QuestionsforJahana.org

by John C. Rankin

 

  • As an African American woman, as a member of Congress and as a Democrat, Jahana Hayes has a vital perspective on the current debate concerning racial politics.
  • As a son of a long abolitionist lineage, as a minister of the Gospel and the founder of the Emancipation Party, John Rankin has a complementary and vital perspective on this debate.
  • Is a good public conversation possible?

Questions:

  1. What is the history of human slavery?
  1. What is the history of the Islamic slave trade?
  1. What is the history of the transatlantic European slave trade?
  1. What is the history of John Newton and William Wilberforce in the abolition of the British slave trade and slavery?
  1. What is the history of American abolition and how Abraham Lincoln celebrated constitutional checks and balance on power to prosecute the unalienable right of the Declaration of Independence?
  1. What is the history of the Democratic Party in terms of the 1857 Dred Scott decision, the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution in 1865, 1868 and 1870, Reconstruction, the founding of the Ku Klux Klan, the instigation of Jim Crow laws and segregation following 1877, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the subsequent expansion of AFDC and its impact on Black fatherhood and families, the nature of public housing projects, the nature of public education in depressed neighborhoods and the possibility of public and/or private school choice, and finally, the targeting of Black people by the abortion industry?
  1. What is the history of the Republican Party and its record in advancing or hindering Black well-being, freedom and prosperity?
  1. What are the prospects that Black Lives Matter can accomplish racial justice?
  1. What is the history and nature of institutional racism in exploiting Black suffering?
  1. How do the United States compare in opportunity for Black people alongside all other polities in the world?

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