5000. The tree is not for sale. Now, this whole business of what we call success, we only have one definition for success in america and that has to do with how much money you make and i dont think that is a fair definition. So here a neurosurgeon who is not terribly nice to his wife and children, he makes a lot of money and hes a success but the taxi driver even though he is an enormously wonderful father, and husband he is not a success. So what do you mean by success . I think that definition may be a little different than ours. It certainly doesnt have everything to do with money. You see, and so i think it sounds to some people when you start the discussion somewhat crass. Host how did you conclude your flamboyant tree negotiation . Guest i didnt get it. [laughter] i didnt get it. I did learn though that they grow very fast and you can get them small and you dont even have to have my mother gardened decorative flowers until she was at least 93 and one i was a child to this is spending time in the yard because i loved it. I loved my hands in the soil just as she and we like to talk about plans in that sort of thing so that is one of the things i love about the caribbean because everything blooms all the time. And its so wonderful. So you can get flamboyant trees rather easily and plant them. Host Randall Robinson you spent several years living in the d. C. Area. Is it easy to get intoxicated by the power that is available here . Guest here . Host yes. Guest it depends on who you are. It didnt take with me. I was never adjusted in that and its not anything necessarily great to say about me. Im just built that way and im essentially quite private, so i never liked the public side of what i used to do at all. And so i am very much a home person. There is no place in the world i want to be more than home. And so, whatever was happening here i think i held it builtin immunity to it. Host canton ohio you have been very patient you are on with author and activist Randall Robinson. Caller hello mr. Robinson. Is great to hear and im originally from mississippi and grew up in this south where my parents graduated from school. I dropped out of school but eventually i went back and went to college and moved to ohio and got a job. Even the church and some time that people buy your history in america and how we treat one another and even the slavery. Im a big fan of Frederick Douglass also. In a piece that he wrote, he writes the real question that all commanding question here is whether american justice and american liberty and american civilization, the american christianity can be made to include and protect all the rights of all american children. As black people we feel not educated by history and other countries and you know as i talk to people from where i came from my struggles with my parents if you live in the south, even sometimes the black people seem like they have not comprehended what im talking about. The struggle and where we came from and where we are now. Host lets get a response from Randall Robinson. Guest well, i understand very much how you feel. I think that you cant have offhand much reason for expectation of anything different. I have taken the position that i have taken particularly on reparations, because in my view it is our due. That doesnt mean that i expect that they will materialize even in my lifetime and not in the nearterm future. But it is renovated when you know that it is our due. The question is, what do we have to do within ourselves to repair ourselves psychically and emotionally . I think that we have to learn as much as we can about our story. We have to read vigorously everything that we can put our handson. We have to make sure that our children get the best education we can win for them and that they have the right values. We have to do the best we can with what we have and we have to continue to say that doesnt come close to what we are owed for what we have been made to endure for a long, long, long period of time. We all inherit our starting place in life. For those of us who come from the families of wealth and those of us who come from families that are impoverished, and im not just talking about material wealth. Im talking about social wealth and poverty. So the race is much more difficult for some of us then for others of us and it was made difficult because of what we had to face for 246 years. Catching up without any recognition of that difficulty on the part of a government that benefits from slavery, on a part of the private sector in sections of our population that continued to benefit from that slavery. Nonetheless, we have to understand ourselves of what we are owed and what our due is and continue to say that notwithstanding of whether or not that is except did on the other side. You are watching booktv on cspan2. Every month the first sunday of the month is our in Depth Program, and a three hour discussion with one author and his or her body of work. This month it is author Randall Robinson. And if you can get through on the phone ended like to make make a comment on our Facebook Page you can go to facebook. Com booktv. Like us on facebook and make a comment. Furness smith asks this question on facebook or go hugh have seen the diaspora from different parts of the world. In 2013 when africa and those of african descent still trail and economic viability, what are your suggestions to gain empowerment without economics to politics wont ever work. I agree with that. We need to it seems to be to retool our values to some extent, to balance them, overbalance them towards entrepreneurship. We need to invest in our energy. We need to know that there is very little that can be done without money. We have to be in a position to and l. Our own efforts. We dont have that kind of money now. We dont own any news broadcast