Black Horizons; 3424; Julian Bond

You Welcome to Black Horizons. I'm your host, Chris Moore. Tonight we're proud to bring you an extended interview with Mr. Julian Bond, Chairman of the National NAACP, and a world leader in the fight for civil and human rights. We'll show you that interview in just a moment. Also on tonight's show, if you missed it on Q, we'll tell you about Amnesty International and their work here and abroad. And don't forget to grab pencil and paper for our community calendar on the horizon. But first, as an activist and educator and a

politician, Julian Bond has always been eloquently outspoken, and his recent appearance in town was no exception. I interviewed Mr. Bond in March minutes before he gave the inaugural address at the University of Pittsburgh Center on Race and Social Problems. We need a situation as our nation is once again at more than the previous goals. More without a reason or a break in town. More unnecessary at the moment. Before this speech, he sat down with Julian Bond for an interview. Mr. Bond, I wonder, you, uh, probably was about 30 years ago. I remember you were not allowed to take your seat in the Georgia Legislature because of your opposition to the Vietnam War. And here we are in the middle of another war. Do you think we've learned anything about war or unjust war in a generation? Apparently not. If we had, we wouldn't be engaged in this one right now. Uh, it's wrong to make comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. They're not the

same thing, but many of the arguments against that war prevail against this one. I mean, we have no connection between Saddam Hussein and November and September 11th. There are no weapons of mass destruction. Our troops have found so far or the inspectors found before then. The containment policy we were pursuing had worked for 12 years. He hadn't attacked anyone. I'm very much afraid, as I think most people are, that we're asking for trouble in Iraq, not only involving the safety of our own troops and their lives, but the lives of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Iraqis, and unrest in the region for generations and generations to come. I think this is an awful mistake. What do you think black Americans should do about the war? I host a number of radio talk shows in this community. And I can tell you, my barambity is that 95 % of them feel that this, as you do, this is the wrong effort. Yet when I see all the pictures of the troops, I see so many black troops, we're in a terrible double -bind. It seems to me. Well, you know, it's odd in a

way because this is the first war in which the number of black troops has been that high, about 30 percent, in which the number of black people prosecuting the war, Colin Powell, Contaleza Rice has been so great. And we're opposition to the war from the get -go, from the very beginning, among African Americans, has been as high. We can do the standard kinds of things. We can protest in the streets. We can march. We can protest. We can pick it. And we can wait for the next election. And make sure there's a gang that got us into war, doesn't hold power anymore. So political activism is going to be very important, you think, in the coming election? Oh, absolutely. I mean, we need to start now making sure every voter is registered. All the registered voters are ready to turn out in vote. You know, we go into most elections, losing a large portion of our electorate behind. From 25 to 50 percent of African Americans don't vote in most elections. We can do better than that. We ought to do better than that. Because not only is the issue of war and peace at stake, but the issue of our very futures. What kind of country are we going to live in? What kind of relationships

are we going to have with the rest of the world? What kind of relationships are we going to have with industry, with labor? All those things are on the ballot, even though they don't actually appear there. And unless we turn out and express our opinions, our voices and I go to be heard. What's it going to take to get us to the polls? Well, hopefully radio talk shows like yours, as well as all the usual groups that do it, the NAACP, the Urban League, dozens of others, churches, labor unions, that usual gang of suspects that gears up just before every election and make sure as many of us as can turns out in vote. Yet there was a certain amount of disenfranchisement also that occurred in Florida. People accused of being felons and said told they didn't have the right to vote. A lot of that went on according to what I read. It went on in Florida, it went on in New York State, it went on around the country. Some states have taken steps to clean up their acts, so we're pretty well assured that at least in some places, this won't happen again. But the fact that it might happen ought not be reason to keep us from going to cast our votes, I'd rather have my vote turn thrown out than not have cast

