REPARATIONS STUDY BILL ADVANCES
Measure would allow study of slavery, possible restitution
A House committee voted on Wednesday to recommend for the first time the creation of a commission to consider providing Black Americans with reparations for slavery in the United States and a “national apology” for centuries of discrimination.
The vote by the House Judiciary Committee was a major milestone for proponents of reparations, who have labored for decades to build mainstream support for redressing the lingering effects of slavery. Democrats on the panel advanced the legislation over Republican objections, 25-17.
The bill — labeled HR 40 after the unfulfilled Civil War-era promise to give former slaves “40 acres and a mule” — faces steep odds of becoming law. With opposition from some Democrats and unified Republicans, who argue that Black Americans do not need a government handout for long-ago crimes, neither chamber of Congress has committed to a floor vote.
But as the country grapples anew with systemic racism laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic and the deaths of George Floyd and other Black men in confrontations with police, the measure has drawn support from the nation’s most powerful Democrats, including President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the majority leader. Polling suggests
that public support is growing, too, although it remains far from widespread.
“We think it will be cleansing for this nation, and it will be a step moving America forward to see us debate this issue on the f loor of the House,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, DTexas.
The renewed interest in reparations comes as Biden has positioned addressing racial inequities at the center of his domestic policy agenda, proposing billions
of dollars in investments in Black farmers, business owners, neighborhoods, students and the poor. The White House has said Biden’s $4 trillion jobs agenda is intended, in part, to “tackle systemic racism and rebuild our economy and our social safety net so that every person in America can reach their full potential.”
The question of reparations to former slaves and their descendants has vexed and divided policymakers for generations, caught up in
larger questions about the legacy of racism in America and White denial of the crippling effects of the slave economy. It presents thorny practical questions as well, such as who should benefit, what form reparations might take and how to pay for them.
Union Gen. William T. Sherman made the first widespread attempt in 1865 with a special battlefield order to seize 400,000 acres of land and award it in parcels to former slaves. But after
President Abraham Lincoln died later that year, his successor, Andrew Johnson, quickly rescinded it. No subsequent plan has come close to enactment.
Black representatives in Congress began rekindling the issue three decades ago when they first proposed a commission to explore it. The bill before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday would establish a body to study the effects of slavery and the decades of economic and social discrimination that followed, often with government involvement, and propose possible ways to address the yawning gap in wealth and opportunity between Black and White Americans. It would also consider a “national apology” for the harm caused by slavery.
Though his administration does not use the reparations label, Biden has embraced versions of many of those proposals in his farreaching attempts to combat the coronavirus pandemic and restart the sputtering U.S. economy.
Biden’s coronavirus stimulus law, the American Rescue Plan, for example, invested tens of billions of dollars in food assistance programs, direct payments to Americans and monthly support for children — programs that applied regardless of race, but would provide significant aid to Black Americans. It also earmarked $5 billion in aid and debt relief to help Black farmers mitigate years of discriminatory agricultural subsidy and lending policies.
“We understand that we don’t need a study to take action right now on systemic racism,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in February. “So he wants to take actions within his own government in the meantime.”
Republicans have dismissed many of the programs as unnecessary, unpopular or too expensive, and appear to be lining up to oppose the plans outright in Congress unless Democrats agree to scale them back significantly.