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Episode #1719
Randall Robinson
Holloway: Jay Holloway,
host
Robinson: Randall Robinson
Holloway: Tonight
author and international leader Randall Robinson, next on
Black Issues Forum. Stay tuned.
Voiceover: This program
was made possible by contributions to UNC-TV from viewers
like you. Thank you.
[THEME MUSIC]
Holloway: Good evening
and welcome to Black Issues Forum, I'm Jay Holloway.
Tonight we welcome Randall Robinson. He's a graduate of Virginia
Union University and Harvard Law School and is the founder
of TransAfrica, the organization that has spearheaded the
movement for influencing U.S. politics toward international
black leadership. He is featured frequently in major print
media and has appeared on this network on the Charlie Rose
Show and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, among others. He's
also the author of at least three books: Defending the
Spirit, The Debt, and his latest book, The Reckoning,
which brings him here to North Carolina. Mr. Robinson, welcome
to UNC-TV and to North Carolina.
Robinson: Thank you
Jay, it's very nice to be here.
Holloway: Yes. For
those that may not have known about your TransAfrica experiences
and all the others, tell us about TransAfrica. You started
that in 1977 and it's evolved from just two people to over
15,000 members, I understand around this globe.
Robinson: I was working
at the time for Charles Diggs who was chairing the subcommittee
on Africa in the House of Representatives in Washington, and
it was a view of black leadership in the country that while
we had members of Congress sympathetic to Africa and the Caribbean,
we needed some instrument, some institution that could galvanize
opinion in the country and support policies that we wanted,
and in opposition to policies towards the black world that
we did not want. And TransAfrica was born from that. I served
there as president for 25 years, stepping down last August,
succeeded by Bill Fletcher who had been a topic assistant
to the president of the AFL-CIO. And now we've got a bright
future. Danny Glover is the chairman of our institution. And
of course through all of those years that I was there, we
galvanized support for sanctions against South Africa, keeping
the U.S. in the program of sanctions against Rhodesia, humane
treatment of Haitian refugees, on and on, trying as hard as
we can and could to put the U.S. on the right side of these
major global social justice issues.
Holloway: Speaking
of that social injustice issue in South Africa, it just so
happens that when you and I first met, and the last time I
saw you, was about almost exactly 12 years ago. It was-I checked
this date-February 11, 1990, it was a Sunday and you and I
were checking out of a pharmacy and I said, "You're Randall
Robinson." You said yes. I said, "It's very fortunate
for me to meet you on this very influential day." It
was the day that Nelson Mandela was released from prison there.
And you played a major role in influencing that. Would you
like to talk about that and what's been the progress since
his release?
Robinson: Well we had
worked on South African issues for many hours before November
1984, not with a great deal of impact, but in the Fall of
1984 the South African government under P. W. Botha arrested
the entirety of the black labor union leadership in the country.
A resolution of censure was introduced in the United Nations
and virtually the whole world voted for it. Ronald Reagan
cast the American vote or abstained from voting. We were horrified
by that and so we asked for a meeting with the South African
ambassador. Theretofore he had wanted to meet and we had always
declined. And so he was quite happy to meet with us, and I'd
asked Congressman Walt Fauntroy and Mary Francis Berry to
go with me to see Ambassador Foray at the embassy. And so
we sat in his office and we talked for a while. He talked
rather, and we listened. He was telling us about the merits
of the apartheid system and probably thrilled that he thought
he had an attentive audience, and then he was called out of
his office and told that the press was assembling outside
on the sidewalk. He had called the State Department and had
been told that they had learned that we had planned not to
leave the embassy, that we were going to stay there. And he
came back in and he said, ashen faced, was that the case?
And I told him it certainly was the case until Nelson Mandela
was released and they had begun taking serious steps to dismantle
the apartheid system, we were going to stay in the embassy.
Went out again, called Pretoria no doubt and got instructions,
called the State Department again, came back in, said, "Well,
are you sure you want to do this?" and we said absolutely.