or major organs so we are still depending on other people in their newsrooms where decisions are made often by groups of people that dont include any of us to make decisions to tell stories that would favor us about our situation, about our history, about our journey and that wont happen until we are in a position to make that happen. And so, i often thought when i was a young basketball player and have thought more about it since, that its much better to own the team than to play on the team. And we have got to get that lesson through our heads. We have got to understand, for instance that in the caribbean there are caribbean mothers who tell their children when they come to the United States to a college, dont associate with africanamericans. They do this because of what they see on american television. They watch american reality shows and those shows picture us in a very unfavorable light. They dont show us in the colleges, they dont show us in graduate programs, they dont show us excelling in science and they dont show any of that. They show the worst possible things about us and it is very offputting to people who watch these shows around the world. Well, somebody is making a lot of money from the shows. Im not sure that this is the same thing, old wine in new bottles, making use of us in that way. Sort of self disparaging stuff that makes a lot of money for producers and writers and other people behind the cameras. Cameras. But we dont make the decisions to put the shows on. But they are there. We have to be in a position to control these sorts of operations and these sorts of operations so we have to repair our young people to aspire to that, to not only make the movies and to not only be in them but to direct, to greenlight them. We are not in a position now in hollywood or anyplace else. The New York Times didnt even cover aristides being taken off in the middle of the night to the Central African republic. Host what about lydia fullgrain. Did she try to get on the plane with you . Guest well, libya had gone to the bicentennial and described the hundreds of thousands of people, something close to 1 Million People at the small but enthusiastic crowd. I do think it is often the case that black writers in publications do things that disparage the black community, facilitate upward mobility in their jobs. And i decided that she wasnt the right person to have on the plane. Amy goodman was there from democracy now and the reporter from the washington post. But by and large this story was an extraordinary story. It was not covered by the New York Times at all. Zip, nothing. How. How could they not cover it . What kind of journalism is that . Host gary poston our Facebook Page, in lieu of supporting questionable regimes in africa, chinas and its trade deals with african nations built schools and hospitals and other in the structure needs of the masses instead of massive Cash Payments to warlords and the like. Any chance the u. S. Could follow suit . Guest well, i am fearful of chinese motives as well. And because i am critical of apologists from our country i have a responsibility to practice that criticism and that is what constructs democracy is all about but i am not happy about china either. China has a horrible human rights policy. China is a oneparty dictatorship and its treatment of its own citizens and particularly what it has done in tibet and western china to the weaker people. So i i am very wary about chinese motives in africa. Host the next call for Randall Robinson comes from mark in minneapolis. Mark, you are on booktv on cspan2. Caller thank you. Hi mr. Robinson. Guest hi, how are you . Caller im fine. Mr. Robinson im a new york city kid born in 1959 so ive seen a lot of america and history but i want to talk securely about the Mining Industry worldwide and particularly whats going on in africa and is there a connection to possible mining in minnesota with Certain Companies . I have looked at some of the ceos and its pretty much american educated and just wondering how this wall street and washington fit in [inaudible] guest i am not sure i understand your question. I am not an expert in mining but i dont know how to approach it because im not sure i understand what you you are saying. Host on our twitter page looks deep tv ron fraser tweets in did you ask Randall Robinson who he thinks would make a better u. S. Envoy to haiti than bill clinton and why . Guest any number of people are envoys are message carriers. Right now our policy towards haiti is so bad that we would do haiti a service if the United States after 200 years of meddling would leave haiti alone. Virtually all of our policies have been antidemocratic for haiti. I have felt strongly when i was characterized as a friend of president aristides, i would always say that is not the issue. I have never been for aristide politically because that is not for me. I wasnt for Nelson Mandela in south africa. I was for affording the south African People and the haitian people the right to choose for themselves who their political leaders would be. The administration now has of course embraced elections in haiti that banned the Largest Political Party from participating. That is not democracy. