MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" Interview With House Majority Whip James Clyburn; And Representative Steve Cohen - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC "HARDBALL WITH CHRIS MATTHEWS" INTERVIEW WITH HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC); REP. STEVE COHEN (D-TN) INTERVIEWER: CHRIS MATTHEWS

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MR. MATTHEWS: On Thursday -- that's yesterday -- the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution apologizing for slavery. But some members of the House of Representatives say it's a bad bill because of the last sentence in the resolution, which is, "Nothing in this resolution authorizes or supports any claim against the United States or serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States."

Well, can the U.S. apologize for slavery officially, as the Senate has done, without some greater form of reparation?

Joining me right now is Tennessee Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen, who sponsored the resolution in the House -- he's sponsoring it now -- and U.S. Congressman Jim Clyburn, a hero of the civil rights movement, from South Carolina, a regular on this program. He's the former chairman of the Black Caucus and he's now the majority whip, one of the top leaders in the House.

Mr. Cohen, I want to thank you for coming on tonight. I want to thank Mr. Clyburn on this Friday night.

Let's talk about the issue at hand. What is the value of the resolution, sir, if it doesn't have any reparation attached to it?

REP. COHEN: Well, I think any time a country, or a person, for that matter, does a grievous wrong, they need to apologize. And that starts a process. The process, I hope, is a dialogue that makes people understand the effects and the ramifications of slavery and Jim Crow. They are great. I see them in my district. I see them in the United States of America. And I think a dialogue can and should begin.

We have apologized to Japanese-Americans, appropriately enough, for their internment, to Native American Indians, to the Hawaiian people when we took their island, and yet we've not apologized for the greatest sin that this country has committed, which is 246 years of slavery and nearly 100 years of Jim Crow.

President Clinton came close, but he didn't do it. President Bush came close but didn't do it. The churches, some of the churches have; I think the Episcopalian Church has. But it's, I think, an appropriate thing to do, and I'm proud of Senator Harkin and Senator Brownback for leading the Senate in this effort, and I was proud to pass H. Res. --

MR. MATTHEWS: But you're from what state? Tennessee. You're from a southern state that was part of fighting the Civil War from the other side. What about people from Pennsylvania whose ancestors went down and fought, and fought the Civil War and got killed? We lost 600,000 men in that fight in the Civil War who died at point-blank range. These guys were killed fighting the evils of slavery. And now you want them to apologize? It makes no sense to me. Why should the whole country apologize for what a good half or more of the country got killed opposing, sir?

REP. COHEN: Well, first of all --

MR. MATTHEWS: I mean, you're from Tennessee. Maybe you should apologize first before you ask the rest of the country to. Why should Pennsylvania apologize for something it fought and died -- you're laughing. It's not funny.

REP. COHEN: No, I'm not laughing, Chris.

MR. MATTHEWS: Why should anybody apologize for your sins?

REP. COHEN: Chris, you know, Pennsylvania had slaves too.

MR. MATTHEWS: Or any state -- New York, Vermont. They didn't have slavery.

REP. COHEN: Yes, they did.

MR. MATTHEWS: They had some of it.

REP. COHEN: Yes, they did.

MR. MATTHEWS: Go ahead.

REP. COHEN: They had slaves in New Jersey and New York and every state. The Constitution of the United States is the Constitution of all the people. It permitted slavery and it counted slaves as less than human beings, and it was responsible for the Dred Scott decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, segregation laws that came out of the Supreme Court of the United States. This is a country that's united, and it has committed that wrong. The slave traders came from the North. The benefits of the slave trade --

MR. MATTHEWS: Yeah. So 600,000 people are dead because of the Civil War because your side wanted to fight it.

REP. COHEN: Well, it's not to my side. You know, east Tennessee was -- it was a split state. My relatives weren't here, but that's not the issue. The issue is where we are today in America, and as an American congressman and the American government needs to apologize for the wrongs that were done by --

MR. MATTHEWS: I just don't think the blame is equal. I don't think the blame is equal, sir. A lot of our families didn't get here till after the Civil War. I think maybe some plantation owners who still have the farm, still own the plantation, still benefit to some extent from slavery --

REP. COHEN: Chris, that's exactly the point. That's exactly the point.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay.

REP. COHEN: They were wrong, but so were the people who had the goods that they sold. So were the people who built the ships. So were the people who insured the ships. So were the people who financed those ventures. They were all in the North, in Pennsylvania and New York. Those were the people that benefited from it too.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay. Well, I don't hold General Grant responsible for the other side when he was fighting the war.

