before. I think it cannot be emphasized too 
much. For 232 years slavery denied the opportunity to accumulate wealth 
to our ancestors. African American ancestors, blacks, slaves who, by 
the way, were not immigrants, they were hostages. They were kidnapped 
and brought here and forced to provide free labor.
  By the way, also, labor for those 232 years had a greater value than 
labor has now. It was a labor-intensive world, a labor-intensive 
economy. You did not have machines to do the hard work. It took labor.
  So the human capital supplied by the slaves was supplied free because 
they were forced to give it, and they got nothing back for it for 232 
years. That is more than six generations. No wealth was accumulated. 
But in the world, all over the world, wealth is accumulated by 
inheritance. It is passed down from one generation to another. If a 
generation, if a group of people are not able to pass down any wealth, 
then they have a deficit. African Americans came out of slavery in 1865 
with a deficit of 232 years of not being able to pass on anything, not 
even a pair of pants, because they owned nothing. They were owned 
themselves, and whatever they had was under the jurisdiction of their 
masters.
  No capital is the primary problem in, and the lack of capital is the 
primary problem of impoverished African American communities. The 
struggle of the newly freed slaves to own homes and land received no 
assistance. The newly freed slaves were told at one point by General 
Armstrong of the Union Army, who had his own ideas about reforming and 
about justice, he briefly had an experiment with every slave was to get 
40 acres and a mule. That is where that phrase comes from. They gave a 
few slaves 40 acres and a mule. And Congress stepped in and told 
General Armstrong to cut it out. He had to stop that before it really 
had any impact whatsoever. So the 40 acres and a mule promise was not 
realized.
  Slaves, even after the 13th amendment set them free, and the 14th 
amendment gave them equal rights, and the 15th amendment gave the right 
to vote, they could not participate in the land grant program, the 
program which provided free land to Americans and they could stake out 
land and from the government begin a homestead and start a new life. 
Ownership came from God, I guess, from God through the American 
Government to white people, but slaves were not allowed. There were no 
reparations, no 40 acres and a mule. And when the land was given out, 
whether it was the land rush or whatever form they utilized to give 
away land, blacks were not allowed to participate.
  As a group the deficit created for 232 years has still not been 
overcome. You cannot overcome 232 years of passing down absolutely 
nothing, no wealth from one generation to another.
  And if you want to go check your own family, find out exactly where 
did your wealth come from, your assets. Some people are not wealthy, 
but you do have some assets. You own a home. Often couples who own a 
home were given part of the down payment by their parents. How were 
your parents able to give you part of the down payment? Because they 
had accumulated some assets before. Where did they get their assets 
from? They probably had some help from their parents also. Of course, 
when you have big multiples of this and people take the small amounts 
that they inherit, they invest it, they use their ingenuity, and they 
use capital in ways that increases their wealth, you have large numbers 
of people become very wealthy and rich. But if you have no capital to 
begin with, it is almost a miracle.
  There are some blacks who got rich. Madam C.J. Walker was one of the 
first millionaires in the black community. She did not start out with 
anything. She had a lot of ingenuity, and she knew how to take 
advantage of the fact that all black women wanted to be beautiful. 
Cosmetics and the various things connected with hair and beauty

[[Page H749]]

