The Los Angeles Times                   Tuesday, June 20, 2000

Race relations: The hinge of America's racial
divide is its brutal mistreatment of blacks

CONGRESS MUST APOLOGIZE FOR LASTING EVILS OF SLAVERY

        By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

     A couple of years ago, when Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio) asked
Congress to officially apologize for slavery, he was blasted from pillar
to
post. Irate whites called his resolution wasteful and racist. Many
blacks
ridiculed it as much too little and much too late.
     On Monday, Hall reintroduced the resolution, which has been
expanded. Hall wants Congress not only to apologize for slavery but to
set up a commission to examine slavery's legacy, fund education
programs to study slavery's effects and establish a national slavery
museum. Almost certainly he'll be hammered again with the argument
that it's unfair to blame today's whites for slavery, and that blacks
have
had a century and a half to shake off its horrors. This is a
wrong-headed
and fallacious argument.
     The U.S. government, businesses and majority whites, not just a
handful of Southern plantation owners, profited and benefited from
slavery. The U.S. government encoded slavery into the Constitution, and
protected and nourished it for a century.
     Traders, insurance companies, bankers, shippers and landowners
made billions off it. Their ill-gotten profits fueled America's
industrial
might.
     Meanwhile, white labor groups for decades after slavery ended
ensured that blacks were excluded from unions and the trades and
confined to the dirtiest, poorest-paying jobs. While many whites and
nonwhite immigrants did come to America after the Civil War, they were
not subjected to the decades of racial terror and legal segregation that

blacks were subjected to.
     Through the decades of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, African
Americans were transformed into the poster group for racial dysfunction.

The image of blacks as lazy, as prone to crime and violence, as
irresponsible and sexually predatory, has stoked white fears and
hostility
and has served as the standard rationale for lynchings, racial assaults,

hate crimes and police violence.
     The fact that some blacks today earn more and live better than
ever,
and that some have gotten boosts from welfare, social and education
programs, civil rights legislation or affirmative action programs, does
not
mean that America has shaken the hideous legacy of slavery.
     Recent polls by the National Conference for Community and Justice,
a Washington, D.C., public policy group, found that blacks are still
overwhelmingly the victims of racial discrimination. And the Leadership
Council on Civil Rights found that young blacks are far more likely than

whites to be imprisoned for similar crimes.
     Blacks continue to have the highest or near highest rates of
poverty
and infant mortality. They are more likely to be the victims of violence
or
suffer from HIV/AIDS than any other group in America. They are more
likely than nonwhites to live in segregated neighborhoods, be refused
business loans and attend decrepit, failed public schools.
     The beating of black motorist Rodney King in Los Angeles, the
shooting of Amadou Diallo and the torture of Abner Louima in New York
City and the routine racial profiling of young black males across the
nation are ample proof that blacks are still at grave risk from police
violence. Blame this on the legacy of slavery.
     There are ample precedents of state and federal governments issuing

apologies and payments for past wrongs committed against African
Americans. In 1997, the U.S. government issued a presidential apology
and admitted it was legally liable to pay $10 million to the black
survivors
and family members of the 20-year-long syphilis experiment begun in the
1930s by the U.S. Public Health Service.
     In 1994, the Florida state legislature agreed to make payments to
the
survivors and relatives of those who lost their lives and property when
a
white mob destroyed the all-black town of Rosewood in 1923. In
Oklahoma, state legislators are considering reparations payments to the
survivors of the Tulsa massacre of 1921. And in May, the Chicago City
Council, with the blessing of Mayor Richard M. Daley, backed a
congressional bill by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) to bankroll a
commission to study the feasibility of paying reparations for slavery.
     The brutal truth is that the hinge of America's continuing racial
divide
is its brutal mistreatment of blacks. This can be directly traced to the

monstrous legacy of slavery. That's why Hall is legally and morally
right
to demand that Congress apologize for that mistreatment. And Congress
should do the right thing and issue that apology.