Transcript of Governor David A. Paterson’s Keynote Remarks at the NAACP’s 99th Annual National Convention
Duke Energy Convention Center
Cincinnati
Ohio July 17, 2008
Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] I see the band is still here from last night.
I hope you like the introduction. I wrote it. [Applause] No, I could never have written that. Only the great Statewide President of the New York NAACP could have written that. [Applause]
And when you have been flattered by an introduction like that, I can only compare it to standing on the absolute center of the North Pole. Any place you go now, you’ll be going south. [Laughter] So, I’d like to thank you for having me—and have a good day. Thank you. [Laughter]
Chairman Bond, who I watched as a teenager be nominated for Vice President at the National Democratic Convention in 1968, one of the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and for all of his great work in the State Senate of Georgia, and all his dedication to civil rights, after that, Chairman Bond, thank you for having me today. [Applause]
To a trailblazer right here in this organization, Roslyn Brock, who is the youngest and the first woman Vice Chair of this organization. [Applause]
To Mark Mallory and all those here who gave us such a tremendous convention, one that is going to give us in New York headaches trying to match the way you were so gracious to all the members and board members. [Applause]
To the members of the National Board, and those who are on the fundraising board, and I see that just in the past few minutes you were enhanced by a tremendous contribution—get it in the bank quick, you never know what’s going to happen in the market. [Laughter]
And finally, to the incoming President and CEO, Ben Jealous, who excelled in California, and will excel as the National President of this organization as well. [Applause]
Thank you all for allowing me to spend a few moments with you this morning.
The reason for being of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People needs to be stated and re-stated.
We wish to fulfill the dreams of those African-Americans, both the living and the dead, who struggled unremittingly and courageously over the past two centuries to build a viable national movement that was dedicated to economic, political and social justice.
Working with our white colleagues all that time—and, most recently, with those from the Hispanic and Asian communities—we have come to the realization that the only way any community can receive economic, political and social justice is by the accession of their best and their brightest to leadership positions in the delivery of health care, of education, in politics and government, in labor, in business, and in our faith-based institutions in this country. [Applause]
The accession to decision-making capacities in these institutions by qualified women and men from the African-American community is the only way we can feel that we have received true equity and true reflection of our merit and qualification here in American society. [Applause]
These, I think, as members of the NAACP, are our goals. These are our principles. And I pray that we will never stray from them. Never let anyone divide or splinter your ranks with any feeling that this action is inappropriate, with cries of reverse racism. For the fight to bring qualified men and women from our communities to the decision-making capacity of government and other institutions is as American as any document, such as the Declaration of Independence or our founding Constitution. [Applause]
As we look to this new century of new activities and new problems, we look to the NAACP for this great, great opportunity to be part of a movement that will inure to the benefit of the people who live in our communities and who are from the diaspora from which we are indigenous.
And so, as we look to America, we recognize that America has not always been fair to those who were brought to this country in chains. But America has always had, as a priority, the decision as to how to address this issue.
The first Africans came to this country not as slaves, but as explorers. Two came with Columbus. Thirty came with Balboa. The great explorers included Esteban, and Jan Rodrigues, the first African from the island of Hispaniola to come to New York City.
But from 1619 to 1863 were 244 years of divisive, inhuman slavery. It was our greatest crucible as we struggled for international diplomacy and recognition over those years. [Applause]
From the founding Constitution of America, that held in 1787, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, the section in the Constitution that provided for slaves, that, for population counting, would count them as three-fifths of man. Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, provided for the recovery of runaway slaves. Get your Constitution out; it’s still there. [Applause]
Although, in my edition, it says in parentheses that, after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, this section is “probably rendered invalid.” How comforting. [Laughter]
All through the embryonic inception of the new administration, what to do about the slaves, what to do about the Negro, was the highest priority—from the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 to the Missouri Compromise in 1820, which held that slavery could exist south of the Thirty-Sixth Parallel.
And then, through the 1820s and 1830s and 1840s, the argument for the justification of slavery versus abolition was the priority discussion held in the corridors of Congress and intellectual societies all through America until the Compromise of 1850, which started to demonstrate that there could be slavery north of the Thirty-Sixth Parallel.
And then the very invidious Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, where it was validated. California was entered into the Union as a free state, Utah was a slave state. Slavery was abolished in neutral territories and in Washington, DC. Every major decision involved what to do about African-Americans before we received our citizenship.
And finally, this led to the penultimate incident in 1857, when an escaped slave named Dred Scott lost, in the United States Supreme Court, his desire to receive freedom.