enhancements was her business. But and there are many others who took 
almost nothing and made something out of it.
  But in general, miracles are not made. Ordinary people in any group 
cannot make miracles. They come through a process of slow accumulation 
of wealth, handed down from one generation to another, opportunities if 
you own a home, you can get, you have collateral so you can get a loan 
for a business. If you have a business and the business is going, you 
can get another loan or you can make some investments. We know how 
capital is accumulated and handled in this society. If you start 232 
years behind, then you have a major deficit.
  It is important for every black teenager to understand that. Some of 
the hate that we experience is due to the fact that they have no 
knowledge of history. They do not really understand why their parents 
were poorer than others, why their grandparents did not pass anything 
down. They do not understand it, so they absorb some of the trash that 
is thrown at them about being inferior, different from other 
immigrants, and they begin to hate themselves, and they begin to act 
out in ways which are very counterproductive and antisocial because 
they have no sense of the fact that there is a disadvantage there all 
right, but it has nothing to do with them as individuals. Just the 
opposite is true.
  They should understand that the very fact that their ancestors were 
able to endure the Atlantic crossing, where slaves were not brought in 
immigrant ships, as bad as some of the ships might be. The movie 
Titanic showed you how the poor people were in the hold of the ship, 
and when the ship wrecked, they were at a great disadvantage. The kind 
of accommodations that they had were palaces compared with the way 
slaves came over. Slaves came over lying flat, to make the maximum 
amount of room. They had to lay flat for the whole trip, and also to 
control them, they had to lie flat, piled one on top of the other in 
the holds of the ships. And the very fact that our ancestors endured 
the crossing was a great achievement.
  The fact that they endured 232 years of slavery from one group to 
another, they survived with some humanity intact, that is a great 
achievement. I tell people, I am a descendant of an aristocracy of 
survivors, and every black person ought to understand, you are a 
descendant of an aristocracy of survivors. A great achievement just to 
stay alive.
  But in the process of just staying alive, we could not accumulate 
wealth. The system would not allow us to do that. You have to have 
something. Property owners and consumers make the economy percolate. 
The turnover of wealth at the local level sets off a chain reaction 
that accumulates significant amounts of capital. Local slave 
communities, what did they have to turn over? How could they have a 
little general store, somebody being able to patronize it and 
accumulate wealth by running a general store? Whatever they had, you 
know, accumulated very meager profits because you were in a community. 
It was segregated. For years after slaves were set free, the dual 
economy produced very little wealth, the segregated economy.
  That is one of the basic phenomenon of black history that needs to be 
reviewed more often by blacks and by whites. Understand that there is a 
232-year economic deficit that slave labor was demanded, commanded for 
232 years for nothing. They got nothing in return. There were no 
reparations.

  We talk about reparations. People get very angry. Why should blacks 
demand reparations? Reparations obviously has some validity because 
they do require reparations in certain activities. Our civilization now 
understands that justice sometimes requires reparations, but when 
blacks talk about reparations, immediately you get hostility. People 
turn off or they turn away or they turn towards you violently.
  So that is one phenomenon, the economic price that was paid, the 
disadvantage. Those who argue against opportunity programs, opportunity 
programs that might focus money on education programs for disadvantaged 
African American youth in inner cities where the poverty is piled up 
and still continues, those who argue against that should take a look at 
the fact that there is a reason why the need is there, and part of that 
