Mr. Speaker, I rise to acknowledge and submit for the Congressional Record a speech delivered by H. Patrick Swygert, the President of Howard University at a meeting called by President Enrique Iglesias of the Inter-American Development…
Mr. Speaker, I rise to acknowledge and submit for the Congressional Record a speech delivered by H. Patrick Swygert, the President of Howard University at a meeting called by President Enrique Iglesias of the Inter-American Development Bank to examine the challenge of social inclusion in economic development in the Western Hemisphere. President Swygert's speech points out not only the destructivity of social exclusion, more importantly he emphasizes the need for social inclusion as a means to break barriers, build bridges, and create networks as a means to achieve economic development.
I would also like to commend President Iglesias and the Inter- American Development Bank for understanding and beginning to take
the necessary steps towards a more social inclusive global community, and for affording President Swygert a forum to discuss and accelerate dialog regarding this important initiative.
It is essential in the period of economic surplus that we recognize the fact that as our wealth grows, the gap between rich and poor widens. Eventually those on the lower end of the spectrum get left behind and have very few means to catch up to their counterparts. Social inclusion, as President Swygert eloquently points out, aims to intervene in the perpetual cycle of poverty that exclusion creates.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to thank President Swygert for his efforts to alert us all to the growing economic inequality that is the end result of social exclusion and for his visionary leadership in advocating social inclusion as the means to achieve the alleviation of poverty in the Western Hemisphere.
Social Inclusion, Education Health and Culture: Breaking Barriers,
Building Bridges and Creating Networks
(By President H. Patrick Swygert)
The IADB President--Mr. Enrique Iglesias, Other Officials
of the Bank, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentleman,
Greetings. First, let me congratulate the Inter-American
Development Bank for this impressive effort today to
accelerate the dialogue on social inclusion.
Inclusion of course, implies exclusion, its opposite.
Certainly, without the recognition that the issue of
exclusion is a problem and a growing one, there would not be
the need for this dialogue today. I regard this meeting,
therefore, as an effort to understand both sides of an issue
that is destructive in the case of the one, and productive,
harmonious and highly desirable in the other.
It is indeed commendable that this institution, a
development bank, is leading this initiative to enhance our
understanding of the importance of inclusiveness among the
various human components of our societies and, conversely,
that you are examining the nature of exclusion and how it
thwarts the development process by relegating some people--
the best resources of any society--to the fringes where they
are unable to realize their ambitions as fully functioning
members of the society.
This undertaking, therefore, is both significant and
challenging because the issues that militate against the
inclusion that we seek are centuries old and are as pervasive
as they are persistent. And now, studies are showing that the
process of globalization which, at one level, ironically
enough, is bringing the world closer together, is at another
level, fostering deeper divisions between the peoples of the
world, and reinforcing the familiar and painful dichotomies
of powerful and powerless, haves and havenots, and increasing
the wretchedness of the wretched of the earth.
In this still brand new millennium, our failure to build a
more just world and to fully harness, arguably the bulk of
the human capital into the process of building better
societies, better nations and a better world, remains one of
the greatest failures of this civilization.
To this extent, dialogues like these are critical because
they are the necessary first steps on the pathway to a
greater understanding, appreciation and acceptance of our
common humanity and the building of the bridges we so badly
need.
For me, this is a particularly interesting time to reflect
on the need for inclusion at all levels and the painful
lessons that we eventually learn when we pursue policies and
pathways that are exclusive and divisive.
Come May 17, this year, Howard University will join the
NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Educational Fund
in a gala event at Constitution Hall to celebrate the 50th
Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark
Supreme Court ruling that desegregated public education in
America and began this nation's transformation toward a more
inclusive society.
As you can imagine, the Supreme Court ruling was a great
day for African Americans who made their entrance to this
continent in chains and struggled for centuries against the
denial of their humanity, and their exclusion from all else
except the forced labor that generated wealth for the
masters.
The eventual end of slavery would not be the end of the
struggle for them it was soon followed by Jim Crow and the
segregation that ended officially only 50 years ago. Again,
the end of segregation merely heralded a new struggle--that
to have the society treat them as equal in accordance with
the new law of the land. It would take years of agitation
among civil rights groups and activists and the sacrifices of
people like Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. before
the society finally began to implement changes at all levels.
The process continues today. We have made tremendous
progress but we are nowhere near a fully integrated society.
It is still a daily struggle for African Americans and other
minorities to get others to look beyond the color of their
skins and see a fellow human being rather than a stereotype.
