Promise Keepers, you did a good thing by calling White males to repent, for the White male is the most guilty; he should repent. And I want you to keep your promise. I was on the west coast recently, and I saw O.J. Simpson, who came to greet us. I told the audience that O.J. won in a court of law and was set free by a jury of his peers because the government could not sustain the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. O.J. should never have had to pay his lawyers if the State of California charged him and couldn’t prove it. The State of California should bear the burden of paying his legal fees. But, in a vindictive way, they brought him back to court, changed the venue and found him guilty of being responsible for a crime of which they already said he was innocent. I don’t quite understand that logic, but let me try it on America.
President Clinton said he wanted to apologize for slavery. I want to say to President Clinton: Sir, you do not have to apologize for slavery because no White folk that are present today had anything to do with slavery. You don’t have to apologize for what you didn’t do. You don’t have to apologize for the Middle Passage because you didn’t do that. You don’t have to apologize for taking away our name, our language, our culture, our God, our religion, our history, because you didn’t do that. You are innocent of that. But I must ask, are you responsible? And I would say to the Whites of this nation and to the White male in particular, you have it good because your fathers built your world on our sweat, our blood, our undeserved suffering. You are not guilty of what happened yesterday, but you are responsible today.
And since you are responsible, White America, if you don’t accept your responsibility to correct the sins of your fathers by giving justice to these who are deprived, then you are no better than your fathers. That’s why the scripture says, “prepare slaughter for the children for the iniquities of their fathers.”
1997
President Clinton said he wanted to apologize for slavery. I want to say to President Clinton: Sir, you do not have to apologize for slavery because no White folk that are present today had anything to do with slavery. You don’t have to apologize for what you didn’t do. You don’t have to apologize for the Middle Passage because you didn’t do that. You don’t have to apologize for taking away our name, our language, our culture, our God, our religion, our history, because you didn’t do that. You are innocent of that. But I must ask, are you responsible? And I would say to the Whites of this nation and to the White male in particular, you have it good because your fathers built your world on our sweat, our blood, our undeserved suffering. You are not guilty of what happened yesterday, but you are responsible today.
And since you are responsible, White America, if you don’t accept your responsibility to correct the sins of your fathers by giving justice to these who are deprived, then you are no better than your fathers. That’s why the scripture says, “prepare slaughter for the children for the iniquities of their fathers.”
1997