reason relates to America as a Nation, America as a Nation tolerated 
slavery. America as a Nation provided the legal structure to maintain 
slavery for much too long.
  There are heroes, of course, who tried to get rid of it early, and 
finally Thomas Jefferson got a prohibition on the importation of 
slavery long before Lincoln was able to issue the Emancipation 
Proclamation. The Congress was able to pass the 13th amendment. It was 
a heroic struggle, and I think I want to note that some African 
American youth who are very angry about it accuse white people of being 
responsible for it and find it difficult to relate to white people 
because they think they are the victims of a long-term plot and all 
whites are equally guilty. We cannot make alliances, we cannot 
integrate, we cannot become part of some caring majority activity 
because, after all, those people cannot be trusted. Those people did 
that to us, and anybody that has ancestors who participated in a thing 
as heinous as slavery cannot be trusted.
  My answer to that kind of reasoning, by young people or anybody else, 
old or young, is that the white people set us free. The white people 
were part of the process. We are indebted to our ancestors, blacks, for 
surviving and for enduring. We would not be here if they had not 
endured all of things that were done to them. But white people had the 
power, and only they had the power, to finally work the situation out 
so that we were set free.
  The abolitionists who were often ridiculed and not given the proper 
role in history, people who were motivated mostly by religion and a 
belief that God would not accept a condition where just because one's 
skin was white you had a reason to reign over another group that was 
black, they refused to accept that, and they not only refused to accept 
it, they took action and they agitated to get rid of slavery. They were 
mostly white. Some of the first statements against slavery in writing 
were made by the Quakers insisting that they would not tolerate slavery 
within their midst. They were white. Finally, in the woods and on the 
field and wherever the bloody Civil War took place, it was mostly white 
soldiers who fought on behalf of the ending of slavery. They fought on 
both sides, but there were white soldiers who gave their lives and 
hundreds and thousands for the cause of the Union and under the banner 
of Abraham Lincoln. We would not be free if that had not been the case.
  So there is no need to get caught up in ethnicity and simple-minded 
solidarity to the point where you cannot relate to the other race 
because they were a part of that terrible crime of slavery, that 
criminal institution. That closes the door and does not recognize the 
fact that African Americans have two sets of ancestors. We have African 
ancestors, and we have American ancestors. Thomas Jefferson is my 
ancestor; George Washington is my ancestor.
  I do not think it was wise, I am not proud of the fact, that a school 
in Louisiana decided to change the name of the school from George 
Washington to some other name. I think it was Charles Drew who deserved 
to have schools named after him, but to have children reject their 
ancestor, their past, because George Washington owned slaves. Yes, he 
did own slaves, but if he had not had a mindset different from his own 
ancestors, he came out of a monarchy, they came from a monarchy, they 
came from a society which looked at all men as being inferior 
classwise. You had a certain elite class, the royalty that looked down 
on everybody and reserved the right to command everybody and to more or 
less enslave everybody. If George Washington had continued that 
tradition, if he had not had whatever it was that he had when he denied 
the crown, if he had accepted a crown when it was offered to him, we 
would have had a monarchy. And probably that monarchy would still be 
nurturing slavery because you would have had a long struggle just to 
set the ordinary common white men, Indians, everybody else who came 
over here, to set them free before you got to the slaves.
  At least you had a group of men, nobody quite knows how the miracle 
of 1776 took place, how you had a group of men who were so rational and 
at least