it all. So the best thing we can do is raise as much sand as we can right now and on election day cast the ultimate weapon and that's our right to vote. Your hand, Pittsburgh, to deliver a inaugural lecture for a center that's going to do a lot of research in race and politics. You think this kind of research is needed, obviously? Oh, absolutely. I mean, we think we know a lot about the condition of African Americans and of all of American citizens. We have a census done in this country every 10 years. It's just an encyclopedia of who we are, how much money we make, how much money we don't make, how many of us are rich, how many are poor, all those kinds of facts and figures. But there are other things we really don't have a good grip on. Why does some black kids in this school do very well? And some black kids in that school don't do well at all. Why is there such a high rate of single motherhood in African American communities? Is it because so many black men are in jail? Is it because those who aren't in jail aren't proper marriage partners don't make enough money? We need to know the answers to these and 100 ,000 other questions. And a center like

the one here can give us those answers. But once we have the answers, we need to do more than just know the answers. We need to act on the answers. Is that, would you plan to tell them in this inaugural address? That's part of what I plan to tell them. But I'm really going to try to reflect back on where we've been, where we are, and where we want to go. Where have we been, where are we, where are we going? Well, we've been in a bad place, but we've seen that bad place get better. I'm in my 60s. And I could remember when in parts of this country, I couldn't vote, I couldn't go to school, couldn't sit downstairs in the movie theater, when my life was terribly prescribed by racial discrimination. That kind of overt racial discrimination is vanished. It's gone. It's not coming back. But racial discrimination still exists all over this country, not just in the American South, but in Pittsburgh in Philadelphia, in towns and cities all over this country. We need to root that out. And we need to make sure we live in a country that has social policies that help people who cannot help themselves. Large portion of those people are racial minorities. So there's much else we have to do. On these talk shows that I

host many people, when you talk about issues such as you just raise, site you by name, Jesse Jackson by name, and so you're part of the old guard of the civil rights movement and so much has changed as you have alluded to, that those kinds of programs are not needed anymore. No affirmative action. Nothing else that might give black folks a leg up. Black folks just need to work real hard. How would you answer those kinds of criticisms? I'd say I agree. We all need to work hard. We need to work hard in school. If we're students, we need to work hard at our job. If we're employed, if we're parents or fathers or mothers, we need to work hard at that too. But we are dependent on government assurance that there's going to be a level playing field. That's what affirmative action does. It doesn't take people who aren't qualified and put them in places where they can't deal with things. But you know that's the common belief. It's a common belief, but it's a false belief. It's a lie. So we're dependent on government assurance that there's going to be a level playing field. Unless we have that assurance, we're going to begin

to slip back. Now we're not going back to slavery. I'm not trying to raise that frightening specter. But we are in real danger of going back to the day when a black face meant no chance at all. And I don't want to see that day come back again. I believe it's next week. Supreme Court is going to be hearing cases on affirmative action. And that Michigan case, the president's filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of the elimination of affirmative action. Of course, tons of other organizations from the Army to corporations have filed friends of the court brief on the other side. What happens if that's overturned? Is it Baki all over again? Well, I can remember when the Baki decision was handed down. We thought that was the worst thing. It was the darkest day. But Baki, which is the law of the land today and will be until this decision is rendered. Baki has allowed the programs of affirmative action to continue from that day until this. No one can predict what the Supreme Court is going to do. If it does the absolute worse, then we're going to have to find some way to ensure that the pathway from elementary school to high school

to college and to graduate school continues to be open for qualified young men and women. I believe we can do it. But it's going to be much, much harder in a changed atmosphere and after Baki atmosphere than it is today. What do you think of the portrayal that the media does of the civil rights movement these days? Generally speaking, and that's a big generalization, it's a kind of whitewashed history. Here's what the history tells us. There used to be segregation. Martin Luther King came along. People marched and picketed. Some people went to jail. Couple of people were killed. Segregation went away. That story is simplistic. It's much more complicated and much more complex than that. Martin Luther King was part of an army that numbered in the tens of thousands. And we have to remember, he did march from Selman to Montgomery by himself. There were other people marching with him. When he spoke at the march on Washington in 63, there wasn't an empty field out there. There were hundreds of thousands of people there. And there were thousands more before him and after him who did the necessary work of making the civil rights movement. Thankfully, history writers,

