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"GLOBAL POLICY WARRIOR" RANDALL ROBINSON TO SPEAK FEBRUARY 20 AT OBERLIN COLLEGE
FEBRUARY 12, 2001-- Is there an unpaid debt still due for the 250 years that Africans were enslaved in America and for the decades of white supremacy that followed? "When a party unlawfully enriches himself by wrongful acts against another," states Randall Robinson, "the wronged party is entitled to be paid back."
Robinson, who is known for his work on the inequities and atrocities of the African diaspora, maintains that America should pay remuneration to African-Americans, just as the German government paid $60 million to victims of Nazi persecution and the United States paid the Japanese who were interned in World War II. African-American reparations advocates usually start the bidding at about $1.5 trillion.
Robinson is also the author of The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, which he wrote to provoke national discussion of reparations for slavery and discrimination. He will expand on this theme in a talk at 8 P.M. Tuesday, February 20 at Oberlin College. The event, which is part of the College’s Black History Month program, will be held in the Root Room of the Carnegie Building at 52 W. Lorain St. It is free and open to the public.
Robinson has garnered a formidable reputation as "a global policy warrior" (Los Angeles Times). The president of the Washington, D.C.-based TransAfrica and TransAfrica Forum established in 1977 to promote enlightened U.S. policies towards African and the Caribbean, he is widely recognized for his leadership of the Free South Africa movement, which pushed successfully for the imposition of comprehensive economic sanctions to end apartheid in that country.
He also launched a 27-day hunger strike to force the United States to halt its discriminatory policy toward Haitian refugees and restore Haiti’s first democratically elected government. In addition, he joined a delegation that met with Pope John Paul II to advocate debt relief for the world's poor countries, has discussed American-Cuban relations with Fidel Castro and a group of African-American leaders, and works to alert Americans to the cause and implications of the nation’s burgeoning prison industrial complex.
The Harvard-trained attorney also is the author of a book of memoirs: Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America and the brother of the late Max Robinson, an Oberlin alumnus and a prominent Washington D.C. broadcaster with ABC, who was the first African American to be a co-anchor of a major network newscast.
Oberlin’s Black History Month program is the result of a coordinated effort between the Department of African-American Studies, Afrikan Heritage House, the Office of the President Residential Services, the Multicultural Resource Center and Abusua.
Media Contact: Betty
Gabrielli
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