[[Page H750]]

committed enough to doing the right thing and moving beyond just 
themselves to the point where they started a process by which the 
Constitution was able to be put in place and then enlarged, include 
everybody, everybody was white, and then finally set up a situation 
where slavery was obviously in contradiction to the principles that 
they had established.

                              {time}  2015

  If the principles had not been established, if there had been no 
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, for whatever their shortcomings 
may be with respect to slavery, we would not have had a basis for later 
on moving to the steps Abraham Lincoln took when he said the Union must 
be preserved and the Union can only be preserved if we come to grips 
with this terrible problem of slavery.
  So the phenomenon of denial of wealth for 232 years is one phenomenon 
that needs to be looked at more. President Clinton's commission on 
race, I have said before, needs to set some records straight, do some 
thorough study. There should be an academic component of his Commission 
on Race Relations.
  Of course, his Commission on Race Relations goes beyond just 
relations between blacks and whites, as it should be. He has a great 
deal of vision. I applaud the President's vision in terms of 
understanding that at a time like this, when we do not have riots in 
the street, we do not have a crisis that is obvious between races, 
there is no race relations critical situation that has to be addressed 
on a national level, that that is a time when we should discuss race 
relations.
  We should quietly deal with the fact that under the surface there is 
a problem. We do have two societies growing apart, according to experts 
who have made studies, and we need to address that. So I applaud the 
fact that he has taken this step. He has it on a broad base, so 
relations with Asians or relations with immigrants in general, a whole 
lot of things, go beyond the African-American history. But that 
component ought to be there, and a thorough study of slavery and 
African-American history would throw a great deal of light on current 
discussions with respect to public policy. The basic public policy 
discussion surrounding opportunity would be very much assisted if we 
knew more about what the denial of opportunity has caused.
  The second factor that ought to be looked at in African-American 
history, the factor which has a great deal of bearing on public policy 
decision-making now, especially the question of opportunity, should we 
provide extraordinary resources to guarantee opportunity to the poor, 
to the disadvantaged, as a way to create a more just society?
  If we are not willing to deal with it on the basis of skin color, 
then just look at the fact that large numbers, the majority of people 
of African-American descent in this country, are poor. They are 
disadvantaged in terms of economics. We must look at it for another 
reason, in addition to the denial of the opportunity to accumulate 
wealth for 232 years. Let us look at the fact that for 232 years, the 
institution of slavery pursued the objective of obliteration. 
Obliteration.
  We had experienced a Holocaust. We experienced an obliteration. The 
Holocaust tried and succeeded in many cases in destroying the body. The 
ovens of Hitler destroyed massive numbers of bodies. Six billion Jews 
were destroyed physically. And it may be there is nothing worse in the 
world than to be destroyed physically, because without life there is no 
hope. The slaves were not destroyed physically, because the slaves were 
considered to be resources and assets. They wanted to keep the body 
alive but destroy the soul. So there was, for 232 years, an active 
effort, an aggressive effort to destroy the soul of the slaves of 
America who provided free labor.
  They started in the middle passage, when they brought them across the 
Atlantic Ocean. They always mixed the slaves according to tribe. They 
made certain that slaves of the same tribe were not grouped together on 
the boats. They mixed them up deliberately because they did not want 
them to communicate. They wanted to confuse them and prevent any 
efforts at solidarity. They wanted to stifle any efforts to maintain 
continuity.
  Slaves came from civilizations. African slaves were people who were 
taken out of a civilization that had rules and regulations and customs, 
religions, societies. They had tribal ceremonies. But an immediate 
attempt was made to get rid of all that, not let them practice them, by 
mixing up people from different places and guaranteeing that they had 
no common set of beliefs.
  They prohibited any religious or other customs or ceremonies or 
rituals. Slaves could not practice their own religion. And even later 
on, when the blunder was made by many slaveholders of allowing slaves 
to convert to Christianity, they limited the amount of time they could 
have worship service by themselves, even after they had adopted the 
religion of the master.
  They refused to recognize family units. And this is devastating. If 
we want to know the origin of some of the tremendous sociological 
problems we have within the African-American community, we should stop 
and think about the fact that there was an attempt made in the course 
of the 232 years, not an attempt but a successful venture was launched 
to guarantee that there were very few family units.
  Slaves were sold, children away from parents, and the unit of 
marriage was not recognized. Slaves had their own unit of marriage, 
called ``jumping over the broom.'' They considered a man belonged to a 
woman or a woman belonged to a man because they believed to ``jump over 
the broom'' in their own ceremony indicated marriage. Well, they may 
jump over the broom one night and consider themselves married, and the 
next night the husband is sold away from the wife or the wife sold away 
from the husband. So no family unit was recognized.
  Children were put in what we might call group settings. We cannot 
call them orphanages because they were often fed like animals. We know 
from recent studies of children from Romanian orphanages what can be 
done to a child if we deny then nurturing within the first few months 
of their life, certainly within the first year. If we feed them the way 
we would hogs, if we put their meals in a trough and place them in a 
room, a holding, a compound with one nanny and 50 children, and nobody 
gets any individual attention, we can change the brain of a child.
  That is what the studies found of the Romanian children who were 
adopted, and American parents had difficulties with them. Various 
studies conducted showed that the children had been treated in a way 
where they had been kept alive physically, but they had no emotional 
nurturing and they had been treated in a way where their brains had 
changed. And instead of being receptive and responsive to warmth and 
cuddling, they rebelled against it and they were hostile toward people 
who tried to be warm and responsive to them.
  This is a very real phenomenon. The whole argument about heredity 
versus environment is almost settled. We can change the brain of a 
child who might have come with one set of genes, but if we treat them a 
certain way, their actual physical structure changes and we have a 
different individual as a result of the environment we put them into.
  Well, slaves were put into a hostile environment. The children were 
treated in ways in which many of them certainly suffered and 
experienced that. They even promoted breeding, as if they had a 
factory. Breeding farms. Breeding farms were like factories of 
production to guarantee more slaves.

  They denied human nurturing and did any other thing they could do to 
wipe out any sense of a soul of a human being. That was the other 
phenomenon that we have to take a look at.
  Wealth accumulation, out of the question. But in addition to not 
allowing them to accumulate wealth, there was an active process that, 
if they wanted to make their slaves efficient, then they had to make 
them more like animals. If they wanted an efficient working animal, 
they had to deny them any opportunity to grieve, any opportunity to 
establish contacts among themselves, because they did not want a 
brooding slave after their son or their daughter had been sold. They 
did not want a rebellious slave because they had treated him in some 
human way for a while and then suddenly found it necessary to treat him 
like an animal.