history professors, scholars are now uncovering this history. So no longer do we have a top -down history with King at the top, presidents at the top, and the movement faceless people underneath. Now we have a kind of bottom -up history where we see what people were doing in small towns in South Carolina, or Georgia, or even in Pennsylvania. We've got a much more expanded vision of history yet. With some exceptions, that doesn't make it into the media. You still appear on America's Black Forum as a commentator, right? Yes, I do. A lot of times when I've watched that program, I see Jerry Falwell, Armstrong Williams. There are a whole lot of different voices out there than maybe the accounts for who funds the program. I don't know, but there are a lot of voices out there on the talk radio and in the media that define themselves as new Black conservatives or neo -conservatives. Is there room enough in America for those opinions they seem to be promoted highly, especially over the opinions of people such as yourself? They are promoted highly, and because of the promotion, they appear to represent more than they really do. It's a fair estimate about 10 % of

African Americans fall on the right side of the political spectrum, and the other 90 % fall either in the middle or on the left. So when you read your newspaper and you see that blackface on the op -ed page, when you turn on your TV, you see that blackface shouting and yelling and screaming on the Sunday shout shows, you ought to understand that well, that opinion may be his opinion, and as his opinion, it's a valid opinion. And we want to listen to it. We want to hear it. It doesn't represent much more than his opinion. It's demonstrated almost every public opinion polls that African Americans stand solidly with the standard remedies to discrimination, affirmative action, strong civil rights laws, the whole laundry list of those kinds of things, and this narrow course of foundation supported and sponsored blackface figures really doesn't represent African American opinion. A future of the NAACP nationally. Does the NAACP have a position on reparations? Yes, we support the bill introduced year after year by Congressman John Connoes of Michigan, not

to create reparations, but to create a commission to study the issue. As we know, this is not a new idea at all. In fact, it's an old idea in American law. If I rob you, many courts will say, I've got to pay you that money back, or I've got to do something to make you right, because I made you wrong. Well, this is the same principle. An enormous wrong has been done to African America. Someone needs to make it right. The entity that helped engineer this wrong was the government of the United States, and the government of the United States owes some payment. Now, I don't know anybody who's talking about writing million dollar checks to Bill Cosby's children. But I do know many serious minded people who are saying that government grants to schools, to community centers, to a whole range of facilities in depressed communities and low -income communities, would do a great deal towards setting what was wrong right. It won't erase the problem. It won't make it go away. There'll still be work to be done, but at least some effort will have been made to make this tremendous wrong into a right.

One of the programs that I host in it, this will air on, it's called Black Horizon. Locally, it's been on air since 1968. Manette and I have been doing it for about 20 -something years right now, and I wonder what you would say to that primarily Black audience who watches that program about where we are, where we've been, and where we need to go. Well, you know, there's an old folks saying in Black America, we ain't where we're used to be, we ain't where we're going to be, but thank goodness we're on our way. So, you know, things are better than they were when I was a child. They're going to be better than they are now when I'm an older man, and for my children and grandchildren, they're going to be better still, but they don't get better by themselves. These things don't just naturally happen. People don't wake up in the morning and say, gee, I've been doing wrong. I think I'll do right right now. Instead, we've got to work at it, and working at it means doing a dozen different things. It means joining the NAACP. It means supporting the Urban League. It means joining the community group. It means belonging to your PTA. It means going to the school board meetings. It means monitoring the City

