House judiciary subcommittee this portion of the hearing includes questions from members starting with the subcommittee chair. It is one hour and 45 minutes. Why should the federal government bear responsibility for economic and social damages . Thank you, chairman cohen. The most obvious reason is because the federal government is complicit. Thisrticle you spoke about time of White Supremacy reference in the headline it is so broad that if i tried to cover in one article it would have been impossible. I focus on a specific thing and that is jim crow and housing discrimination specifically in the city of chicago. The federal government was deeply complicit in housing surrogates in and redlining and the plunder of black homeowners in chicago. It would have not existed if the sha did not have a policy of not ensuring loans for black People Living in chicago. It would not have existed if not for the redlining laps that were written and created by this government of every major city in this country which relegated black people whether they had a outside of aor not class of people who could benefit from movement which created our modern middleclass. I dont know how it would be possible to exempt the federal government from such a process. I have to make this point over and over. Victimized who were by redlining are alive today. This is not about identifiable victims. Thank you, reverend sutton, you heard this testimony and said he did not want reparations, this would be a study of reparations, hr 40 draws no conclusions, do you believe there should be exclusions for wealthy folks who have been successful and works anddeeds and actions that have helped people who have not achieved as much and lift them up . One of the reasons why it was so widely accepted i believe one of the reasons why reparations were some accepted in my diocese were because we separated it from black descendents of slaves getting checks. About funding initiatives, programs and addressing issues such as mass incarceration. When that is explained to people that that is a reparation that is preparing something that can then thatto slavery is the case. I am concerned about those who have been left behind. The masses of africanamerican descendents of slaves who are mired in hopelessness and despair in communities of crime, violence, poverty and racism. I think if we can have a civil good conversation on the concept of reparations then talk about money, the moment you Start Talking about money the idea, especially among many white persons, im going to give a check to black persons, what about me . The moment you begin with money the resistance goes up. Lets talk about the concept. Question weto your have a problem in this nation of being able to talk civilly about race. When im talking about reparations im talking about those left behind and im talking to my White Brothers and sisters. Than we do,s more you need this for your soul. You need this to be able to look a black person in the eye and a i acknowledge the mistake and i want to be part of the solution to repair that damage. [applause] as reverend sutton speaks to the soul dr. You speak to the some of these efforts to remediate the past as the doctor has spoken about, massive influx of money for health and job training, if some of that went into areas where there are large cons and tradition of descendents of succeededt have not for a myriad of reasons and some of that went to white folks who were there who were living in bad conditions, would that be a problem . Or would that be helping anybody who is in a miasma. Ischairman cohen it interesting that right this minute as we have this hearing reverend William Barber is having a hearing on poverty. This is a great day for Economic Justice issues. Poverty is a problem in our nation but you cant fix poverty nor can you fix any quality and less you deal with racism. Dealing with racism is about dealing with reparations. I am with the reverend here. I dont care about a personal check made out to anyone. How about we fund historically black colleges and universities . We had moretime than 100 blackowned banks and now we have 23. The devil is busy. Thatcious legislation caused people to lose banks, changing reserve requirements and things like that. Empty swatches of land all over our nation. I respect your question about areas but i think that speaks to our uneasiness in talking straight up about race. Race is our nations second original sin and the first was what we did to the native people. We have to deal with reparations. If we want to have an american lets not forget that race is central to anything we do around Economic Justice. My time expired and i recognize the Ranking Member mr. And. Mr. Johnson. I think all for your heartfelt sentiments. I want to thank you for your honesty, humility and courage. Here is a big question that hangs over all of this. Many people believe on all sides of the political spectrum that racial inequality that we see today is not entirely attributable to the legacy of slavery and jim rowe, it is a factor but not entirely contribute a bull. Can you elaborate on other causative factors . The first thing i would say is that blaming slavery and jim crow for the entirely of Racial Disparity is really a factor, but blaming it for the entirety of the problems we see facing black people is a way of not taking responsibility for policy decisions that were made in the last 50 years. Our prisons did not balloon until the 1980s. Unemployment for black and white youths were virtually identical until the late 1950s or 60s. By blaming slavery and jim crow failed to takewe responsibility for policy decisions that were made on both sides of the aisle in very recent history. I would say that there is a naive assumption that wherever there is a statistical gap the outcomes between two groups, that that cap must be attributable to some kind of discrimination, whether it is over or structural or systemic. There is a . 