In Black America; Randall Robinson

Now for me, it's yourself. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is In Black America. I owe, in many respects, a debt of gratitude to several leaders in the state of Missouri, but none more than Congressman Bill Clay.

When I came to Washington 16 years ago, had no job, no where to stay, nothing but a pot full of ambitions. I went to see Bill Clay to ask for a job. I got a job before I got an apartment, writing speeches for him for two years. The Clay, of course, is one of the powerful members of the House of Representatives. Alan Wheat is fast becoming a powerful member of the House of Representatives. Missouri has distinguished itself in its black members of Congress, and I am very proud to have worked with them over these many years, and proud to see Bill's son now coming along in the same path. Randall Robinson, Executive Director of TransAfrica, a lobby group for Africa and the Caribbean. This nation and the world is aware of the relentless General Persuasioneth and Stubborneth

of Randall Robinson, perhaps the most influential voice for Africa today in America. And in most cases, people are listening. Formed back in 1977, TransAfrica, on the leadership of Randall Robinson, is asserting itself as an institution of expression and extension of Pan-Africaness work, started by George Padmore, CLR James, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Paul Robeson. Also in the Robinson's direction, TransAfrica has established programs at Lincoln University and Spelman College to orientate black students in foreign service careers. TransAfrica also plans to introduce elementary school students to the world of foreign affairs when it moves into a renovated school building in the nation's capital. I'm Johnny O'Hanston, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. This week, Randall Robinson, Executive Director of TransAfrica, in Black America. Perhaps focused by Clarence Thomas' nomination to the Supreme Court and much of the controversy

that surrounds that nomination. I normally talk about foreign policy and I normally have the good sense to confine myself in my remarks about something I know something about. But I've got strong feelings on some of these issues because, in many respects, I see the social fabric of our nation tearing apart. My own city, Washington, DC, we are on a pace to set a record for murders, drugs are paralyzing our cities. There was a time when drug dealers were killing drug dealers and people thought that we were not at risk if we weren't involved in that industry. But now, innocent bystanders are being inadvertently killed in cities across America.

With a mandate from the Congressional Black Caucus, Randall Robinson formed TransAfrica back in 1977 with only two staff persons to date, they are 12. Born in Richmond, Virginia, the path to his current line of work was first laid with his parents, who were both teachers, who imparted a positive history of Africa in both their sons and daughters. Randall Robinson completed a degree in sociology at Virginia Union University before attending Harvard Law School. Robinson was involved with the South African Relief Fund and later was a Ford Foundation Fellow in Tanzania. After law school, he worked as a public interest attorney in Boston before coming to Washington some 16 years ago as a Congressional aid. For more than two decades, Robinson is stressed that blacks in this country can play a vital role in the development of many African economies. He won African American business persons to find profitable opportunities and partnerships

in Africa's public and private sectors. This past summer, Randall Robinson was the keynote speaker at the annual awards banquet of the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus in Jefferson City, Missouri. Mr. Randall Robinson. Our cities are falling apart, our education budgets are being slashed, discrimination is being looked to scan set, the problems of the elderly and the disadvantaged are being ignored and pathology deepens in our community. There was a time when people killed people with a purpose, with anger, with focus, with consciousness. Now we're seeing a new generation of people who killed people remosslessly, totally disconnected from the human family. What has happened so dramatically in our culture, to loose among us this deadly social disease?

How long can our leadership in Washington pay absolutely no attention to what ails us as a nation? We've really set up some false issues. The issue has never been and is not now a question of quotas or affirmative action versus self-help and bootstraps making it. These two things are not mutually exclusive. We need to talk about how we do it and how we don't do it. We need to talk about the society's responsibility to us and our responsibility for ourselves. Forfe and I feel and sound like a conservative. Often I grow tired of black folk blaming our dilemma wholly on white folk.

Don't carve about racism white folk have been racist or racist and are going to be racist. The fact is that in view of that, what are we going to do for ourselves? So in that respect, I agree with Clarence Thomas. We shouldn't have to climb a 12 foot fence when others have no fence at all. So these things are not mutually exclusive. But we will need leadership from Washington. We need not to be distracted by other pirate technical events such as what happened in the Middle East. We spent a billion dollars a day on a war that solved not a single problem. What was so very tragic about it all was to see this this this this orgy of American celebration

at our war making in the Middle East. We had a range of problems in our foreign policy there before we went to war. Stability of a state of Israel, a solution to the problem of the Palestinian people, stability and economic stability for the other countries in the region, a control of Islamic fundamentalism, the salvation of secular governments in countries like Egypt. But every one of those problems that we had before the war, we have now almost more complicated than before. We have restored a mere to his throne in Kuwait. And it is not a bit more democratic now than it was then nor is Saudi Arabia nor are the governments of Egypt and Morocco more secure but less secure nor are we closer to a solution