Council. It means voting in every election. That all that and much, much more. So, you've got to work to make these things happen. Yet in still, for instance, the Urban League's national convention is going to be held here in Pittsburgh this year. They're a group of African -Americans who are totally opposed to it because when the convention center was built, when the various stadiums were built for the Steelers and the Pirates, it was built with public dollars, out -tax money as well as white citizens. And blacks, as well as women, were disenfranchised, not allowed to participate in gaining some of those dollars in construction and jobs and sudden letting contracts, and they are adamantly opposed. There's a little rift, at least here in Pittsburgh and other places that I detect in the black community. How do we heal that? How do we come together? Because they make a valid point. They weren't allowed to participate. This same issue came up in Cincinnati last year when the Urban League was scheduled to meet there. Since then, Annie, as you know, had this long, long history of awful relationships between the police and the black community, great many shootings of black people by policemen. The Urban League moved its convention. I'm going to leave the Pittsburgh question

up to people in Pittsburgh and the National Urban League. But let me tell you my own private personal opinion. I don't believe a dime of public money ought to be spent to build these stadiums for millionaires. I mean, we don't build a public library and then turn it over to some private group for their exclusive views. It just seems to be wrong in the worst kind of way. I'm not a big sports fan, but I live in a city where the owner of the football team built the football stadium and thank heaven that he did. People who love football can go to that stadium. They can watch the football team play, they can cheer, they can yell, they can shout and be happy to know that not a dime of public money was spent to build it. Julian Bond says that the opponents of Affirmative Action say that it carries with it a stigma. A stigma, did you not good enough? I'm not good enough. A lot of

people assume that a good job because dad was president of the company. A president of the United States. Ever see them walk over and tell them that everybody in the executive washroom is whispering about how they got their job. Most of our league professions have long been to the exclusive observable white men. I seriously get it a single one of these men is suffering low self -esteem. It can't help doing an intro. Stensive remarks in that inaugural lecture and we look forward to see what Pitt produces in its research on race in America. Well now it's time to grab that pencil and paper because it's time for our community calendar on the horizon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

If you've got an event you'd like to see publicize please send the details to on the horizon 40 -025th Avenue Pittsburgh VA 15213 Avenue City International is known the world over for their continued and impassioned fight for human rights. The following interview with Dr. William Schultz originally appeared on our Nightly News magazine on Q I notice one of the big programs you're doing is on diversity, is that a big issue for you? Absolutely. Amnesty is, of course, an international organization. It's an organization also that speaks to human rights issues that often disproportionately affect people of color, of diverse cultural backgrounds and so it's critically important to Amnesty that we also be a

culturally diverse organization ourselves. I have to turn to today's headlines and that's the war in Iraq. Amnesty International has always concerned itself with human rights abuses and those kinds of things. What do you think of President Bush's policy of preemptive war and do you think it at all leads to any human rights abuses? Well, any kind of military action leads almost inevitably to human rights abuses. Amnesty takes no position one way or the other on the war itself. Our job is to monitor the human rights violations that will inevitably take place as a result of that kind of action. Certainly, we have seen the Iraqis over the years, guilty of very serious crimes, several of the paramilitary units, the fedeum Saddam who are fighting very brutally with the United States and the coalition forces are responsible over the years for cutting out of tongues and beheading of enemies of Saddam. At the same time, our job is to monitor the coalition forces and to make sure, for example, that they

don't disproportionately affect the civilian population, that the coalition does everything it can to see that civilians are protected and that it not use such things as cluster bombs, which can have a disproportionate effect on civilians. So our job really is just to call the human rights record as we see it on all sides. Some people in this country might think that that's unpatriotic. They think that our troops are loyal, brave, and defending freedom across the world. And if some people are shot in an Iraqi roadblock at a bridge and women and children die, it's happened the other day. They think those soldiers are protecting their lives because there have been incidents they would point out where people said, I surrender, I surrender, and then fire upon troops. So some people might think that that's an un -America in attitude to monitor American troops for human rights abuses. Well, there is such a thing as the laws of war, the Geneva conventions, the ways in which any army, any military, needs to abide by internationally agreed standards. Amnesty is not suggesting