21 on the dollar in Household Income between white americans of russian descent and white americans of disparity ist area the norm, not the exception. Is not why two groups would have different outcomes whether it is for wealth income or incarceration. The question is why we do what expect any two groups with different histories and geographical patterns and patterns of migrations and culture to get exactly the same outcomes. Thank you for that. Mr. Owens i was moved by your testimony that we are fighting for the heart of this nation. Everyone in this room is a part of a family. There aopinion is formula that will last the Africanamerican Community to achieve the measures of success that is missing today . There is and im going to i want to square a few things away. And ik about restitution have so much respect for the black men and women who built that had 60 millionaires and they had international businesses. They were part of a certain party. 40 acres and a mule was implemented. The democratic president Andrew Johnson took over and they took that land back, they took a way the guns than the land. Has lynched 4700 people and some of them were white republicans. We have a lot of evil going on. Is a certain ideology and certain people that along to a certain area and a certain niche and we need to hold them accountable. Booker t. Washington had four foundations. There was head, heart, hands and home. Process, had his education, heart is compassionate service, hands are entrepreneurship and home his family. The history is not being told. They wereso busy not looking at finding someone to blame they were busy eking out these racists. They held on to those principles until the socialism and marxism gotten to our community to stop educating our kids. 75 in 2017 department of education study, 75 of black boys in the state of california cannot pass a standard reading or writing test. You wonder where they are going to go from there. They are not want to learn anything about their country or what we do people have done together. And hear turn on bet how bad they are being treated and hear how bad our country is and how bad white people are. They will be taught how to disrespect women and they will be put in jail and they will sit there and talk about why this is being done. Put the mission together, why is this happening where so many kids are not being educated in every single urban city in our country . That is what our problem is. If we blame people from years black males across our country in the city of chicago they are killing people right and left. I have something i put in my book and i will read this quickly. People is a person who is stealing the hopes and dreams of is targeting, evil a race of millions and using political strategy to steal their strength and future. To have my race dealing with the evil and misery we have been dealing with and nobody says a word other than look back and see what happens 200 years ago. Thank you, i am out of time i yield back. I am going to ask one question and yield to the gentlelady from california. Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell on tuesday said he does not support reparations to the descendents of slaves saying i dont think reparations for something hundred 50 years ago for which none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea. We tried to deal with the original sin of slavery with landmark civil rights legislation and we elected an africanamerican president. There is a lack of knowledge in this nation that the true nature, fax, and current consequences of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the enslavement of African American democracy and white purplish are founded describe briefly some of the continuing impact and vestiges of the enslavement era on living africanamericans today . All, one thing i tried to make clear in my testimony is that we perceive the era of enslavement, the air of jim crow and the era of mass incarceration the things that are somehow not tied to each other. Besides the economic damage and the normalization of torture and rape and the normalization of treating people as though they the institution in the American Mind that black people are necessarily inferior. 1865 when black people were emancipated that belief did not dissipate. T proceeded for hundred years after and well into the lifetimes of many panel members. It is not a matter of the past, these things are linked. Repeatedly said throughout this conversation that somehow wealthy wealthy africanamericans are immune to these effects. ,n addition to the wealth gap one thing that folks should keep in mind is that wealthy africanamericans are not the equivalent of wealthy white americans in this country. The average africanamerican family making 100,000 lives in the same kind of neighborhood the average white family making 35,000 lives in. That is tied to the legacy of enslavement and jim crow and the idea that white people and black people are somehow deserving of different things. You, the injury commits after i commit the act. If i step you, you may suffer complications long after that stabbing. You may suffer complications long after that initial shooting. There are people well within the living memory of this country that are still suffering from the aftereffects. Thank you very much. I yield to the gentlelady from california. Thank you very much. All of the witnesses that are here and representative jackson lee for doing this legislation. This is such an important moment in our history. Minuteso spend a couple talking about why we are having this hearing today. I believe in this country we have never been able to come to grips with our history. The 250 yearsbout of enslavement we call it a sin, we called a mistake, we say it was a subset of americans, not the entire nation, it was inconsistent of the values of our nations founding and why cant we move on, why do you keep bringing it up . Slavery might have ended in the mid 1800s but apartheid and terrorism lasted after that. We passed a bill on lynching. There was a man executed two weeks ago for a lynching that took place in texas. There