We were praying that he would do one of three things; it seemed
that he had his choices. He could pick us up and throw us
unceremoniously on the lawn; he could let us stay in there
over the Thanksgiving holiday, turn off the heat, the lights
and all of that; or he could have us arrested. But we were
praying that he would have us arrested. He came back in and
he said, "Well, if you don't leave, I'm going to have
you arrested." And I said, "There is a God."
Holloway: And so you
were you arrested.
Robinson: He arrested
us. That provoked the arrest of 5,000 people at the South
African embassy over the next year. Not a day went by when
somebody wasn't being arrested at the embassy. We sustained
those protests as long as the anti-apartheid measure was before
the Congress. It passed the House, passed the Senate, was
vetoed by Ronald Reagan. The Senate overrode the veto, the
first time a Congress had overridden a sitting president's
foreign policy veto in the 20th century. And that
provoked sanctions around the world and signaled the beginning
of the end of apartheid in South Africa. And so it was a major
victory for us and putting the U.S. on the right side of that
important anti-apartheid issue.
Holloway: You've been
passionate about many international issues that affect blacks
all over the world for decades, as we've heard, but what makes
you so passionate about that? Many are now just becoming passionate
about international issues and maybe issues of Africa because
of the recent attacks on America and the war on terrorism?
What makes you so passionate and why should people share that
passion now?
Robinson: Well I had
always believed-I think I came of age when I was in Law School.
I went to Harvard at the age of 26 and I must confess an embarrassing
ignorance about foreign affairs before I got there, and began
to read voraciously and before I discovered that the U.S.
was on the wrong side of all of these major issues. We were
not only supporting apartheid diplomatically, we were heavily
invested in it. The wars had begun in Angola, Mozambique,
Guinea-Bissau, against Portuguese colonialism, which was a
500-year old institution in Africa. So Africans were at war.
The U.S. was on the side of Portugal. The same was true in
Rhodesia. And so throughout southern Africa the U.S. had aligned
itself with the white minority in its efforts to deny people
democratic rights. And so I felt then what I feel now, that
African-Americans had a responsibility to the African world,
and as much as we live in the most powerful country on earth,
to make sure that we put it on the right side of this issue
because I believe our interests are indissolubly bound up
with the interests of Africa and the Caribbean. And so a strong
Africa means a strong black America, and vice-versa. And as
much obtains for the Caribbean. And so I've devoted the last
25 years of my life to these kinds of issues. And I've never
distinguished myself as an African-American from black South
Africans or Nigerians or Ethiopians or Haitians; we're all
one people. I think with a common cause and a common struggle
seeking a common outcome: better lives, freedom from tyranny
for all of us worldwide. And I think we'll get there together
more quickly than we could ever hope to arrive to such a high
plane acting separately.
Holloway: Do you see
that there is a common thread as we all look at our role or
observation in this war on terrorism?
Robinson: Well I see
several things; I think it is unforgivable that people around
the world would kill innocent people. It's just totally inexcusable.
At the same time, I think it is very difficult to mount defenses
against it, because one doesn't know where to look. A British
statesman said not long ago that America can destroy any country
on earth but it cannot and will not be able to defend its
own citizens. And so I don't think there can be a security
tight enough to accomplish that end. So it seems to me, it
behooves us as Americans to ask questions about why these
things have happened, what has driven people to such states
of anger that they would do such things? What could it be
in our policy, why are we loathed in so many quarters of the
world? It's certainly helpful to listen and learn and I think
to some degree it is because we have aligned ourselves with
forces that are not in the interest of democracy and self-determination
in many parts of the world. And so I think we've got to do
two things: one, of course you have to practice security and
you have to take measures to fight those who would commit
acts of terrorism, but I also think you have to attack these
things at the root, at the causes.
Holloway: Now let me
ask you, just before this attack on America, the U.S. was
involved in a worldwide race relations-conference on racism,
and the United States pulled out of that. And some African-Americans,
especially some of the nation of Islam black Muslims felt
that may or may not have had something to do with reactions
in terms of terrorism or fuel some of the hatred towards America
from those other parts of the world.
Robinson: I think that
would be a very small part of it. I think the genesis of this
hatred goes back a very long way. The problems in the Middle
East are on towards a century old. A Brit named Percy Cox
in the '20s drew lines in the sand creating nations that theretofore
did not exist. And so Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and Iraq and
all of those nations just simply did not exist. They're products
of British colonialism. Much the same was done in Africa.