of Israel's problem, nor have we met the fundamental and just demands of the Palestinian people for a fair deal. But we have spent billions and billions of dollars there, taken out of the education budgets of our country, our national budget and our state budgets, taken out of the hide of cities trying to stand upright, taken away the attention of Americans who need to focus on issues that have to do with our families, our neighborhood and our national social fabric. We have forgotten ourselves. The sad thing about it, we have forgotten one of the basic lessons of democracy. Democracy is rooted in an enlightened citizenry. And so our first responsibility is to make those that we elect to lead us to account to

us. If we don't understand how our society works, we don't understand anything about our world, we cannot be little, good little de-democrats. Fact is in the Western community, Americans know less about themselves and their world than any other national population. In a contest recently of global Western industrialized nations, to measure global sophistication we finished at the absolute bottom. One in eight Americans could not find the United States on a world map. Recently a test of New York State High School two students determined in upstate New York one in five didn't know where Canada was. It was two miles do north. Member of Congress once told me he didn't think there were twenty members of Congress who could name five African countries.

And so when we're faced with a Middle East crisis, most Americans are not in a position to undertake public debate with the president because we never heard of Kuwait before the war broke out. So we've got to ask ourselves what is wrong with our education systems across the country. For if we don't have public enlightenment and if we don't have general sophistication, we cannot have democracy. We will be really hortened forever. And so I say if we're going to build a stronger black family, a stronger American family, we have the responsibility as Democrats in our own society to make our leadership account. And to do that we have to better inform ourselves and we have to understand in the black national community that we are not going to be transformed as a national society by celebrity charismatic

leadership. Forget about it. With the only community in the country with leaders, everybody else has jobs. We will not be turned around by famous people. The celebration of it, the fascination with it, tends to absolve us of responsibility at the home and ground zero level. If we want to talk about leadership, let's talk about teachers. If we want to talk about leadership, let's talk about mothers and fathers. We want to talk about leadership, let's talk about young people. We want to talk about leadership, let's talk about anybody who does an honest day's work for an honest day's wage. We want to talk about leadership.

We have to understand that we need to in our own black community to have a kind of national town meeting of sorts to talk about values. That we have to recommit ourselves to the notion of hard work. That we, as students, have to understand if you got the grade and you didn't do the work, you got cheated. For the world is run by people, the world is run by people who know what they're talking about. And we have to understand in the last analysis that suffering is not redemptive, that people who turn the other cheek simply get slapped twice, that the meek may inherit the earth, but not the drilling rights. We have to understand that if we want empowerment, we have to understand where the levels of power are

through sophistication and education and dedication and hard work. We have to get ourselves in the rooms of power as they are dispersed across our society. Things don't happen because they are right. Right people lose all the time. I remember some years ago, Jimmy Carter was meeting with some black ministers. And he told them that he had five minutes to spend. He was running behind in his schedule. They could take some pictures or they could discuss some issues. I'll let you tell me what they elected to do. We have a responsibility to get in the room. And once you are in the room, understand our responsibility to Harriet and Sojourner Martin

and Malcolm and to the young people who follow us on the stage of struggle. And so I say to Clarence Thomas, I wish he had learned what I learned when I got my ticket to Harvard. The ticket wasn't for me. I didn't pay for it. And so I owed somebody else a debt. I am proud of the Congressional Black Caucus, but we are growing up as a community. We have to learn to criticize each other constructively publicly. We don't want somebody on the Supreme Court solely because the somebody is black. We can undertake critical analysis of our own folk when the time comes. For the decisions of the Supreme Court

will affect millions of Americans for the next 20, 30, 40 years. And the decision may be more important than the color of the decider. We can look beyond that and understand the broader societal consequences of what we're talking about here. And so many years ago, trying to understand this business of where we ought to be, somebody came to me looking for EID, the Agency for International Development, a Black Forester who spoke French. And all of these years, I've been looking for a Black Forester who spoke French. Every rule, where significant decisions are made, we have to be there. In business, in media, in politics, in the arts, in foreign affairs, and in domestic affairs.

Some years, my late brother was the ABC anchor person on world news tonight. And Max always understood that it was more important to be behind the camera than in front of a camera. That the decisions are made at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Decisions that are made about what we ought to learn about ourselves and about our world. And then you look in these rooms and you see how badly underrepresented we are. In a city like Washington, D.C., we fondly call Chocolates City, where we have so much political power, we have no economic power. There is no such thing as power without economic power. And then a city. Many years ago, when I was in school, you know how young people are.

Young people have a kind of arrogance of political virtue. And the one thing you are is right all the time. And I think the good Lord blesses us with children so they will come back to curse us. My daughter, when she was in the 11th grade, one night, went to bed a fashion model and woke up as Harriet Tutman. Went on to Spellman College, and she has been right ever since. So one cannot have a discussion with young people. And I remembered when I was in law school, I rose in my corporations class to talk about South Africa. And I went on, I was just waxing beautifully. My thing was symmetrical. It had a compelling logic. It just unfolded and it spread out. And I was just so impressed when I finished. I said, no, there. And the professor said to me, because it was so full of morality and that sort of thing, Mr. Robinson, the Divinity School is one block down and two blocks over.

