2020 hopefuls embrace new meaning of reparations

Some Dems propose subsidies, tax credits for legacy of slavery

Several Democratic presidential candidates are embracing reparations for the descendants of slaves — but not in the traditional sense.

Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro spoke of the need for the U.S. government to reckon with and make up for centuries of stolen labor and legal oppression.

But instead of backing the direct compensation of African-Americans for the legacy of slavery, the Democratic candidates are talking about using tax credits and other subsidies.

Long defined as some type of direct payment to former slaves and their descendants, the shifting definition of reparations comes as White House hopefuls seek to solidify their ties with African-Americans whose support will be crucial to winning the Democratic nomination. But it risks prompting criticism from Republicans and a shrug from black voters and activists if the proposals are seen as an empty gesture that simply renames existing policy ideas as reparations.

Montague Simmons of the Movement for Black Lives, which has pushed for reparations, said the debate is “not just cash payments.”

But “unless we’re talking about something that has to be systemic and transfers power to the community, it’s not likely going to be what we would consider reparations,” he said.

For now, that’s not how most Democratic presidential contenders are talking about reparations.

Harris has proposed monthly payments to qualified citizens of any race in the form of a tax credit. Warren has called for universal child care that would guarantee the benefit from birth until a child enters school. Families with income less than 200 percent of the poverty line would get free access and others would pay no more than 7 percent of their income.

Those benefits would likely have a disproportionate impact on AfricanAmericans.

But except for long-shot candidate Marianne Williamson, no Democratic White House hopeful has called for financial remuneration for blacks.

Harris told reporters in Iowa that “we have to all acknowledge that people have not started out on the same base and have not had equal opportunities to success.”

Castro told The Root, a black online news site, that America “would be better off” if the government addressed the issue of reparations, which he said he would explore if elected.

And in New Hampshire, Warren said the U.S. needs to confront its “ugly history of racism” and “talk about the right way to address it.”

In terms of a direct payment, reparations could be a tough political sell. In a Point Taken-Marist poll conducted in 2016, 68 percent of Americans said the country should not pay cash reparations to AfricanAmerican descendants of slaves. About 8 in 10 white Americans said they were opposed to reparations, while about 6 in 10 black Americans said they were in favor.

Republican strategist Whit Ayres said the issue of reparations is “symptomatic of the fundamental debate that is roiling the Democratic Party today.”

“There is no doubt that issues of race have been and remain critically important in American society,” he said. “But the idea that you resolve those issues by taking money from white people and giving it to black people will make race relations worse, not better.”

When Barack Obama ran to become the nation’s first African-American president, he opposed reparations. But in the final days of his presidency, he didn’t question the legitimacy of the concept.

“Theoretically, you can make, obviously, a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps,” Obama said, referencing the racial disparities faced by black Americans today.

“That those were wrongs done to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it’s not in the form of reparations checks, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, in order to close those gaps,” Obama said, referring to the American initiative to provide economic assistance to Western Europe after World War II.

Still, he said it was politically difficult to achieve such a goal.

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