[[Page H751]]

  So it was in the system. Slavery is often called a peculiar 
institution. That is the polite way to talk about it. It was a criminal 
institution designed to dehumanize and to obliterate the humanity of 
the people who were in it.
  When we are considering the massive social disorganization that 
currently afflicts African-American communities, we have to consider 
the result of this combination of 232 years of economic denial and the 
torture of obliteration. The combination of the torture of obliteration 
and the denial of an opportunity to accumulate wealth has created a 
condition which still cries out for some special treatment.
  Oh, why does it take so long to get over these problems, one might 
ask. That question is often raised. Well, if we had some kind of 
continuum where there is some assistance, some opportunity, then we get 
positive results. During World War II, when everybody had a job, there 
were massive opportunities available for everybody, white and black, 
and blacks had an opportunity to earn an income steadily, over a long 
period of time. We had tremendous leaps forward in terms of the social 
organization of black communities and families.
  In that brief period, there was an accumulation of wealth, enough for 
large numbers to buy homes. And it began the dispersal of blacks who 
had moved out of the South into the industrial North, into different 
communities within cities and also into the suburbs. If we just applied 
a set of favorable conditions economically to the black community over 
a reasonable period of time, probably we could get rid of all of the 
social problems that seem intractable.
  Economics is at the heart of it. There are a number of books that 
have been written, and they keep repeating over and over again that the 
jobs that all left the cities and the places where blacks were 
accumulated, to fill up the vacuum of the jobs that left the drugs came 
in, and the crime that the drugs bred, of course, exacerbated the 
problem.
  I am saying all this because I wanted to stop Black History Month or 
African American History Month from being trivialized, from being 
celebrated with an overkill of microachievements, without getting to 
the heart of what we need to do and look at and study in order to have 
a better approach to public policy.
  What are we going to do about the President's proposals for school 
construction? Are we going to have on this floor all those arguments 
about we do not want big government, we do not want big spending, while 
out there in the inner cities they have hundred year-old schools? In 
New York City they have numerous school buildings that are 70 to 80 and 
100 years old.
  In New York City we have almost 300 schools, 300 schools, which are 
still using furnaces that burn coal. Recently there was a series of 
articles in the Daily News on asthma, the horror of asthma in the city. 
We have one of the highest accumulations of asthma in New York City 
than anywhere else in the country.
  It really shocked me that the Daily News could write a series of 
articles in three stages, three different days, and discussing asthma 
and the high rate of asthma and how it accumulates in certain 
communities, and discussing asthma and how attacks often take place in 
schools and teachers do not know what to do. They never bothered to 
mention that there are 300 coal-burning furnaces in the city and they 
are contributing greatly to the asthma problem.
  It just is mind-boggling to believe that a set of reporters, 
journalists who are trained, could develop an article. I cannot believe 
that it is by accident. I cannot believe they overlooked the fact that 
there are 300 coal-burning schools and they spew coal dust into the 
air. Even the best coal-burning furnace with the best filters are going 
to have coal dust in the place where they are located. And coal dust 
accumulates slowly in the lungs of young children, who are very 
susceptible to the impact and the effect of coal dust. But that was not 
mentioned in any one of the Daily News articles.
  I have asked a few questions. I was told someone on the Daily News 
staff has gone to work for the Mayor and they did not want to do 
anything to upset the city government. I do not know.

