ovesa ow, >> guest: now, he moves forward and cuts us off from any access to african history. sich was not what was intended. so we obviously over the value of the hype to the people who w sufferedho so much and their families, and those who are descended from those people who worked for 246 years. of th but we owe them. we have been asked to expect that people can survive in good and sound psychological health. on ashes and obliterated richm histories. we used to have this phrase that we used all the time. from here to timbuktu. but nobody knew what it was. i we didn't even know it was a place. it was a crossroads of comments. but it was also one of the first that was done in spain. you have all of these manuscripts written tween 580 and 15 a.d. that are literature and support and manuscripts we didn't know anything about the queen of sheba she lived all hed life, which approximately lifeea in ethiopia is today. she but is now in what is called yemen. but it was part of the queen of sheba.acks the battle describes her as a woman of black skin. all of this was written. people develop cultures inuse ty history. because they need them to stay in good health.cial that is how we make social progress. living without memory is like r driving without a license.more it is more dangerous live without your story.thout soyo the point is that we were t off from all of that and then renamed. when i was a child, we wereed. called negroes. no one knew what the prevalence was of the word, what s meaningless. that was a partme of the wall to was built to separate those thad were stolen for example, they have the highest crime rate in the country, violent crime rate on indian reservations. the question is, like? what awful thing happened that would cause this situation for them? the same is true in the case of african-americans and when it was all over, this awful chapter from the beginning of slavery 246 years followed by virtually a century of pnh which people were essentially forced to work for knowing him in income in the south and then legal segregation before the end of the voting rights act, that nightmare had ended and during that nightmare untold sums of lives have been wrecked and the social damage is still witnessed and so we all an acknowledgment to the fact that this is not peculiar to the united states that you don't want to acknowledge. the people of turkey don't want to acknowledge the genocide against the people of 1915. jenna does not want to acknowledge its discriminations in tibet or in western china against the uyghur people. many nations hide from their past but we owe people the truth. we owe them their history and we owed them repair and we are not doing that. not only that, we don't even want to talk about it as a society. >> host: you say that this loss of heritage is comparable to the holocaust and some of the other genocides. >> guest: the holocaust was 12 years. this was 246 years plus the century that people lost where they lost their languages. they. they lost their culture, they lost everything. many people had their severed. people lost their tongues. thomas jefferson when he was a boy at two years old had a relationship with a 14-year-old girl, sally hammonds, that he owned and wasn't from the -- we know what it would be called today. that was routine. we lost any idea of who we were. it was our past, our memory was banished and we worked ourselves to an early death. rebuilt the capital, built the white house, and doubt harvard law school which was endowed by isaac royal from the proceeds and the sale of slaves that he owned and antigua in the west indies. these things were retained so any american institution transfers the wealth that they got from the work of people who were not paid to their families and making their line rich and impoverishing those who had been stolen and used in this way. >> host: mr. robinson how far back can you trace your family's history? >> guest: i am very fortunate in that we have pictures. i can go back to my grade, at great-grandparents with pictures and with my great great great grandparents with the story of their lives in the united states. but that is extremely lucky. >> host: it in "the debt" what america owes to blacks you wrote what white society must be induced to do, own up to slavery and acknowledge its debt to slavery's contemporary victims. pay that debt and massive restitution's. rebuild the black esteem it destroyed by democratizing access to a trove of history's to which blacks contributed to prominently. when you talk about slavery's contemporary victims, what do you mean? >> guest: when segregation ended, there were those of us, and i was very fortunate to, a headstrong parents and an intact family. both of my parents had finished college. my father taught history in high school. my mother taught until she stopped to rear for children. and that meant everything to us. and so while we were damaged by segregation and we have a home. we had a family that was intact, that was sound and that was strong. 's so many people didn't have that, so they were exposed to the brute sharp edge of what was happening to them. and i think there were some of us who were in a position to move out once segregation ended. i was among that group. until that time, do we and those who were -- were stuck in the same boat. we were closed in to each other. some of us were able to go up and out. others of us could not. and so, we cleaved into two parts i think even then and i am not sure that those institutions that fought so hard at one time have fought the same tenacious battles for those who remain stuck today. so we have got the largest prison population in the world. over 2 million people, of the largest in the world-3/4 of those who face the death penalty are black and hispanic. half of the prison population is black. because of the way people's lives have been involved but also because of the unfairness in our criminal justice system. we see that for non-violent drug crimes. we constitute 14% of those who commit those crimes but roughly if i still have the figures right, if something like that a 6% of those prosecuted and close to 75% of those incarcerated. one sentence for a pound of cocaine and another sentence for crack-cocaine. the pound is essentially what white people used. the sentence is much lower than it is for crack-cocaine which is what black people have used. so the system is unfair. the history has been cruel and in many cases very little has changed for those people. >> host: in "quitting america" you write for all of my life, i have wished only to live in america that would but