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Black Issues Forum
Representative Womble & Senator Goodall
Vajda: Resolutions expressing profound regret for discrimination and other acts against African-Americans passed unanimously in both the House and the Senate a few weeks ago but some think that an apology is not needed. Joining me to discuss this is Representative Larry Womble who is the sponsor of the House resolution and Senator Eddie Goodall. Senator Eddie Goodall, you did vote for the resolution but you don’t think it was necessary. Why?
Goodall: Well you know what we tried to analyze is why we felt the way we did. And I say we, I am talking about white people because I got a lot of emails saying, “Eddie you shouldn’t, you weren’t there, we weren’t there, we weren’t responsible for slavery.” And I tried to analyze that and determine why we did have some reservations about apologizing for something we don’t really have an association with. And that was described to me by my wife who happens to be in Psychology at UNC-C in graduate school. And she helped me understand that it is kind of the same logic when you take a lie detector test and you lie, you are saying something that you really don’t believe is true. So when I say I am sorry for apology there is a little bit of angst inside me because I really don’t have any association with slavery. And so I think that helped me with that explanation. So of course I supported it. I don’t, it is also suggested that whites have an invisible veil; they don’t see their whiteness as much as blacks experience their blackness. So I was voting “yes” so that it would be the right thing to do and if it meant something to the African-American community that was fine with me.
Plus the sections two and three that ask for institutions to promote racial reconciliation, and number three to ask everybody to respect the humanity of all individuals, those are things that I am here today and hopefully tomorrow we can do something about that. So that is why I supported that bill.
Vajda: Representative Womble, why an apology? Why now?
Womble: Well you just heard the senator say it; he voted for it. And you gave, he gave his own reason; he said it was the right thing to do. And it is. And it is still the right thing to do. Now we are not asking for an apology and I think that that is where the senator and some other people maybe are being sidetracked. We are not asking for a personal apology from the senator. Quite naturally common sense will tell you he wasn’t there. And I wasn’t there at that particular time. If you look at the bill, the resolution, it says the government, the State of North Carolina, this general assembly that we serve in. Well at that time that general assembly made laws on the books, regulations, such things as if you were caught trying to teach a slave to read you got 39 lashes. Or if you are a free person that came back into this state then you had to be re-enslaved again and then the only choice you had was to choose who your master is going to be. The State of North Carolina should not have participated in those kinds of things. Dealing in human flesh, the State of North Carolina should not have done that. And I am saying that those people who have called the senator and others saying, “I wasn’t there, I didn’t do it, I didn’t vote for it,” that is common sense. That is common knowledge. And we are saying the government, because the government, the State of North Carolina perpetrated laws, enforced the laws, and implemented the law on human beings which is unconscionable and we must get the record straight that we should not do that. And as a way of us going down the road of healing—and you always hear talk about one North Carolina, well let’s be one North Carolina in the truest sense of the word, that we must get to the healing and we must get the reconciliation.
Vajda: And that was going to be my next question. Besides setting the record straight, you are saying healing; do you think this apology will help in the healing of the African-American community?
Womble: I think it is a step, even though it is a baby step. I think it is a step down that long road, that long journey of us truly being one North Carolina, us truly getting to the point of healing and reconciliation just as they have done in South Africa with Nelson Mandela. We had our own apartheid here in this state and in this country. So I am hoping that yes, we will begin to go down that road. And there is reparation for that. My grandmother who didn’t have but a third-grade education said, “Son, first thing you have to do is be responsible for what you do. And if you are responsible and you find out you are wrong, the next thing to do is to apologize.”
Vajda: Representative Womble, you have in the past few sessions introduced the sterilization fund and also in 1898 Wilmington Act, there are a number of bills surrounding that. Why do you think reparations are needed?
Womble: Well so far as the sterilization is concerned, that is genocide. Again the state government through its Department of Social Services, these social workers, during the 1929s up until 1974 specifically, right here in this state—and there were 33 other states that did it. So North Carolina is not by itself. When you go in and forcibly take somebody out of their home, mostly young black girls, 10 and 11-years-old, take them out, sterilize them, and bring them back and their families can say nothing else about it. That is a form of genocide. Come to find out that the government is the one that set it up, implemented it, and enforced those kinds of things on children. We should not do children. The only thing that these people were guilty of, they were born black and they were born poor and most of them were born female. Now strange thing about it, they did a few white people like that, too, boys and girls, because of the drain, they said the drain that was going to be on society. That kind of stuff came from Hitlerism back during those times when they were trying to create a pure race, a pure society. And the way you do that is to eliminate all the impurities in their mind. And the way you do that is to kill people. And the government, State of North Carolina, did that. I don’t believe there is any amount of money that you could give these victims to make them whole again. But I think something should be done.
Vajda: Senator Goodall, you don’t think reparations are the right thing, why?
Goodall: Reparations I don’t. And let me just say that 60% of those in the sterilization program were African-American and 40% were white. So there were white victims also. I think reparations are a bad idea. I think it sets African-Americans against the very nation that actually set them free. Now the fact that slavery existed here is one thing, but slavery had existed across, of course across the world. We now have in our country, our African-Americans, if you take their income and their wealth, they would be the tenth largest economy in the world. And the income of African-Americans that live in our country is 20 to 50 times greater than the income of Africans. Now you may say that makes no sense but—and maybe it is not a good analogy, but I think it is. I think African-Americans have come a long way, there is a long way to go Representative Womble, but 620,000 people died in a war, not just about slavery but a large part of that battle had to do with slavery, so there is an investment there.
