Burgess Owens: “No race, no ethnic or religious group, has suffered so much over so long a span as blacks have, and do still, at the…”

“No race, no ethnic or religious group, has suffered so much over so long a span as blacks have, and do still, at the hands of those who benefited, with the connivance of the United States Government, from slavery and the century of legalized American racial hostility that followed it. It is a miracle that the victims-weary dark souls long shorn of a venerable and ancient identity have survived at all, stymied as they are by the blocked roads to economic equality. At long last, let America contemplate the scope of its enduring human-rights wrong against the whole of a people. Let the vision of blacks not become so blighted from a sunless eternity that we fail to see the staggering breadth of America's crimes against us. Solutions to our racial problems are possible, but only if our society can be brought to face up to the massive crime of slavery and all that it has brought. Step by step, in every way possible, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus are seeking to force the issue of having America face up to the need to compensate, the need to have special policies and programs which understand and recognize this long history of deprivation that was perpetrated against the people.”