                              {time}  2030

  I hope that this is not a corrupt oversight. I hope it is an 
incompetent oversight. Either way, it is hard to imagine writing an 
article about the accumulation of asthma cases, the rate of asthma 
cases in the city, and not bothering to see that the 300 coal-burning 
schools have something to do with it.
  In the making of public policy and responding to the President's 
initiative, school construction, smaller class sizes, you cannot have 
smaller class sizes in most inner-city communities like Chicago, New 
York, Philadelphia, unless you build more schools or you greatly expand 
those that exist or renovate them. So you have got to build schools. 
The construction initiative of the President is directly related to any 
initiative you take on smaller class sizes.
  You cannot have an increase in the amount of computers and wiring for 
the Internet in the inner-city schools unless you repair or build new 
schools, because those old schools are not wired properly to receive 
the wiring or you cannot even bore holes because of asbestos in walls. 
They still have a serious problem of asbestos.
  In New York City I have been involved in a project to wire 11 schools 
as a pilot project. First we had to have a certification by an asbestos 
firm that asbestos, if it existed in the schools, was a problem with 
the holes that we bored, it was not too great. They had to certify that 
it really was not a health hazard. It is very expensive to get the 
asbestos firms that do the certification. Just to get off the ground 
and be able to get permission to bore holes to bring volunteers in to 
wire the schools, we had to spend money on asbestos certification. In 
many schools, of course, it is so great until you cannot get off first 
base and start the process unless they make considerable repairs and 
removal of asbestos.
  Now there is a move on to test the pipes of the schools, because 
large numbers of old schools of course have lead pipes. They only had 
lead pipes in public buildings at the time these schools were built, so 
those lead pipes are deteriorating, of course, and lead in the water 
becomes a problem, a very serious problem, for children. We are just 
getting around to really making a survey of the old schools and testing 
to make certain that the levels of lead are not dangerous.
  So the President's initiative on construction and his initiative to 
improve education, if you have children, even if they have the 
advantage of smaller class size, if they ingest enough lead, their 
brains are affected. One of the things lead does to your brain is 
certainly greatly decrease your capacity, your intellectual capacity. 
That has been clearly established in studies.
  The President has some other initiatives beyond the wiring of the 
schools for computers and the ratio of classes. Child care at an early 
age, more Head Start. All of those same initiatives, by the way, 
appear, and I do not think they are parroting or plagiarizing the 
President. I think this report has been under way for some time. They 
come to the same conclusions, that you need to maximize opportunity in 
ways that are very concrete and very practical.
  Let us take a look at what some of this Eisenhower Foundation, which 
is itself an update and review of the Kerner Commission report, the 
Kerner-Lindsey Commission report, let us take a look at some of the 
recommendations they are making. First you might be interested in a few 
items from the executive summary. For those people who are so much 
older than I am or younger than I am and do not remember the Kerner-
Lindsey Commission report which talked about two societies, let us just 
review in their executive summary some of the things they say.
  My point here is that public policy should be guided by a knowledge 
of history. I went all the way back to 232 years of slavery. That 
history is very pertinent as we make public policy decisions, the fact 
that slaves were denied an opportunity to accumulate wealth, the fact 
that slaves were treated like animals and an attempt was made to 
obliterate their souls. The soul is the intellect and the heart. A 
whole lot of things go into a soul. Laws were made, by the way, to 
punish anybody who taught slaves to read.
  Let us come forward to 30 years ago when riots broke out in Detroit, 
in

[[Page H752]]

Newark, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. New York under Lindsey's 
administration managed to avoid any major riots until finally in the 
spring of 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated, you could not 
hold back the anger and we did have riots break out in New York City 
following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. The Kerner 
Commission came out with the following report that angered Lyndon 
Johnson a great deal:
  ``Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, 
separate and unequal.
  ``What has happened in the 30 years since and where do we stand now? 
The Kerner Commission proposed remedies to racial, spatial and economic 
disparity. The civil rights movement of the 1960s and early 1970s 
brought about improvements that helped expand an African-American 
middle class. It is important to recognize the achievements made 
possible by the civil rights movement and by individual struggles of 
millions of African-Americans. The African-American middle class has 
expanded, as has African-American entrepreneurship. The proportion of 
African-Americans with white collar jobs has risen. There has been an 
enormous rise in the number of African-American mayors, other elected 
officials and police chiefs. The high school graduation rate among 
African-Americans is rising.
  ``Yet in the 1970s, when technological change in the economy 
increased demand for high skilled and educated workers, jobs for the 
less skilled and educated became obsolete. The unemployed stayed 
behind, but more mobile middle-class African-Americans left core inner-
city neighborhoods. Especially during the 1980s, labor market policies 
to provide training and jobs for the less skilled never materialized. 
In the words of Professor William Julius Wilson and his colleagues at 
the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, `The exodus of 
working- and middle-class blacks from core inner-city neighborhoods 
enhanced the concentration effects of joblessness and poverty and 
removed important economic and social buffers that had softened the 
impact of macroeconomic changes in these vulnerable communities. During 
the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, conditions in inner-city ghettos 
went from bad to worse.' ''
  I am quoting from the executive summary of the report that was issued 
by the Eisenhower Commission, a 30-year update and review of the Kerner 
Commission report. That last statement which was made by a Ph.D. 
college professor might have been a little difficult to understand. In 
essence what he was saying, middle-class blacks, those who had the 
education and a little economic advantage, they moved away from the big 
cities. So you were left with a core of people in the inner city who 
were poor only. The least educated and the poorest were left to fend 
for themselves. The leadership class was taken away. The activities, in 
many cases economic activities, entrepreneurship activities that the 
leadership class of blacks provided in the inner city also was taken 
away. In more plain, ordinary terms, that is what Dr. William Julius 
Wilson was saying.

