[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 39 (Tuesday, March 31, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H1838]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 PRESIDENT CLINTON'S REMARKS ON SLAVERY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I think it is very important 
that I bring to the attention of this House a very fitting commentary 
by Richard Cohen, printed today in the Washington Post, March 31, 1998. 
It is titled, ``A Fitting Apology.'' Might I just share partially some 
of the comments made in this article?
  It starts off by saying, ``Should President Clinton now apologize for 
apologizing? It seems he should. His remarks about the American role in 
the slave trade, neither historically inaccurate nor, you would think, 
all that controversial, have been denounced by no less a personage than 
a key member of the House GOP leadership and mocked, nay, scorned, by 
pundits galore. We are not, I take it, sorry about slavery, a 
rhetorical question.
  ``Clinton's words are worth setting down in their full 
unremarkableness.''
  As the author says, quoting President Clinton, ``Going back to the 
time before we were even a Nation, European Americans received the 
fruits of slave trade, and we were wrong in that.''
  You may want to read that statement a second time, and once you have 
done so, let me assure you that nothing has been left out.
  Again, might I quote this statement? It says, ``Going back to the 
time before we were even a Nation, European Americans received the 
fruits of slave trade, and we were wrong in that.''
  As the author says, and once you have done so, reading it twice, as I 
have done, let me assure the Members that nothing has been left out. 
There it is, a bland statement of regret. Yet, the august majority whip 
of the House of Representatives, Thomas Delay, blasted the President 
for what he said in Africa.
  ``Here is a flower child with gray hair doing exactly what he did 
back in the sixties,'' Delay said, referring to Clinton's antiwar 
activities, according to Richard Cohen's column. ``He is apologizing 
for the actions of the United States.''
  Not exactly. Clinton did not say anything about the United States, 
although he certainly could have. Slavery, after all, was not ended 
until the Civil War and the capitulation of the confederacy.

                              {time}  1845

  Until then, it was legal in the State of Texas for one human being to 
own another and to sell his or her children if he so chose. Our 
colleague further objected that Clinton said nothing about the role of 
Africans, such as the chieftains in Uganda who were selling blacks to 
slave traders. Others of an equally scholarly bent have noted that it 
was West Africa, not Uganda, that supplied most of the slaves to the 
New World.
  This has not been limited, of course, to those in the United States 
Congress, for Patrick Buchanan added another bit of history, seemingly 
inaccurate and small in mind. He said, ``When Europeans arrived in sub-
Saharan Africa the inhabitants had no machinery, no written language,'' 
he wrote. ``When the Europeans departed, most of them by 1960, they 
left behind power stations, telephones, telegraphs, railroads, mines, 
plantations, schools, a civil service, a police force and a Treasury. 
Now with the Europeans gone, much of sub-Saharan Africa has reverted to 
chaos.''
  I am very delighted, as a Member of the United States Congress who 
has had the opportunity in recent months to visit Africa, first with 
the presidential mission of the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) 
and recently with the President of the United States, that history 
tells us differently.
  First of all, sub-Saharan Africa is an emerging 48 nations, along 
with the 53 nations of the continent, that is quite progressive. And 
frankly, the colonizers who came did not leave Africa in such good 
repair. I am delighted that this Congress passed, with the support of 
Speaker Newt Gingrich, the African Growth and Opportunity Act that will 
recognize Africa as an equal partner.
  Mr. Speaker, I also am very saddened by the lack of acknowledgment 
that all of us should regret slavery, whether we live on the continent 
of Africa or whether we came here in the bottom of the belly of slave 
boat, as my ancestors did, or whether we are of European descent.
  The statement by the President was not one, I believe, of a flower 
child; it was that of the President of the United States of America, 
the leader of the free world, acknowledging an era in all of our 
history which we would like to forget or at least acknowledge that it 
was a bad time for all of us.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that we in the United States Congress can 
recognize that an apology is simply that, an acknowledgment of 
something that happened that was wrong. I have always taught my 
children, and I was always taught, that a simple apology goes a long 
way. And that it is.
  Of course, President Clinton did not make an apology; he simply 
expressed regrets. And all of the press and the media and the 
recordings of what he said simply acknowledge a regretful period in the 
history of America and Africa.
  Mr. Speaker, I think it is time that we begin a healing process. 
There is nothing wrong with simply admitting that was a regretful time, 
a time we wish not to repeat.

                          ____________________