reciprocate my loyalty. at country that would absorb -- exhort from the several and diverse mounts of its decision-making authority and ideal of public candor and unconditional compassion in a country that would say without reserve to its disadvantage to its involuntary victims to native americans to african-african- americans to the wretchedly poor of all colors stripes tongues and religions that your country wronged you in separate and discrete ways, gronke with horrific and lingering consequences, wronged you in some cases from long ago and for a very long time, to a degree that would morally compel any civilized nation serious and sustained attention. >> guest: we don't want to talk about it. we still don't want to talk about it. we run from it. we now call it victimization, so it's not to be raised. it's a sad truth. >> host: why did you leave the country? >> guest: well i was as much going to a place as leaving a place. i have been going to st. kitts in the caribbean for 25 years, and it's a small island. it is made for someone like me who doesn't like big crowded places, big cities. it's an exquisitely beautiful place with mountains and clear blue water and a kind of smallness that allows the kind of intimacy you seldom go downtown and don't see someone that you know. but the biggest piece of it is that the woman i loved and married is from st. kitts, so we had decided many years ago that we were going to build a home their, which we did 11 years ago. so hazel and i have been there all that time and our daughter khalia went to high school there and finished high school and came back here to college and so that was one reason the. i was also wary -- weary, tired of the struggle that had depleted me. america had worn me out. simply because there are things that can't be talked about, has no tolerance for that kind of honesty and has no plans to make anything right. as if it says, and and i heard it say we have stopped the act of crime, and so if there is damage, then we are walking away from that. it's as if to say at the end of slavery, you could sort of like in this to two runners in the race. you take it done and shoot one runner in both legs and sounds the gun and you say now run. you can't catch up. there are people who had had everything taken from them. and the things that are not material are even more important. it's your software. it's your interior plumbing. it's what you have been caused to think of yourself, how you see yourself, the confidence or lack thereof in which you're trying to run any race. it was drained from many people over that love period and it's not like anything that has happened. we are talking about the longest running massive crime against humanity, the last 1000 years in the world. it's not like we bombed not the sake and hiroshima. and it is incinerated hundreds of thousands of people and in literally minutes because if the japanese who survived can remember their literature, can remember their culture and their traditions and put it all back up again, if the people who have lost it all, mothers, fathers, children, traditions, cultures, ways of living, then they don't know how to begin. i have jewish friends and hazel and i some years ago when we were in washington went to a bar mitzvah to see the launching of this adolescent son into adulthood. bland praise comes say all these wonderful things about a child. such a wonderful cultural traditional right of a ceremony to practice. there have been things like that still practiced in africa but the lost all of that. so your cause to reinvent culture almost every generation, that's a lot of damage. and it has to be acknowledged and it has to be reckoned with. >> host: randall robinson how much time do you spend in the states now? >> guest: i come up a few times. i was the dean of penn state law school that i have known for a couple of years, philip mcconaumcconau ghey called me and asked me if i would like to teach human rights courses and i spent all of my life in human rights and growing out of what i've been talking about. i said i would be happy to, so i teach a human rights course at penn state law school and i come up about three times a semester. arrested that we do via video so it works wonderfully. >> host: have you kept your u.s. citizenship? >> guest: oh yes. >> host: why? >> guest: my mother and father and my grandparents survived that for me. it is my duty. >> host: in "quitting america" the departure of a black man from his native land written in 2004 and by the way have you changed any of your views since the election of barack obama? >> guest: i remember my mother when he was nominated, hazel and khalia and i were in montréal. she called me at the hotel. she was i think 93 then. she said, and she was crying. [inaudible] i didn't need that telling. i always knew this. america is many places. it is a place that can be tolerant and accepting, a place where views can be moderated and differences can be reconciled. and i think a good deal of america supported vigorously the candidacy of a rock obama. and it's not only important to the black community. it's important to other americans as well. but he still faces a sort of vicious kind of ridicule from certain borders that are not unlike the america we saw when i was young in richmond, virginia. but, i think there are several americans -- i had grown tired of at least one of them. >> host: and "quitting america" you wrote america never helps anyone, even the starving and list its proposed to an american interest either strategic or economic and one cannot always distinguish one from the other. >> guest: well that's certainly largely true in foreign assistance. foreign assistance always has to be associated with a strategic purpose. when we look at what we did as a country to haiti, to thomas jefferson did everything he could to defeat the haitian revolution. the only successful slave revolt in the history of the hemisphere if these people turned back an army from spain, armies of 60,000 apiece from england and france twice and won their freedom, opened their doors to freeing slaves all over the world, gave them a weapon and muskets and soldiers to fight for freedom and black america in exchange for freeing slaves there, a promise he didn't keep but they did all of these things and america did everything they could to quash this haitian quest for freedom for people who had been enslaved. and when they won their revolution, they took with it two-thirds of france's foreign income because that was the most valuable colony in the world. now, that survives even until now. frederick douglass spoke