And in the Middle East, Palestinians felt that they were entirely,
totally dispossessed of their land. These are old enmities
in the Middle East and the feeling is in many parts that we
have been unsympathetic to the interest of indigenous people
there; and further, we've done things that are insulting to
Islam, to their holy places. Much is the feeling in Saudi
Arabia about our policies and our relationship with the Saudi
government. And so these are very complicated, very old issues,
misunderstood in large part by a society that covets newness.
Americans don't know very much about the history of anything.
I think we think the world happened yesterday. And we don't
have a great deal of sophistication about why things happen.
We look at Congo and say, "Oh, isn't Congo a mess"
without knowing the King Leopold slaughtered 10 million Congolese
between 1890 and 1910 and stole all of the riches of the country.
Or that Dwight David Eisenhower approved the assassination
of Patrice Lumumba or that the CIA imposed Mobutu on the Congo
and destroyed the country. We have no idea of what our responsibility
could be for the difficulties in a number of African countries
and the Caribbean.
Holloway: Let's move
now to your latest book, The Reckoning, in terms of
what blacks owe to each other. And one of the things you say
in the book as we move back to the United States here now
is that to understand the full damage that America has done
to the black race or the black world over the last 346 years,
you must extrapolate the general from the specific, not the
other way around. What do you mean by that?
Robinson: Well, this
book is built around a true story, a picture of the lives
of two fellows I've gotten to know well who live in New York:
one is PeeWee Kirkland and the other is Wallace New child
Lynch. And these are brilliant guys, good fellows, nice guys
who lived under such circumstances of poverty, such absence
of opportunity that they committed early, when they were 13
years old or so, to lives of crime. They dealt drugs; they
were loan sharking; they did everything imaginable. Some they
did in cooperation with white bond traders, with store owners,
that they agreed to rob the stores so the owner could get
the insurance money. PeeWee went to jail, to federal prison
twice, but none of the people that they did things with ever
went to prison. And now these guys are in New York with programs
trying to wean black youth from the gang life, from the thug
life. Now when I say we have to extrapolate from the specific
to go to the general, I mean that there are literally hundreds
of thousands if not millions of PeeWees now, they are filling
our prisons. The American prison system has become-and I say
this not loosely-the new slavery inasmuch as we're building
these prisons for profit often so that white investors can
make money from black misery. We're building public prisons
to benefit the communities in which they're built because
they bring new jobs, like the 1400 jobs that two prisons in
Malone, New York brought to an all-white village in Malone.
84% of the inmates are black and Hispanic. We're a country
with 1/20 of the world's population but 1/4 of the world's
prisoners. Over 2 million prisoners, half of whom are black.
And you say, well, one might ask, well if they did something
bad, shouldn't they be in prison? But blacks commit 14% of
drug use, are responsible 14% of drug use in America but are
arrested-their arrests comprise 35% of the arrests for drug
offenses-
Holloway: More than
twice.
Robinson: 55% of the
convictions for drug offenses; 75% of prison admissions for
drug offenses. And so a young white male in America stands
a 1 in 15 chance of being arrested and incarcerated; a young
Hispanic, 1 in 10; a young black 1 in 3. And so we have a
whole generation of young black males who have become caught
up in the prison industrial complex. It is chewing up our
youth and benefiting investors and towns who are competing
to get prisons built in their towns. You take a place like
New York State: New York built from 1817 to 1981, 33 prisons;
then came Rockefeller with the Rockefeller drug laws, which
means that for a non-violent drug offense you can go to prison
for 15 years. We've already talked about the differential
justice and who's arrested, convicted, and when we are convicted
we serve terms exactly twice as long as whites do for commission
of the same crime. So Rockefeller passes the drug laws and
so the harvest begins, and then Governor Cuomo begins building
the prisons. From 1982 to 1999 New York State, which had built
33 virtually in its history, builds 38 more, filled largely
with blacks and Hispanics.
Holloway: Where is
local, state and national black leadership on this issue of
this de facto slavery and this prison industrial complex?