Womble: Let me say we died in that war, too, the African-Americans died in that war. We had to fight two wars. We had to fight the war on foreign countries so that we could have freedom here, but then when, after the war was over with we came back here and found out that we were treated like second-class citizens, that we still had to go in the back door, we still could not go to the movie theaters, we still could not eat at the lunch counters. But here we are fighting for freedom somewhere else and we didn’t even have freedom ourselves.
Goodall: Well you know the—
Vajda: Well the question is actually is, should reparations be given to the people that—I am guess no one argued that there was discrimination—should reparations be given in today’s world?
Womble: And I am saying that something should be given. We still haven’t got that old proverbial 40 acres and a mule yet. That has, and that was promised to us. And that was written down. That is part of what we are talking about history that has not been fulfilled, that promise has not been fulfilled. The other thing about it is that, as I said, I don’t believe any amount of money will make these people whole again. So it is not the money that is really important, it is the recognition that this country has done something to us. You stand up and admit yes, we have done it. Now other things are just as important. It may be more important for example, getting it correct in the history books, having a monument. Having also this displayed also is important for us to make sure that this does not happen again. That is still a form of reparation. Reparation doesn’t always have to take the form of money.
Goodall: Let me kind of finish that. The reparations I was talking about were money and again let me say that I think that perpetuates a culture of victimization for blacks, I think it is politics of envy. And I don’t think we need that in this country. I think you know we have equal opportunity. That doesn’t equate to equal outcomes. And the thought of doing this I think is perpetuating the, I think the racial flames that burn bridges, that don’t build bridges. And so I am totally against it as you can tell. We are going to disagree on this. Now the, the non-tangible things that they mean, if they mean something to the black community, certainly that is important. But I don’t think we should perpetuate what we are trying to get away from. When we talk about diversity we are trying to say let’s get away from this distinction between our colors and let’s go forward. So I think this does the opposite. What we can really look at is education, crime and taxes with the black community, when 70% or 60% of, or half at least of black youths aren’t graduating from high school, when we still have the test score gaps.
Womble: The state has them in half.
Goodall: And when you say 2003, no, you are saying in 2003 10% of African-American men between 24 and 29 were incarcerated. So those are the issues that I know Representative Womble cares deeply about those. I just want to focus on those and not the past.
Vajda: So you do agree that the government should take some kind of an active role in the, in helping the African-Americans?
Goodall: Yes, we have de facto segregation now in our school system because if you don’t have enough money to choose exactly where you want to live to go to the best schools or choose the private school; you are assigned a government school. I think families I would say start with those lowest on the socio-economic ladder, should be given either vouchers or tax credits if they are not paying a lot of taxes they wouldn’t have the tax credits but give them a voucher, give them money and let them pick a private school or the school of their choice and we will figure out how to get them there so that those black parents can make choices and get their kids again into the schools that they choose.
Vajda: Representative Womble, a final word?
Womble: What I am trying to do is get this state beyond the point of denial. This state as a whole, the government—and I’m not talking about any individual person or any individuals—the government as a whole is in a state of denial. We didn’t do that, or that was so-and-so and then we try to excuse it away, rationale. The fact is that the state did it; you stand up and be responsible for what you have done. Now that responsibility can take many forms and it can take many avenues. Just as the good senator said, these quotes that he is saying about what the devastating part of the African-American community—the state is part of it. It is the reason why we are in the situation that we have, that they don’t fund our schools at the level that they are suppose to fund the other schools. The other thing, look at healthcare. Many of us don’t have healthcare because it goes back to an economic thing wherein that blacks do not get the kinds of pay on the average that others get. We still have two societies. Until we wake up to the realization that we want to be one North Carolina and not just say it in words but we must practice it in deeds. Until then, then you are going to see all these other kinds of things. Look at the court system. Everywhere in part of our society here is a black person getting charged for something, here is a white person getting charged for the same thing. The black person will more than likely get more than what the white person was because it is based mainly on race. And we must make sure that we do that.
The other thing he is talking about is that we must get beyond color. I am sure that we ought to get beyond color, too, because Martin Luther King said we must judge a person on the content of their character rather than the pigmentation, the color of their skin. I agree with that. But just be getting rid of my color, then I become invisible. A lot of people like to call American the melting pot. Well I don’t like to be called a melting pot because when you are a melting pot everything dissolves and you can not tell any kind of identity. I like to think of America as being a quilt, where everybody contributes to make the quilt, the corduroy makes the quilt, the silk makes the quilt, the linen makes the quilt, the cotton makes the quilt, but you still kept your identity of what you are and you helped make the quilt. That is what I think our society to be. And when we start admitting to these kind of things, and living up to them, I think then that is when we will see America live up to all of its promises, and North Carolina live up to all its promises it is supposed to live up to.
Vajda: Representative Womble, Senator Goodall, great discussion. I appreciate it.
Goodall: Thank you.
Womble: Thank you so very much. It was our pleasure.
Goodall: Certainly was.
[END OF RECORDING]
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