You can go to meet with any politician in Washington. You can know everything you need to know about an issue. You can be right. You can have your facts complete, but unless you can alter that member's political fortunes, you're wasting your time. So we have to know the facts and we have to understand power. And we have to use it in our community's interests. And we have to raise our money in our community for he who pays the paper calls the tune. I went to college on a basketball scholarship. And only later on did I understand the foolishness sweating like a pig running up and down the floor, 94 feet in little short pants. But something told me that we were something of heroes on campus how distorted our values were. For it is better to own the team than to play on the team.

So it seems to me when we talk about improving black families, we have to talk about a long list of things. We have to urge our national government to help us salvage that part of our family that now seems lost in self-destructive crime. We have to talk with critical self-examination about our own role in our own homes and our own value development. We have to talk about national policy, domestic policy, local policy, state policy. But at the same time, we have to talk about what we are going to do for ourselves. For we are now faced with an administration that is going to be reelected, that really cares not a wit about the interest of our community.

I'm really shocked to learn that George Bush enjoyed up until recently 60% black support in our community. He is a man when he was a candidate for Congress, opposed the Johnson Civil Rights Bill, then as he opposes it now. He is a man who two weeks ago lifted sanctions against South Africa saying that he was merely complying with a very law that he violated in lifting the sanctions. Black South Africans couldn't vote 30 years ago. They cannot vote now. Nelson Mandela is out of jail. He is not free. So we have an administration in Washington that's inimical and hostile to our interest. We have to learn to help ourselves when we have enemies on high and make sure we eliminate those enemies just as soon as we can politically. But in the last analysis, when we talk

about the future of African-American families, we don't really have to talk about all we do wrong in our foreign policy. I won't go into that with you tonight. We have to talk about what certain communities do that do well when they've got friends in high places and when they do not. In the last analysis, I think our salvation is within ourselves. And somehow we have to begin to preach and teach and talk more about self-responsibility. And at the same time, make clear to Clarence Thomas to the Bush administration and to any who would listen. That that does not absolve the federal government of sensitivity and responsibility for the domestic mess they have made of this nation. We give the world the impression that we support democracy. But you know, people who live in other parts of the world

know more about us than we know about them. I drink a can of Donald Duck Orange juice in the desert of the Western Sahara. I watch Dallas on television in Libya. Can you imagine Muammar Gaddafi watching Dallas? I watched happy days on television in Zimbabwe. I debated a young high school student in Tanzania who was telling me about the principles and writings of Thomas Jefferson. They know more about us than we know about them. But they know the hard and difficult and bitter parts that right now in the president's request for aid to Africa for democracy is he has requested a fourth as much as he has requested for tyrannies. We don't support democracy in virtually any place in the world. But if Americans don't know about it, there's nothing we can do about it. My God, this is a problem from top to bottom,

east, west, black, and white. In his first term, Ronald Reagan went to Latin American toast at the people of the wrong country. When he was told he was not in that country, he said that's where he was going next. And he wasn't going there at all. Now, if white folk can't afford this massive stupidity, black folk cannot. For we have, we are expected to defend our interest. We must know what those interests are. We must imbue our children with a sense of historic responsibility. We must hand them the torch and encourage them to bear it well to the next generation, with courage, with decency, with integrity, knowing the name of the game is not to accomplish celebrity, but to pay

your debt to our people. If we can do that in good times and in bad times, the black community will survive and prosper. After round the Robinson address, I spoke with him to get a better focus on some of his remarks. Mr. Robinson, your address focused on a lot of issues. I'm going to try to go through them there swiftly. He stated that for 10 years there was a national disregard for the total well-being of particularly black American in this country. Could you elaborate a little bit more on that thing that the Reagan and Bush administrations have, through their appointments to the Supreme Court, their appropriations for education, their lack of commitment to affirmative action, and their opposition to the civil rights legislation, their support for South Africa, in every imaginable way this administration

has demonstrated a callous disregard for the interest of not just black people, but the elderly, those people in our society who have had a difficult time and find themselves disadvantaged. This administration has had no sensitivity at all towards those parts of our national constituency. You also touched on a problem in D.C. with the proliferation of drugs and the census killing of viewing beings. Is there any light at the end of the tunnel of the administration, the D.C. administration, with the new mayor trying to address those concerns? Well, the mayor is, I think, doing as good a job as any human being could do. It's, she's doing an excellent job. But no mayor can cure city's eels when they are as far reaching as they are in D.C. For our cities, we need leadership

from the very top of our country. We need the president to underscore those things that A.L.S. as a society, and the president has not bothered to concern himself with these kinds of matters. But I think Sharon Pratt Dixon is doing an absolutely wonderful job. Mr. Randall Robinson, executive director of TransAfrica. If you have a question or comment regarding this program, write us. Remember views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for in Black America's technical producer, Dana Whitehair. I'm Johnny O. Hanson, Jr., please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available that may be purchased by writing in Black America cassettes, Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America cassettes,

Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm Johnny O. Hanson, Jr., join me this week on in Black America. Drugs are paralyzing our cities. There was a time when drug dealers were killing drug dealers. People thought that we were not at risk if we weren't involved in that industry. Randell Robinson, Executive Director of TransAfrica, this week on in Black America.