Robinson: I think largely
missing the point. I think we talk a great deal about racial
profiling, as if that were the forest; it's the tree. It's
what's happening to a whole generation of young black males:
that's the forest. And I suspect in part that we talk more
about racial profiling, driving while black and that sort
of thing, because that is still an issue that affects all
blacks. But what affects the PeeWees is this absence of opportunity,
this legacy of slavery, this prison industrial complex. And
this failure to understand that we're still all in this together.
What happened after the civil rights movement, people like
myself and yourself who were prime to go to college and we
came from families that were intact, parents that were loving
and encouraging, models for our behavior. And so all we needed
was the ceiling removed a bit and we did well. But most of
us were bottom-stuck, homes broken, fathers not there, intergenerationally
riddled with pathologies. Those people remained and I think
that we, since the civil rights movement, have argued less
tenaciously in their interest than we have in our own. And
our relationship to President Clinton is a good example of
that. For some curious, arcane, difficult to understand reason,
black communities had a great affection for Bill Clinton and
with the exception of the things he has done for certain blacks,
he's done nothing for the mainstream black community. He added
more federal prisons to the prison rolls than Bush and Clinton
put together. Built more prisons than either of them, destroyed
the Caribbean economies, did as much to Africa. Welfare reform
pushed people into poverty. He was terrible for black people.
But he bought us with gestures.
Holloway: We're about
to run out of time, believe it or not. I want to ask you,
we're just coming off of King holiday here, and how would
you say that Dr. King's dream translates into what's going
on today?
Robinson: Well I think
in more ways that one generally publicly appreciates, I think
America likes to sum up King's work as a work that produced
the dismantlement of de jure discrimination and segregation
in America and all of that. And certainly that changed my
life. I'm 60 now and so I was 15 when he came to my high school
during the Birmingham campaign and Montgomery and all of that,
and it meant everything, because he had become a national
hero by that time. But King was much larger than that. I mean,
he spoke about apartheid, he spoke out about global issues,
he spoke out creating controversy about our role in Vietnam.
And lastly he spoke out about economic justice and economic
equality. And did not get as far when he started to talk about
these issues of fundamental social and economic parity that
threatened the interest of those sometimes who had supported
us on the right to check into this hotel or eat in this restaurant
or ride on that bus.
Holloway: And we're
facing that similar kind of thing today.
Robinson: Absolutely.
And he would be making this argument today about this prison
industrial complex, were he alive.
Holloway: Thank you
so much. Very quickly, can you give me a 15 or 20 second statement
on reparations today?
Robinson: Well, it's
very simple: I think we're going to court with Johnny Cochran,
Charles Ogletree, Willie Geary and other lawyers on board
sometime in the fall of this year, in several federal courts.
We're going to pursue this thing. You don't take from a people
and destroy them, rob them of the value of their hire or their
labor for 246 years, build major companies like Fleet Bank
and Brown University, build the White House, the Capital,
Georgetown University and all of this through their labor;
you don't develop enormous wealth on one side, having taken
from the other side creating this great gap and then say close
the gap. It doesn't happen. Compensation is due.
Holloway: Thank you
so much. we've run completely out of time and I certainly
appreciate your time. And I leave you with a quote from Mr.
Robinson's latest book, The Reckoning: "While
broad programmatic restitution can insure African-Americans'
future, it cannot salvage a living generation of African-American
men and women who are being, in alarming numbers, lost to
the black community as wives, husbands, mothers, fathers,
breadwinners and responsible social contributors. This we
must do for ourselves," he says. Thank you for joining
us tonight on Black Issues Forum. We'd like to hear
from you: contact us via e-mail. Or our telephone number there
the numbers and the web site and e-mail is on the screen.
If you'd like to know more about Randall Robinson, TransAfrica
or his books or more information on Black Issues Forum,
visit us. For Black Issues Forum, I'm Jay Holloway.
You join us every Friday night at 9:30 only on UNC-TV. You
have a blessed evening and a good night.
[THEME MUSIC]
Voiceover: This program
is made possible in part by contributions from UNC-TV viewers
like you. Thank you.
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