at this point for a minute that the U .S. and coalition forces have committed human rights abuses. All that we're saying is that it's part of our job to monitor what's going on, to make sure that that doesn't happen, and to insist as we can, that the coalition, and of course the Iraqis as well, abide by those international standards. We have certainly condemned the practice of Iraq mixing military, Iraqi military, in with Iraqi civilians. That, of course, puts every Iraqi civilian at risk. What about the school of the Americas, as it was formerly called? There are various people who are watching what it did in terms of the United States involvement in the training of military forces, other where in the use of torture and those kinds of things. A number of people claim that these institutions, like the school of the Americas, train people to go back to their countries and commit torture. What do you think of those claims? Well, there's absolutely no question that, at least in the past, the school of the Americas has trained people,

officers, other military officials in Latin America, who then have returned to their country and committed torture and other serious human rights violations. In fact, in the early 90s, there apparently was a manual that was used at the school of the Americas to explicitly teach how to torture those under interrogation, for example. Now, the military claims that that is no longer the case. Amnesty International has asked for the school to be suspended in its operations until a full investigation can take place to see whether indeed that is true. Has it been in response to that on a part of our government? We've not yet succeeded in having that program suspended. They're ignoring you. Well, they're certainly not doing what we're recommending in this case. What needs citizens do who might be concerned as you are about human rights abuses around the world to do something about it? Well, the first thing, of course, they can do is to log on to our website at amnestyusa .org or to call 1 -800 -AMNISTY. Learn more about amnesty in our programs. There are just literally dozens of ways in which

people can get involved. Here at the Greater Pittsburgh area, we have a wide variety of both student and community groups that are active every week, every month in both contacting officials of our own government about human rights and contacting those of governments overseas, asking them to free political prisoners, for example, asking them to stop torture and shining a light of truth and international opinion. The mobilization of shame, if you will, upon those governments that are committing these kind of violations. So I'd urge people to check it out, amnestyusa .org and they can get involved either at the local level or the national. How do you advise those that might say that's a great feel -good exercise? But people like Saddam Hussein and other dictators around the world are just evil people and sometimes they only understand the use of force because they use it so horribly against their own people. Well, amnesty international, as I say, does not oppose the use of force per se. We do not take a position on military action. We don't oppose military action. We don't support military action. Our job is to call it as

we see it. Now, it may be a feel -good exercise, but I'll tell you, it's a feel -good exercise for the 40 ,000 political prisoners who amnesty has helped to free since we were founded in 1961. And it's a feel -good exercise for literally tens of thousands of people who have been tortured and whose torture has stopped, who have been released because of amnesty bearing this kind of witness. So it may be feeling good to us, but it also feels good to the victims of human rights crimes. Do you think that the domestic agenda here in America is being neglected in any way? Well, first of all, there's absolutely no question that the war on terror is affecting the domestic agenda here in many different ways. We have seen, for example, immigrants to this country rounded up and denied basic international rights as they attempt to make the case that they are not a threat to this country. We've even seen two U .S. citizens thrown into jail and denied access to legal counsel, they're U .S. citizens. That's a remarkable development. So in that respect, of course, it is affecting what is happening. At the same

time, it's critically important to say that amnesty continues to do its best to monitor such things as police brutality, to stop such things as the death penalty. And whether or not the war on terror will ultimately divert attention from those efforts, I'm not sure, but I can assure you that amnesty international will not be diverted in its attention to them. All right, Doug, so thank you very much. And Dr. Schultz just happens to be from this area raised in the shady side section of the city. Well, that brings us to the end of another episode of Black Horizons. We thank you for joining us. Be sure to join us right here every Friday night at 10 p .m. And Sunday afternoons at 2. From all of us here at Black Horizons, have a great weekend. Set pieces donated by Macondo and by the History Store, Craig Street and Forbes Avenue. Thanks

for watching. You You You