This case has been misunderstood in recent decades. People think that it was the decision that rendered it possible for there to be slavery north of the Thirty-Sixth Parallel. That is wrong. It actually was decided in a case called Strader v. Graham in 1852. The Dred Scott decision was very simple. If you are three-fifths of a man, you are not a complete person, and cannot sue anybody in a federal court. That’s what the Dred Scott decision held. [Applause]
It took a bloody civil war, and the loss of millions of American lives—and continued segregation, ratified by the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896, which not only upheld segregation but mandated it as law. And struggles—8,500 lynchings in this country—until, finally, the passage of the federal Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
But the fight was still not over. We were fighting cases like DeFunis, Bakke, and the Michigan case. Like a Supreme Court decision in 1989, the Croson decision, which then held that set-aside programs designed to equalize opportunity for men and women who had previously been denied would have to undergo further scrutiny—setting back minority- and women-owned business enterprises a full decade. The Croson v. Richmond decision of 1989. Patterson—no relation—v. AT&T in 1990.
But all along, there was support for the freedom and equality that we were promised in our Constitution, but was validated in 1909 with the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. [Applause]
Now you should play that. All right. I’ve just got to get straight with the organist what the main points are here. [Laughter]
In 1905, at the Niagara Movement, which was the precursor to the NAACP—which was supposed to be held in Niagara Falls, but actually had to be held in Ontario, on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, because the hotel owners would not give rooms to the black individuals who were at that conference—W. E. B. Du Bois was asked: “What is it that the Negro wants in this society?”
His response was that the Negro wants what everyone else has. An equal opportunity in education. Fair housing. An equal opportunity in employment. And the opportunity to receive decent and affordable health care. [Applause]
And so, as we look to 1909 at Cooper Union, to that founding Constitution, we realize that the NAACP has been there through the fights of desegregation, through the legal cases, through the marches, through every single social action that has brought any kind of freedom and equality for our people. Its founding, its epicenter, its focus is with the NAACP. [Applause]
And so it is my highest honor to welcome you to spend your centennial anniversary in the home where you were founded: New York City. [Applause]
We will be working hard to try to keep up with Cincinnati. They did a great job for you all. We owe them a round of applause. [Applause]
But New York has got a lot of surprises for you. We hope you’ll come and see some of the landmarks. We hope you will come and see the African Burial Ground, the oldest burial grounds in the history of this country, and the only burial grounds that has slaves native to the African continent that lie there, buried between 1710 and 1795.
And next year, I’ll come and tell you about it, but you must come and see the national memorial to the burial grounds that lies at the confluence of Broadway and Duane and Reade and Elk Streets in Lower Manhattan. It stands as a tribute, more so than our country ever has, to those who came to this country in chains and helped to build America. [Applause]
But as exciting as it’s going to be, as hard as we’re going to try to make all of your proud of your centennial convention, and as interesting as it is to be in the big city, how much more glorious and gratifying would it be if, during that convention, you are visited by the President of the United States, and that it is the first African-American President of the United States, President Barack Obama! [Applause] I thought you would like that. [Laughter]
This is not to show any disdain or disrespect for the Republican candidate for President, Senator John McCain, who appeared here yesterday and gave a very, very sound speech. [Applause]
And I would like to believe that, unlike some of his predecessors, that Senator McCain showed great sincerity when he was here, and would be willing to meet with the NAACP should he be elected or after he’s elected, unlike others who have come before him, and that he would fulfill some of the promises he made to the Convention yesterday. And we thank him—we thank him for taking the time, during his campaign, to appear at this Convention. [Applause]
But in all objectivity, the reality is that Senator McCain has said that he is supporting the policies of an administration that turned a $2.5 trillion surplus into a $9 trillion debt. [Applause]
He is supporting the policies of an administration that has made it such that there are 9 million Americans in this country whose mortgage value is higher than the price of their homes. [Applause]
He wants to continue the policies of an administration that has lost $4.5 trillion for homeowners, with 5 million homes either being foreclosed or in jeopardy of being foreclosed.
He wants to support policies of an administration that has seen jobs going overseas, the national savings cut in half, thousands of companies going out of business, state budgets wildly out of balance, more children going without food and without shelter than at any time in the last 10 years, entire regions struggling for survival, people denied the opportunity to work and now others thrown out of work. And people are now, rather than living in prosperity as we were promised, more divided than ever—region against region, class against class, the haves against the have-nots. [Applause]
That doesn’t make him a bad guy. It’s just that there’s another candidate for President who came through the greatest primary competition that has ever been witnessed in the history of this country, from his opponent, the dynamic Senator from the great State of New York: Hillary Clinton. [Applause]
And after this titanic struggle, he is the nominee of the Democratic Party. And the prevailing feeling is that, with the mood of this country, America needs a change in its leadership and, presumably, its policies. [Applause]
So, as we approach this quadrennial referendum on leadership, and presumably policy, there’s really only one thing standing in the way of the accession to the Presidency of the first African-American candidate nominated by a major party in the history of this country.
