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Declaration Against Israel Causes Dissension at the U.N. Conference on Racism

Aired September 02, 2001 - 17:17   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
STEPHEN FRAZIER, CNN ANCHOR: A strongly worded declaration against Israel is causing dissension at the U.N. World Conference on Racism. The declaration brands Israel a racist apartheid state, guilty of ethnic cleansing. It was adopted at a parallel conference, called the Human Rights Forum, which is going on at the same time as the racism conference and is just next door. CNN's Charlayne Hunter- Gault has reaction now from Durban, South Africa site of the conference.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was late into the night when they adopted the final declaration. The majority of the 42 caucuses approved the document, though some abstained. Jewish groups and some of their supporters walked out. The fallout was most intense on Sunday, from as for away as Israel.

SHIMON PERES, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER: It is an outburst of hate, of anti-Semitism, of anti-Israeli, without any consideration. It feels like it came -- it doesn't have neither understanding nor tolerance, nor a message for the future.

HUNTER-FAULT: The foreign minister's views echoed at the Durban conference.

RABBI ANDREW COOPER, SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER: That document is the worst anti-Jewish document since the Nazi period in 1945.

RAJI SOURANI, PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS CENTER: I think this world conference was and supposed to be -- the works of the victims, the works of the suppressed and the oppressed, and try speaking -- I mean, the words (UNINTELLIGIBLE) express that in a clear-cut way.

HUNTER-GAULT: A U.S. delegation to the conference was downgraded because of earlier draft language condemning Israel. Now, congressional members in the delegation disagree over how to respond, with some holding out the possibility of a walkout if language in the official declaration bears any resemblance to the NGO document.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This document is repugnant and revolting, and I expect the American delegation in the official meeting to denounce it. REP. JOHN CONYERS (D), MICHIGAN: This not the end of the world. We should stay and negotiate and build up friendship and support with our African friends. We should make incursions into the Arab bloc that is represented here, and we should stay the course.

HUNTER-GAULT: A Palestinian on the official delegation said he believed the official document would be different from the NGO's declaration, but he wouldn't condemn the NGO statement.

NASSER AL-QUDWA, OFFICIAL PALESTINIAN DELEGATE: We are not going to denounce the documents. On the contrary, we appreciate their work, however their documents is theirs. And the official document will be ours.

HUNTER-GAULT (on camera): The NGO document is not legally binding. But emanating from this U.N.-sponsored conference on racism, it will have a status and an impact that it otherwise wouldn't have.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault, CNN, Durban, South Africa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRAZIER: And with that impact, the anti-Israeli declaration is overshadowing another controversial topic at that conference, where delegates are still debating whether reparations should be paid to African nations for the slave trade.

Now we will debate that issue with our two guests: Dorothy Tillman, a long-time civil rights activist and an alderman of Chicago's third ward, a city counsel member -- joining us though not from Chicago, but from vacation I guess in Pensacola, Florida. And Robert Sedler, a civil rights lawyer and professor in Wayne State University who is in our Detroit office. Thank you both for joining us.

Alderman Tillman, our first question for you. This U.N. conference, is taking up the idea of reparations on an international basis, but let's talk to you about reparations for American citizens who are descended from slaves. You have called for that in the past.

DOROTHY TILLMAN, CHICAGO CITY COUNCIL: First of all, I think it's awful that in Durban they are dealing with everything but what happened to us as a people, because the worst Holocaust in the world was what happened to African people, the fact that all of our identity was stripped from us, and because for we did in America we fueled the world.

In this country I think that we know that African-Americans in this country built this country. We had free labor from blacks, and white folks received wealth from it, and we are still seeing the effect of slavery today. African-Americans are the only ones in this country that the American government ever created laws to continually oppress us.

FRAZIER: That's the legal and the economic justification for reparations. What form would you advocate they take? TILLMAN: Well, I think we have several forms that we are talking about. As you know, that we have a group with (UNINTELLIGIBLE) out of Harvard and a group of lawyers who are working collectively, who are we going to come with a collective decision.

As to what form -- we are talking about -- some people are talking about a Marshall plan similar to a Marshall plan, for lack of a better word, than when you look at our communities and you see the residue of slavery that is going on today, that our communities need to be rebuilt. When you see the effect of the fact that poverty was handed down to us and we are still suffering, we have the largest prison population, we are 1 percent of the national wealth, just right after the Civil War we are still 1 percent of the wealth.