Howard University, my alma mater, played a critical role in
the successful Brown case. The University was the training
ground for the attorneys who represented Brown and most of
them were faculty at our school of law. And, it was one of
our graduates, Thurgood Marshall, who argued the case before
the Supreme Court.
Howard University is proud of this legacy. Proud of its
commitment to a philosophy of equality and justice for all
people. Proud of its dedication to help create an environment
that affirms the value of all humanity; that uplifts
everyone and oppresses no one.
Throughout this academic year, the University has hosted
several events commemorating the Brown anniversary. The
dialogue has been about social exclusion and inclusion,
because that was at the heart of the case. African Americans
in this country know about exclusion. They know it was wrong
400 years ago and it is wrong today in whatever form it
comes.
It is out of this history of suffering perhaps, has come
the instinctive revulsion of these kinds of artificial
barriers among African Americans. They seem to know
intuitively that divisions of the kind that they experienced
are morally offensive; they are socially disruptive,
economically unproductive and they form the breeding ground
for conflict and instability in any society.
The basis of the exclusion that we speak of today is not
limited to social class, but gender, sexuality, physical or
emotional disabilities, ethnicity, race, skin color.
In so many countries of the world, humanity seems divided
by these artificial barriers--barriers that do little except
to blind us to the reality of our common bonds. With both our
hearts and our intellect, we know that as citizens of the
universe, we are far more alike than we are different, yet by
our own attitudes or lack of action, many of us reinforce old
stereotypes that ultimately become obstacles to progress and
the pursuit of meaningful interactions.
Samuel L. Johnson, the great 18th century British essayist,
and poet, suffered from all kinds of physical disabilities.
His sight was poor. His hearing was poor. His face was
scarred by a skin disease and he suffered from Tourette
syndrome. You bet that he too knew the meaning of social
exclusion. In a ringing appeal for acceptance, Johnson wrote.
``Men, however distinguished by external accidents or
intrinsic qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains,
and, as far as the senses are concerned, the same pleasures.
We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the
same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger,
entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.''
As human beings, we cherish a common desire to satisfy our
basic needs, and beyond that to pursue what we believe will
bring us a sense of fulfillment. For many of us, this often
means reaching out beyond ourselves in service to others and
this is where many of us truly absorb that the world is
bigger than the sum total of any single individual's needs.
The truth is, our fundamental desires, with little
exceptions are grounded in our humanity, not in our race,
religion, ethnicity or any other such variables. Yet we
persist in our creation of all kinds of false dichotomies,
even as many of us embrace the notion of a Fatherhood of God.
Somehow, we have failed to accept that this fatherhood of God
extends itself to a brotherhood and a sisterhood of
humankind.
Rather than such acceptance and the equality that it
implies, we have not just subdivided humanity but we have
stratified it as well. People of color--non white people--are
at the low end of this hierarchy. The farther one departs
from the Eurocentric ideals, which tops the hierarchy of
course, the less value is ascribed to one's talents, wisdoms,
cultures, contributions to civilization, needs and desires--
one's humanity.
This is certainly true of the Americas. Five decades after
Brown, for example, many of our schools remain deeply
segregated. Black and Latino children disproportionately
attend schools that are in high poverty areas. These schools
are under-funded, under-performing and naturally turn out
graduates that are ill-equipped to move forward and help
their families free themselves from the shackles of poverty.
Eighty percent of black and Latino children in segregated
schools are in high poverty areas, compared to five per cent
of their white counterparts in similar schools. Many schools
remain segregated, or at best minimally integrated, at both
the level of the student body and the staff. In states such
as Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and
California, the pattern is now too pronounced to ignore.
The outcome of this kind of segregation is the
underperformance among the children who attend them; the high
drop out rates; significantly reduced chances of post high-
school success, and the eventual spiral into drugs and
violence among too many children who end up with life on the
streets as their vocation.
In health care, the disparities are just as obvious.
According to the American Medical Association, racial
disparities in healthcare in the United States, remain
``chronic'' with minorities benefiting the least from what it
described as ``marked by advances in medicine and health
care.'' Among some of the more interesting statistics:
Thirty-one percent of minority adults, ages 18-64, do not
have insurance, compared with 14 percent of white adults in
the same age group.
Minority adults report more problems with receiving health
care.
Forty percent say they have ``a major problem with having
to pay too much for care,'' compared to 26 percent of white
adults.