It’s a question we can’t answer. It’s a question only America can answer.
Can America reject the crucible of race that has dictated and pervaded all of our history to embrace an African-American man who has the right policies for the next decade in this country? [Applause]
Can America overlook its past practices that were so grave that, in 1820, the great Scottish wit, Sidney Smith, writing in the Edinburgh Review, said of America: how can they protest the tyrannies of Europe while they torture and brutalize one-sixth of their population? Can America get past this and elect an African-American President of the United States? [Applause]
Can America go past the crippling way we’ve shot ourselves in the foot over and over—denying opportunity to people who are bright, to people who are qualified, to people who are able, but they didn’t look like us, or they didn’t come from where we came from, or they’re from a different gender, or they’re from the African continent? Can America push that away and find new leadership? [Applause]
Can America show new leadership, as opposed to the old leadership that has left so many people in poverty, with the cure for cancer probably stuck in the brain of a little black girl who lives in South Central Los Angeles but can’t get the minimum skills and training that would take her to save the world? [Applause]
We will find out in the next few months what America can do.
And, as we look into the twenty-first century, we are reminded of W. E. B. Du Bois’s comments at Cooper Union in 1909 when he said that the challenge of the twentieth century will be the “veil of segregation.”
The challenge of the twenty-first century, my brothers and sisters, is that there is a higher number of African-Americans attending college than there has ever been in our history. There are more members of the African-American middle class than at any other time in our history. But at the same time, there are more people under the poverty line in our community than at any other time in our history. There are more people going without food and shelter in our community than at any other time in our history. So the gap between the haves and the have-nots, right in our own community, is wider than it’s ever been before.
And so, how are some of us—who have, many times, been luckier than we have been good—going to embrace those who, unfortunately, haven’t been able to embrace prosperity as we have?
The first thing we’re going to have to recognize is that, no matter how prosperous we are, no matter how well-heeled we may be, no matter how ambitious and successful we have been, we still can be cast under the same net regardless of our circumstances. [Applause]
This week, I saw one of the most malignant, vicious covers of a magazine I have ever seen in my natural years. [Applause]
It presented a man who was President of the Law Review at Harvard Law School, and successful for his entire life—and his wife, whose success is equal if not better than his—it depicted them as angry, hateful, violent and unpatriotic, a direct antagonism to the lives these two great black professionals have lived for the last 45 to 50 years. [Applause]
And what does this mean? It means that if this could happen to a man who is a nominee of a major party, then, as Ralph Ellison said in Invisible Man, maybe on the lower frequencies, I speak for you. [Applause]
Now, on March 17, I was sworn in as Governor of New York State. [Applause]
On January 1, 2007, I was sworn in as Lieutenant Governor of New York State. [Applause]
At that time, I was not looking for a job. I was Minority Leader of the New York State Senate. I cut the margin of Republican majority from 14 to four. I was on my way to becoming the first black Majority Leader in the history of New York State. I was not looking for a job.
I was asked by the candidate for Governor, who would eventually win, Eliot Spitzer, to be his running mate because he said that if there was any unforeseen circumstance, I want someone there who can run the government of New York State. [Applause]
But you ought to come to New York and read what they write about me. I am known as New York’s “accidental governor.” And you see it replicated: “the accidental governor.”
I would like to point out a couple of facts. The two adjoining states to New York—New Jersey and Connecticut—have had three government changes in the last five years. None of those people were called “the accidental governor.” [Applause]
Nobody called Malcolm Wilson, who became Governor of New York in 1974 when Governor Rockefeller became Vice President, he was never referred to—Google his name in any article—as an “accidental governor.” Nobody called Teddy Roosevelt an “accidental president.” Nobody called Harry Truman an “accidental president.” And no one called L.B.J. an “accidental” anything. [Applause]
So why was this non-illustrious title held all these years for me? [Laughter]
I will leave this answer to all of you, or the Freudians in the audience, because I haven’t had a chance to think about it. [Applause]
When I got into office, I recognized that New York had lost 25,000 homes that year to foreclosure. And so, in the past few weeks, we have passed, and I have now signed into law, legislation that demarcates what is said to be a valid loan, and the violation of that is now a criminal penalty in the State of New York. [Applause]
Moreover, we have passed a provision saying that, at any point when there will be a foreclosure, the homeowner must be notified within 90 days of the event—and there must be funds for counseling and for legal services, and there must be an opportunity for redress by people who want to live the American dream and keep their homes. [Applause]
Then I noticed that there were children living above 250 percent of the federal poverty line who were not receiving health care in New York. We tried to pass legislation calling for federal assistance in 2007. Not getting it, we have just, in the past few weeks, passed legislation—and since the federal government can’t invest in children, we’ll do it for them, and now all of New York’s 450,000 uninsured children have access to insurance within the past few weeks. [Applause]
But there’s more. [Laughter]
New York had one of the worst records on minority- and women-owned business enterprises.