were many murders that stilled where people are wondering whether or not they were lynchings. In our country we pride ourselves with our development but we refuse to knowledge the reason why we have the development. The first 200 years of our history was done with free laborers. The south and slave africanamericans but the northern economy flourished because of that. Our fundamental problem is our ignorance of history and our refusal to admit it. Everyone understands the pain caused by people who deny the holocaust. Deep pain is caused by this and deep pain is caused by our country that cannot a knowledge what has happened. I want to say that it should be obvious, but the entire Congressional Black Caucus supports this legislation. We thinklems racism, sometimes it is trivialized as behavior and ideas and we are all equally racist because we refuse to accept the fact that racism is ingrained in our institutions. We say there mustve been something that 12yearold did two of gotten shot, there mustve been a reason that Police Officer pulled a gun on that pregnant woman last week. We do not see the connection between this because we refuse to admit it. Hr 40 call for the establishment of a commission. It does not call for checks. Coates goes into details about reparations meeting much more than that. When i hear we need to be encouraged to work harder, to pull ourselves up by her bootstraps, that that is the only thing that is the problem, and then to talk about the Democratic Party black folks thought the Democratic Party. Nobody acts as though the Democratic Party was not the racist party until there was a movement that fought for justice. Im glad [applause] thank you. Let me have a word, please. Hats. Several consider the hat i am wearing as an activist and an in citybut i worked government for six and a half years in 1971 in the Model Cities Program in San Francisco california. I worked in the mission and Africanamerican Community. Most of that was the realization about the programs about the great society. I saw those programs youd is rated. I saw those programs evis cerated. The programs lasted only a short time. I understand because i have lived in the same community my entire life in San Francisco. My mother met my father and came to San Francisco after world war ii. Jobs, they work for the post office from 1948. They were able to raise a family on that income. They were able to buy a house in the same neighborhood i live in right now. They were part of that generation who were the first beneficiaries of the ongoing civil rights movement. I have watched that city and work in that city and im just talking about San Francisco, this liberal city that has this great tradition around labor and everything else. E talk about harry bridges eviscerationd the of cities because of crack cocaine and mass incarceration as well, right in my neighborhood, right in my family. Those are the kind of longterm impacts that we do not realize. Those children, who were the descendents of the generation who had the opportunity after world war ii, those children do not have the same opportunities and now those children are cityoned as adults in that. I think we have to look at this as people said often, this is just a study at racism. Gentrification as well. I was in the fillmore area in 1966 going to Community Organization meetings where people were desperate to find different ways in which they were not being removed from their communities. These are real issues. They are longstanding issues that go back and find themselves resonating in slavery. All the material we have, all of the books we have him up all of the studies that have been done have outlined that. We have to begin to tell ourselves the truth. James baldwin one set we cannot tell ourselves the truth about the past, we become trapped in it. This country is trapped in not telling the truth. We talk about education, mass literacy is important, and most children, particularly children of color are prepared for mass literacy. We have to talk about education our children for 21st century citizenship. That is what it is. People who have been most we create a better country here. Thank you very much. Were not going to get out of order. Respect,. Glover great but the panel and the way we operate as we go from member to member. If the next person wants to ask you, they can ask you. Representative klein, you are recognized for five minutes. I want to thank the witnesses for being here. , ive followed your career with interest. Mr. Glover, im a big fan. I want to thank the witnesses for their remarks. If hughes, i wanted to ask there was anything that was said previously that you would like to respond to. I would like to address myself to the comments made on the subject of us not knowing our history, of us not having told the truth about slavery and jim crow. It strikes me that this is not exactly true. Mr. Glover mentioned all of the studies and books that have been written on the subject. I would argue that in the 10,000 year history of slavery on every continent, there is not a single example of slavery that has been more studied than slavery in america from the 17th century to the 19th century. Nots not true that we have told the truth, that we do not know our history. Years,r, in the past 50 if we are talking about what scholars in the American Social sciences have directed their attention towards, it is hard to find a subject on which more books have been written that has been more studied than racial inequality. Thank you. Hank you for that mr. Owens, i have followed your career with interest. Can you speak to your career in the nfl and also you spoke of your family. What was the greatest legacy or lessons from your family that brought you to the opinion you hold now . The greatest legacy for my , who served in world war ii, came home and could not do his postgraduate in texas because of jim crow laws, so i got a lot of letters when he passed away, hundreds of rejection letters used as motivation. Eventually got to ohio state wher