When you look at education and you look at our communities and the fact that all of these different industries thrived off the slaves, industry is still thriving and we are still poor. So we are going to have to look at both governments and also private industry in order for them to repay us to repair the damage.

FRAZIER: Well, let's ask -- as we turn to professor Sedler, also point out -- you mentioned the Marshall plan, Ms. Tillman, and you mean a reference to a domestic version of the plan that -- by which the United States helped Europe following World War II?

TILLMAN: Yes, the United States rebuilt Europe. Not only did they rebuild them, they are continuing to help them today. Why do you think in this country we are worried about mad cow, about cows coming from Europe with beef? Because the United States is continuing to make sure that they fuel Europe. Even the slave trade fueled Europe, during the slave -- they were drop slaves off and take goods back to Europe and also resources.

FRAZIER: Indeed. All right. Let's turn to professor Sedler now. As a lawyer and a civil rights lawyer, professor, tell us if there are legal underpinnings for the idea of reparations, and what they have used in precedence, such as the money that was paid to Japanese Americans following their internment during World War II?

ROBERT SEDLER, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY: Well, a legal case -- I mean, a challenging -- challenging the existence of reparations and seeking some remedy for it in my opinion would not have any chance of success. If for no other reason that our constitution was all about slavery. It was recognized in no less than three places. It allowed the importation of slaves until 1808, it provided for collection of fugitive slaves who escaped, and it counted slaves as three-fifth of a person for representation in the House of Representatives.

Now, our constitution definitively repudiated slavery with the 13th Amendment in 1865 that abolished slavery and the 14th Amendment that overturned the Dred Scott case and made citizens of the newly emancipated African Americans.

My problem with the concept of reparations goes to the analogy that you have just used to reparations awarded by Congress to Japanese Americans who were interred in World War II. The concept of reparations means compensation to identifiable victims of wrongs -- the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, Japanese Americans who were relocated, slave laborers in Europe.

Slavery has long ended. And there are no surviving slaves and we are not going to deal...

TILLMAN: I differ with him.

SEDLER: ... with pressing problems in American society by writing out checks to the descendants of the slaves. Now...

TILLMAN: I differ with him.

FRAZIER: Well, all right, we'll get back to professor Sedler in a moment. Alderman Tillman, you differ there, you say.

TILLMAN: I differ with him, because first of all, even though we had the 13th Amendment, even with 13th Amendment, when the so-called Emancipation Proclamation even came into play, black people was turned out on the streets without any means of support, and you had created a non-person.

Blacks were stripped of all of their identity, we didn't know who we were, we had no language and no place to go. Not to mention what happened to our psyche. When you look at the fact that you talk about the constitution, and in terms of the constitution saying that it is all right to have slaves, well, then when you deal with other Holocausts, when you go to other countries, the Jews was paid reparation -- even America is paying into the Jewish reparation. The Japanese was paid. The Indians were paid, and you can use that same argument and say that it was their constitutional right to do that.

There is never a constitutional right to take a human being and bring them across the trans-Atlantic slave -- it's the worst case a man and humanity demand, the fact that 80 million to 100 million African-Americans died crossing -- coming across here and the fact that we fueled the world, let me just say for Africa...

FRAZIER: Wait a minute, let me just -- did you say 80 million? I thought...

TILLMAN: No, it was 80 to 100 million of us died coming across, not to mention those who jumped overboard and how we were treated.

FRAZIER: I think I want to just -- I want to help you out there, I think the total number of people who were enslaved was about 11 million.

TILLMAN: I didn't say enslaved. I said those of us who came across the trans-Atlantic. Remember, we went throughout the Americas, we went to Brazil, we went everywhere. You had a white society from another country -- Europe and France and all of them -- that's why they don't want to take it up on the floor because they all divided up Africa and they all got a piece of us.

FRAZIER: Well, how would you address those practical questions that professor Sedler just mentioned, for example assigning who should be -- who is a descendant from a slave...

TILLMAN: Well, it's very simple. I'm a descendant of slave, and I'm part of the sharecropping in this country. You had sharecropping where blacks work all day long, for year in and year out, and at the end of the year they would receive nothing.

FRAZIER: OK. Who should pay -- who should pay then?