Let me take -- let me go right now to Congressman Clyburn. Sorry to take up your time, Mr. Clyburn, but I think there's an issue here. Your thoughts?

REP. CLYBURN: Well, I think that Congressman Cohen's resolution, that was unanimously passed by the House, offered an apology. But it went into talking about how we ought to go about rectifying some of the current effects of that past discrimination.

And that's what we're doing today as we roll out this working draft of our health care bill. We're talking about addressing inequities, disparities that exist in the health care in our communities. That's the kind of thing that we ought to be doing.

And when the Senate went even further, I think, and offered up this restrictive language, it seems to me it will call into question some of the stuff that we're now trying to do to eliminate the current effects of past discrimination. And that's why there's a little bit of unease in the House of Representatives.

We applaud Congressman Cohen and we voted unanimously to approve his resolution. But the Senate, I think, sort of gratuitously put in language, as you said, that last sentence, that disclaimer, that might call into question the things we're trying to do here today.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, Mr. Clyburn, why should maybe the slave states, maybe the Confederacy, maybe the states that had Jim Crow for 100-and-some years, shouldn't they be the ones that have to kick up the money rather than the people who fought it?

REP. CLYBURN: Well, this is not about money. This is about health care. This is about energy. This is about employment discrimination. This is about addressing those issues. And if you are not -- and you remember, back when the Supreme Court first addressed this issue of affirmative action back in the Davis case, the Supreme Court said, "If you have not discriminated, then you don't have an obligation to do anything to rectify it."

And so that's what we're trying to do, looking at those areas where they did, in fact, discriminate and see what we can do about righting those wrongs. And that's what Representative Cohen's resolution does. It allows us to go forward in a proactive manner, be futuristic here, not just look back with words but look forward with deeds.

MR. MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about the deeds, Mr. Cohen. Congressman, what do you think should be done in terms of reparations? Anything?

REP. COHEN: Well, Congressman Conyers has H. Res. 40, which calls for a study of reparations. I'm a co-sponsor of my chairman's resolution, and it would be a study. And the most eminent authority on reparations, Professor Charles Ogletree of Harvard University, has said that study could be anything, but it could be emphasizing more public health, public education, public jobs programs, public opportunity, and not just for African-Americans, wherever Americans have been held back, whether it's Appalachia or inner cities or rural areas. And that's what Charles Ogletree suggested when he testified before the Judiciary Committee.

MR. MATTHEWS: Yeah, I think reparations make sense. I just wonder if we're ever going to figure out how to do it.

And Mr. Clyburn, do you have a clear sense of what's the appropriate -- if you could be president right now and had the Congress 100 percent behind you, what would you do?

REP. CLYBURN: What I would do is exactly what we're attempting to do with this legislation -- energy legislation, health legislation. I would look at ways that we can programmatically and with new policy address these inequities and make concerted efforts to do things that will make up for them and eliminate the disparities. That's what I would do.

I think that people, when they use that term "reparation," they immediately start thinking about checks or money going out.

MR. MATTHEWS: Yeah, that's true.

REP. CLYBURN: And that's what causes the problem here. I do believe that our government is doing a good job toward addressing these things, and we ought not do anything with a resolution or otherwise that will call any of these efforts into question.

You know how the House of Representatives is made up -- 435 men and women from all across this country with various views, very diversified. And they voted unanimously for Mr. Cohen's resolution. We would like to do the same thing with the Senate, but we believe that the Senate's resolution with that restrictive language at the end would call into question many of the efforts that we're trying to undertake here today.

MR. MATTHEWS: Good point. I think the fact that the slave owners wouldn't allow people -- they wouldn't honor people's marriages. They broke up families with impunity. They showed no respect for the marital act, the marital relationship, under slave ownership. They wouldn't let people learn to read or be caught reading or educating themselves. All this held people back. Obviously they stopped them from getting capital of any kind. I think we should have had 40 acres and a mule. I think Thaddeus Stevens was a hero.

And I go back to my point. I am so tired of American culture glamorizing the South and the Civil War with "Gone with the Wind" and all that nonsense about the wonders of the Old South and the plantation heritage, when the good guys in that war were the guys in blue who fought slavery and battled for the Republic.

Thank you, U.S. Congressman Steve Cohen, for representing your state. And Congressman Jim Clyburn, thank you very much.

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