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. President obama took some pains to try to block president aristides returned to his country from south africa. That is a violation of the International Covenant on civil and Political Rights which the United States is a part of. We cannot block people from leaving the country nor can you block them from returning to their own country. And so if not the letter certainly the president violated the spirit of our legal binding obligation under that International Human rights treaty. Host where is former president aristide right now . Guest he is in haiti. Host where is a living . The living . Guest he is back in his home and he is operating the school that he operated before so he is doing service work. Host dessi of security . Guest i dont know. I dont know if he has what would be warranted. I just dont know. While we talk to them we cant talk to them about things like that on the phone. And so we dont touch on that. But we are in touch. Host from quitting america the departure of a black man from his native land you write that america is a democracy because america says it is a democracy. America is godly and good and perfect because america says it is godly and good and perfect. These truths must be truths because americas voice is the only voice america hears. Guest that is very true. Particularly true in human rights. We have these wonderful human rights instruments that came on stream with the founding of the United Nations after 1945 spearheaded in many ways by Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt and the universal declaration of human rights and the Great Conventions that followed that and much with the agitation of the developing world for the end of colonialism, the end of discrimination and all of this. So because the United States won the war it largely had a bigger stamp than anyone else on the language of the human rights covenants. And so much of what you see in the covenant on civil and Political Rights you will see in american in the american constitution. A big similarity. But its important to realize at the same time all of these countries across the world have ratified these important conventions. The United States has not ratified would not ratify the convention to protect the interest of children. We have not ratified the convention to protect women and just recently the senate failed to ratify the convention to care for those in the world with disabilities and voted not to ratify the convention after listening to a plea from bob dole, making that plea from a wheelchair before the senate. So many of the important human rights treaties we have not ratified and were ratified by virtually every country in the world but the United States. Our feeling is that is for you. It is not for us. We are exceptional. There is nothing above our supreme court. There is no law, there is no idea and theres no theory and we seldom listen to other voices. We only listen to our own. That is the truth internationally and particularly in International Human rights law. Host Symbian Symbian cant think hello for new good afternoon. Caller good afternoon. Its a pleasure to hear you mr. Robinson. I am greatly impressed by you. My question for you is to ask you, what is your opinion relative to the movement for National Reparations for the descendents of lack african slaves in america . That is my first question and my second question is, how do we address this issue of africanamerican politicians who are Political Prisoners in america particularly in california and to qualify that question, we have guest me maya answer your first question first and then you come back to me with your second question again . Caller sure. Guest lets talk about reparations first of all. We have supportive supported reparations for for the jewish who were used as forced labor by volkswagen turing world war ii and the Clinton Administration supported that. We have supported reparations for japanese and these are proper and the right things to have been done. Reparations for japanese who returned during world war ii was a terrible thing to intern people who were american citizens in that fashion. We have supported something that one could call reparations for native americans. But when the question comes up for reparations for the descendents of slaves, americas huge enterprise of wronging as i have said, the longest running human rights crime in the world over the last thousand years. Not only is it not discussed and analyzed and spoken about and responded to, its just out of hand and that is not proper and it is not acceptable. But it is most important that the descendents of those people who were ground into the dust under the profit making wheels of slavery ,com,com ma it is most important that those people recognize that we recognize that no matter what america, official america does, we know what we are owed. We know what happens and we know that there is a story of us ,com,com ma the longer part of our history occurred before slavery. Thousands of years when the Great Pyramid was built. 5000 years ago, by pharaoh. This is now authenticated that he was very black, as were many of the other pharaohs and it turns out the only ones we know much about is cleopatra because she was descended from greek ancestry. So we know about her but virtually everything in egypt have been built by then and built by black egyptians long before the arrival of arabs in north africa. We should know this history. We. We should know all of this history. But we have been cut off from it. When i was a child, as i may have said before, woodson grew up not far from where i grew up but his book the education of the was not allowed in richmond public schools. He was a harvard ph. D. But his work was not acceptable because it was telling something we needed to know about ourselves and we could not be allowed to know. But we have to break through this because in the last analysis i think even more damaging than the theft of our higher that has bacterial sort of quantification to it is even more important to that is the effect of our story. That we dont know who we are. As Ralph Ellison said when i discover who i am, i will be free. Host cynthia go ahead with your second question. Caller my second question is, relative to the africanamerican leaders who are currently who are Political Prisoners in america today, i am speaking specifically