(CROSSTALK)

TILLMAN: The government have to pay because they made laws to oppress us, and then you have a lot of industry that was built -- even in Alabama...

FRAZIER: So would you focus on corporations then that benefited from slaves?

TILLMAN: I think we got to do both. You had -- "The Wall Street Journal" did an article July 6 that talked about all of the blacks that was put in prison just to build free labor. So you have an insurance company that was built, you had your -- your stock market was built. A lot of whites right now are enjoying their stocks, their bonds. Even when you look at the media, whites was given air waves free, we were not given that.

So, they are enjoying -- they are enjoying the results of slavery from our free labor, and we are enjoying poverty. They got wealth and we had poverty, and I think America -- it's a shame of America, and America has to deal with what they did to us in order to move forward.

That's why Bush did not want to deal with it at the world conference, and that's why the other white countries who decided they didn't want to deal with it -- France don't want to deal with it, because ...

(CROSSTALK)

FRAZIER: Well, in fact, you know, Germany apologized today for its role in the slave trade in a number of states it controlled up until World War I.

TILLMAN: I think all of them need to apologize, but they need to repair the damage.

FRAZIER: Let's turn to professor Sedler now. You mentioned you don't think that sending checks out to the descendants of slaves is a good idea, but you are, in fact, open to some -- to the idea of affirmative action pursued in a very aggressive way?

SEDLER: Yes, affirmative action is a crucial issue in American society today. It is by affirmative action that we will alleviate some of the consequences of the long and tragic history of racial discrimination in this country.

TILLMAN: But would the professor agree with me that affirmative action... SEDLER: Let me finish.

TILLMAN: But would he agree with me that affirmative action today benefits everybody, but African-Americans are the last one on totem pole?

SEDLER: Let me finish.

TILLMAN: Yes, sir.

SEDLER: The premise of affirmative action is that it is forward- looking. It is not designed as reparations for the past, but to bring about the equal participation of African Americans in all important aspects of American life.

TILLMAN: But how do you do that?

SEDLER: It has been a success.

TILLMAN: That has not been a success.

SEDLER: We have increased the number of African American lawyers, doctors, professionals, journalists. We have a long way to go.

TILLMAN: But it was 1 percent during the Civil War in the national wealth, and blacks are still 1 percent! So how have we increased this?

SEDLER: Let me continue with this. In that aspect of bringing about the equal participation of African Americans in all important areas of American life, affirmative action has been a success here.

You are quite right. It has not dealt with one of the most enduring consequences of the long and tragic history of racism, of disproportionate black poverty, the problem of central cities like Detroit, which is 80 percent African American, the problems of central cities like Chicago.

We are not going to deal with those problems, by sending...

FRAZIER: Oh, it looks like we have lost the satellite that was bringing us professor Sedler.

TILLMAN: Well, let me just say that while he's talking about the poverty in Chicago and in Detroit, there is also poverty in Pensacola, Alabama, Mississippi. Mississippi has the worst rate of all, and think of all of our ancestors that did -- that did sharecropping, who did pick cotton for no money.

So I mean, there is a problem across this country when it comes to African-Americans, and most whites don't want to deal with repaying us, because they know that to repay us they have to first they got to acknowledge what they did to us, and secondly a lot of those companies that they have was built on the backs of slaves and free labor. America is going to tell other countries what to do, have to deal with us.

Your private industry, your insurance companies -- your insurance company, they insured the slave ships. That's how they got started. When they insured the slave ships, insured those bodies, they built and they built, so you've got a lot of industry that -- the railroads was built by blacks slaves.

When you look at all the things that we did, and the fact that we are still playing catchup today, and the fact that in Durban today, they are not dealing with what the white world, what Europe and all of them did to Africa. They want to talk about the Jewish problem, and what is happening over there.

FRAZIER: Alderman Tillman, I'm going have to interrupt, I'm afraid, because we are running out of time and we are unable to retrieve that satellite image for professor Sedler.

TILLMAN: I'm so sorry, and I want to thank you for having us on.

FRAZIER: Let me thank you. I'm grateful for your time, especially on if it's a vacation time as we suspect. We are grateful that you gave us some of your time today.

TILLMAN: Thank you.

FRAZIER: And our thanks too to professor Sedler in his absence in these final few seconds for joining us from Detroit

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