at the ship cargo world's fair in 1893 and mystified about how hostile the united states has always been towards haiti, hostile towards them because they won their freedom. we did everything we could to overthrow the democratically-elected government of president aristide. george bush blocked loans from the interamerican development foundation of $146 million loans for education, water and things like that. the international republican institute arranged and organized the opposition to it and then we as a country trained rebel soldiers in the dominican republic, trained and armed them to come to haiti to overthrow the government and then the last analysis, those were a pulse didn't figure into it. bush carried out the coup himself on american soldiers who arrived at the home of the president and took him off at 3:00 in the morning to the central african republic. we have to had to go there. maxine waters, a jamaican parliamentarian and sharon webster and the president's lawyer flew off to rescue him to bring him back to jamaica and then condoleezza rice threatened to make the jamaican government -- threatened to make it very difficult for them if jamaica accepted aristide even for a matter of days before he went to south africa. all because he said the minimum income ought to be raced from 1 dollar a day to $2 a day. the sweatshops of essentially white in haiti combined with american authorities to get him thrown out of office. if you look at the history of america and what we do and why we do it to, it is not a pretty picture. >> host: in your most recent nonfiction book, "an unbroken agony" haiti, from revolution to the kidnapping of a president from 2007 you write in haiti's 200 year history of one is hard put to identify a single episode of organized human suffering in which the u.s. did not play a direct, collateral or instigator of role. >> guest: we didn't recognize haiti until after the emancipation and the united states. from 1804 until the end of the civil war, week combined with all of the western powers to smother haiti, to destroy haiti and then in 1825 friends imposed sanctions on haiti saying that they had to be paid $21 billion for having lost the right to use haitian slaves. so it's the first time in history ever that the winner of a warhead to pay reparations to the loser. and then after 1950, woodrow wilson invades haiti and stays for 19 years, kills thousands of people with american marines and takes the peasant leader of the revolt in haiti in response to this invasion and nails him up on a board for public display to demonstrate to people what the consequences could be when you fight back against america. and then, a chain of black presidents working at the direction of the united states duvalier's son kills 50,000 people and that was fine. aristide, the first democratically-elected resident said we are responsible for the coup that took him out of office. the bush administration did it directly. not covered in the american press. the american press said that he fled to south africa, when he was taken to the central republic. we had to go there to rescue him and jamaica braved the american storm to keep them there until he could go to south africa. we were responsible for that overthrow of the democratic government in haiti. and the haitians we owe so much, because the haitian revolution first of all made possible the louisiana purchase because napoleon was done with the empire as a result of that humiliating thing. secondly, after haiti, after that revolution the north atlantic slave trade was ended by britain and the united states at the last sort of breath of that was the end of the civil war. all of this was precipitated by the haitian revolution. people in the united states know nothing about the history, nothing about the story including african-americans. so we owe so much to those haitians, ex-slaves, who defeated for the four of the most powerful armies in europe in the 12 and a half year war for their freedom. what. what a great story of history. >> host: this month on booktv's "in depth" program author and activist randall robinson. he is the author of five nonfiction books. here they are beginning in 1998, mr. robinson wrote in 2000 "the debt" what america owes to blacks and "the reckoning" what blacks owe to each other came out in 2002 and "quitting america" the departure of a black man from his native land in 2004 and finally "an unbroken agony" haiti, from revolution to the kidnapping of a president. 202 is area code if you would like to dial in and participate in our conversation with randall robinson 585-3880 for those of you in eastern and central timezones and 585-3881 in the mountain and pacific timezones. you. you can also contact us via e-mail or go booktv at c-span.org or social media. you can make a comment on our facebook page. facebook.com/booktv or send us a tweet at booktv -- @booktv is our twitter handle. randall robinson what is transafrica? >> guest: transafrica is the organization that i began in 1976 to galvanize african-american opinion on foreign-policy issues, particularly issues that concern the black world, u.s. policy towards africa, the caribbean and latin america. so transafrica of course was the organization that used its incher mentalities to galvanize american opposition to apartheid and with the embassy arrests that we were able to organize the arrest of 5000 people and in the 1980s and 1984 and the next year, and with that working with members of congress. we won the support for the set of sanctions that president reagan vetoed and his veto was overridden by a republican-controlled senate excess of the work we did and the millions we organized to make a difference. that, coupled with the great work that was being done in south africa led to a new africa that we see today. but we have been doing that work over a period of time. i had been there 25 years when i stepped down. >> host: who are maxey and doris robinson? >> guest: maxie robinson was my father and doris robinson was my mother. and i have already introduced you to them. they had strong opinions and they were extraordinary parents and they were extremely principled people. i remember when my brother max was with abc news as the chicago anchor and he had gone to smith college to make a speech. he was critical of abc and i was so proud of him because in him i saw my father and the kinds of things that he has stood for when we were children. >> host: did that hurt max robinson's career? >> guest: oh, itch or did. there's no question. but i think he thought as much as he loved his work, he thought there were a few