Even though 9 percent of Asian-Americans were pre-qualified, only 1 percent received contracts in procurement from New York State.
Women, who comprise 51.8 percent of New York’s population and 29 percent of those pre-approved for contracting—nonetheless, women received less than 3 percent of the contracts doled out by New York State’s agencies.
Hispanic-Americans represented 7 percent of the pre-qualified contractors, but received .74 percent—three quarters of one percent—of the procurement.
African-Americans represented 9.2 percent of the pre-approved contractors—meaning that we met all of the threshold tests for whether or not you can be part of New York’s procurement program—9.2 percent—African-Americans received .66 percent, two-thirds of one percent, of the opportunities.
How about African-American women? Three percent of the pre-approved contractors. They received .13 percent—I once majored in math, and I can’t tell you what percentage that is of 1 percent—but we’re going to find that sister and have a big party for her once we get done with our legislation. [Laughter]
Because as of today, we have issued an Executive Order that will make sure that the playing field is level. New York is now open for business for minority- and women-owned businesses. [Applause]
In addition—in the areas of banking, insurance, and the sales of securities and bonds—I have now executed an Executive Order in the past few days that will bring equity to those areas. And I have appointed Paul Williams, formerly of the NAACP, to be the head of the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, the largest contractor in this area. [Applause]
And here’s what I have to tell you about that legislation: it’s no accident, and it is binding. [Applause]
There may have been times in the past when public servants talked in absurd extremes, raised hopes that were not fulfilled, made promises they couldn’t keep. But in this era, it is a new day. And if you come to New York, just know one thing, there’s a new sheriff in town—and we’re going to have equality for everyone in this state. [Applause]
I came here today to say “thank you.” Because this Governor got his first job at the Mid-Manhattan Branch of the NAACP back in 1981 and has learned a lot from it, and is just trying to give back, and to not forget where I came from. [Applause]
Finally, we are aware that we have a terrible economic crisis in this country.
We have had to cut our interest rate seven times over the past few months. It has created spiraling inflation that has transposed itself to countries all around the world. China, India, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia now have 8 to 10 percent inflation rates. Malaysia’s is 14 percent. It is 23 percent in Argentina and 29 percent in Venezuela. In the country of Ethiopia the inflation rate is now 48 percent. We are experiencing worldwide job loss and worldwide inflation.
The market is struggling for survival. Our national economy is reeling. The Case-Shiller/Standard & Poor’s index shows that there’s been a 12.7 percent devaluation in the value of homes, ending June 30, 2008, starting July 1, 2007.
We have an immense crisis in this country. Our unemployment rate is above 5 percent. Prices at the pump for gas will exceed $5 by Labor Day. We are aware that energy prices are up 19 percent. Food prices are up 10 percent. The price of milk is going up even higher than the price of gas.
There are immense problems confronting this country. But when can this country be America? Can America be what America has been in the past: resilient, fighting back, proud and victorious? Where can we find this resolve?
We can find it from places such as the NAACP.
We have fought with unemployment. We have fought with the denial of opportunity. We have fought with trying to balance a budget. And we have fought with this for 100 years. Now maybe we can take that resolve and embrace this country—who may be embracing all of us.
And we can work together—whether we be Asian, black, Hispanic, or white; whether we be upper middle class or welfare recipients; whether we be homeowners, tenants, landlords or even the homeless—to bring this country back, to rebuild America, to bring back prosperity and reignite the engine of our economy. [Applause] And when we do, it will be the proudest moment in our history.
I thank you for having me today, and I close by wishing this organization the great success in its next hundred years that it has experienced in this century.
I let you know that we’re standing on the verge of a new culture—when the sons and daughters of people who came here in chains now have a chance to set America free.
Thank you so much for having me here today. [Applause]