Further, low-income persons, regardless of race, spend more
out-of-pocket income--about 7-11 percent--on medical expenses
than higher income Americans who typically only spend about
1-2 percent of their income on medical care.
The infant mortality rate in the last forty years has
declined faster for whites than for blacks, with the
longstanding disparity actually increasing from 1.6 times the
rate for whites in 1950 to 2.2 times the rates in 1991.
Black women are twice as likely as white women to obtain
late or no prenatal care; Hispanic women are three times as
likely to obtain inadequate or no prenatal care as non-
Hispanic white women; and American Indian women are more
likely than either white or black women to obtain late or no
prenatal care at all.
Overall, African Americans tend to receive lower quality
healthcare than whites for everything from cancer, heart
disease and HIV/AIDS to diabetes and mental health.
There is less evidence examining disparities involving
Hispanics and other minority groups.
Here in America, the disparities are obvious. The
availability of data and the high visibility of the society
make it much easier for us to point fingers at what is
happening here. And, it is true that because of the vast
wealth of this country, these inequalities seem more
egregious.
The truth is though, that the disadvantaged status of
minority groups extends into all reaches of the Americas.
Afro-Brazilians, Afro-Hondurans, Afro-Colombians, Afro-
Nicaraguans, Afro-Ecuadorians, all experience the same sense
of despair born from the knowledge of their marginalized
status in countries where they are minorities; where their
worth has been determined by their ethnicity and skin color,
and their sense that nothing will change because, after all,
they cannot change who they are. Whether it is the Creoles in
Belize, the Gari-fun-as of Guatemala, The Arawaks of Guyana,
the Caribs in St. Lucia or the Rez-a-(i)les of San Andres
Islands, the same sense of hopeless and alienation
characterize their existence in the Americas, though most of
these populations have existed here for hundreds of years,
some of them even pre-dating Christopher Columbus. While they
suffer through lives of quiet desperation, they remain
largely invisible to a world that barely acknowledges that
they are there.
Bringing marginalized groups into the mainstream of
development is an imperative for the corporate world, as it
is for institutions like yours, and mine. On the surface, it
may seem like a difficult and costly undertaking, but it will
be less expensive than the price of conflict, malnutrition,
communicable and non-communicable diseases, political
instability and the absence of buying power in the market
place.
Beyond the societal and economic benefits, bringing
marginalized groups into mainstream society is a recognition
of our acceptance of a common humanity and our embrace of
such as the source of our sustenance and the basis of our
quest for peace, harmony and respect for human dignity
throughout the world.
In the words of Kenneth B. Clarke, the Howard University
graduate, whose research supported the attorneys on the Brown
Case: ``. . . segregation (read, exclusion), like all other
forms of cruelty and tyranny, debases all human being--those
who are its victims, those who victimize, and in quite subtle
ways those who are mere accessories.''
Our dialogue today recognizes the veracity of those words.
So, despite what seems like a painfully fractured world, we
must continue to strive for the ideals of co-existence and
community, and the strengthening of relationships among
disparate groups in the pursuit of peace, harmony and
prosperity. The struggle for these ideals is the only basis
of our hope for peace, justice and freedom from oppression.
Like the IADB, my institution is dedicated to preserving
and promoting the ideals of inclusion in the Americas, and to
the extent that our influence reaches, beyond.
Through institutions like the Ralph J. Bunche International
Affairs Center which encourages greater participation in
global issues among the students and faculty; the Moorland
Spingarn Research Center, the largest collection of research
material on African heritage next to the Schomburg Center;
the U.S.-Brazil project on Race, Development and Social
Inequality and the ongoing study and preservation of art,
music, dance, language, history and other characteristics of
cultures, Howard continues to make a sterling contribution to
an informed understanding of the benefits of an inclusive
society.
Our programs in Health Sciences, meanwhile, are dedicated
not just to the provision of quality care to the under-
served, but to a discovery of causes and development of cures
to the diseases that disproportionately affect those
communities. Our Hispanic and multicultural affairs program
and the International healthcare program, are significant
efforts in this direction.
Finally, in all of our efforts, the fight for civil rights
remains central. Howard University was founded on this very
notion that all people, regardless of their race, deserve the
right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the
right to live with dignity and respect.
For 138 years, we have remained committed to reinforcing
these principles and pursue these ideals toward the
advancement of the human race.
I would like to commend the IADB for being an ally in this
process and I look forward to a growing relationship as we
pursue our common goals. Thank you.