  To continue from the executive summary of this report:
  ``Today, while pundits and leaders talk of full employment, for the 
first time in the 20th century most adults in many inner-city 
neighborhoods are not working in a typical week.''
  Let me repeat that. Most adults in inner-city neighborhoods are 
unemployed. They are not working. It is not that they are not looking 
for jobs, because whenever you have a job opportunity, you have lines 
of hundreds of people who are looking to get those jobs. I think one of 
the most publicized incidents was the case in Chicago when they opened 
a new hotel and 4,000 people lined up for those jobs in long lines in 
the winter all around the block and throughout that area, lined up to 
get a few hundred jobs.
  ``Former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall estimates the real unemployment 
rate at about 15 percent, far higher than the official rate.''
  Certainly within my 11th Congressional District in Brooklyn, the 15 
percent figure has been the rate for a long time.
  ``The Center for Community Change in Washington, D.C. estimates the 
jobs gap to be over 4,400,000 persons needing work. A high proportion 
are in the inner city. The consequences of high neighborhood 
joblessness are more devastating than those of high neighborhood 
poverty. When people are poor but employed they can better prevent 
family breakup, crime, drugs and other problems than when people are 
poor and jobless.''
  I come from a poor family, but my father always was employed. 
Sometimes he was laid off for short periods, sometimes he had no work 
for short periods, but basically my father could find work. He never 
earned more than the minimum wage, by the way. No matter what 
conditions were, even during the war, he never earned more than the 
minimum wage. But a family with a father who was employed, there was a 
great deal of stability in the fact that he was employed, no matter how 
menial the work was or how low the pay.
  ``Since the Kerner Commission there have been other important 
trends.''
  I want you to take note of the things that are said here. You hear 
them all the time.
  ``From 1977 to 1988, the incomes of the richest 1 percent in America 
increased by 120 percent and the incomes of the poorest fifth in 
America decreased by 10 percent during the time of supply-side tax 
breaks for the rich and against the poor.''
  Now, you might say, well, that happened to all people. But the 10 
percent decrease took place among the poorest people and in the 
African-American communities where you have the poorest people.
  ``In the words of conservative analyst Kevin Phillips, this meant 
that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The working class 
also got poorer. The middle class stayed about the same in absolute 
terms, so it, too, lost ground.''
  This is middle class white and black, but in the black community with 
a great concentration of poverty. And it is not stretching the truth to 
say 60 percent of African-Americans can be classified as the poor, 
economically poor.
  ``During the 1980s, child poverty increased by over 20 percent.''
  During the 1980s, following the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson and 
the progress made in the 1960s and the 1970s.
  ``During the 1980s, child poverty increased by over 20 percent, with 
racial minorities suffering disproportionately.''
  ``Today, the top 1 percent of Americans has more wealth than the 
bottom 90 percent.''
  ``Since the Kerner Commission, the U.S. has had the most rapid growth 
in wage inequality in the Western world, with racial minorities 
suffering disproportionately.
  America's neighborhoods and schools are resegregating. Two-thirds of 
African-American students and three-fourths of Hispanic students now 
attend predominantly minority schools, one-third of each group in 
intensely segregated schools.
  ``In urban public schools in poor neighborhoods, more than two-thirds 
of children fail to reach even the basic level of national tests.''
  Recently we had a report about American students scoring lower than 
European students and Asian students on tests. Well, they did not even 
have a large number of African-American students take those tests. They 
do not begin to reach the level where they can even go and compete.
  In our inner city schools, in the junior high schools in New York, 
they found in a study that none of the teachers teaching math and 
science in junior high school in the areas where the blacks and 
Hispanics live majored in math and science. They teach math and 
science, but they did not major in it.
  So here you have reaffirmed and repeated again in this report, and I 
am reading from a report entitled ``The Millennium Breach, Rich or 
Poor, Poorer and Racially Apart''. This is in commemoration of the 30th 
anniversary of a National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the 
Kerner-Lindsey Report.
  They do offer a bit of recent history, which, when you couple it with 
history which goes back before the Emancipation Proclamation, should 
throw some light on the decisions we have to make with respect to 
opportunity, the provision of opportunity.
  We say we want to provide opportunity, get rid of affirmative action

[[Page H753]]

and provide opportunity. I do not want to get rid of affirmative 
action, but let us forget it for a while. I challenge all of those who 
want to provide opportunity to put their money and their resources 
where their mouth is and provide real opportunity.

                          ____________________