Reparations backers say House can pass bill
More than three decades after it was first introduced, a House bill that would create a commission to study reparations for Black Americans has the votes to pass, its key champions say.
That broad support, they contend, shows that the idea of reparations has gone from the fringes to the mainstream of American politics.
“This has been a 30-plus year journey,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-texas. “We had to take a different approach. We had to go one by one to members explaining this does not generate a check.”
The commission would hold hearings with testimony from those who support and oppose the idea. Jackson Lee said the country would end up better from the process. “Reparations is about repair, and when you repair the damage that has been done, you do so much to move a society forward. This commission can be a healing process — telling the truth can heal America,” she said.
While supporters are confident they have the votes to gain approval in the Democratic-controlled House, they are less optimistic about the bill’s fate in the Senate. Instead, they intend to push President Joe Biden to sign an executive order that would create the commission. The bill, H.R. 40, calls for a monthslong study of reparations, so supporters say they need Biden to act now so his administration could implement the commission’s recommendations before the end of his term.
The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the legislation or whether Biden would consider an executive order.
Supporters say that the conversations that started after George Floyd’s murder changed the political calculus of reparations. Floyd’s death in May 2020 sparked worldwide protests and a national reckoning on race and the criminal justice system. For many, watching the viral video of Floyd crying for his mother while struggling to breathe pinned beneath the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer was proof of what Black Americans have said for years — that their lives aren’t valued.
“I started fighting for reparations at a time when it didn’t pass the laugh test, when I spent most of my time just trying to get people in power just to utter the word reparations,” said Nkechi Taifa, director of the Reparation Education Project. “That changed with George Floyd. He was like the Emmett Till of the 21st century. It was something about his murder that captured the attention of the world just like Emmett Till’s murder did 70 years ago, and it started a new movement that has led to this mainstream conversation about reparations. But people need to know that this conversation didn’t just pop up overnight on the Internet; people have been fighting for reparations for a long time.”
This push for a federal commission comes a cities and localities across the country undertake their own efforts to account for their racist pasts.
In September 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed AB 3121, which created a task force to study and recommend reparations for Black Californians. In March, the panel will take a final vote on the question of who should be eligible for those reparations. With the vote, the group hopes to set a historic precedent for reparations eligibility for other states and the federal government. Thus far, the California effort represents the largest Black reparations project in the nation’s history, but supporters say they expect similar efforts soon in other Democratic strongholds like New York, New Jersey and Maryland.
The federal legislation was first introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr., Dmich., in 1989. The “40” in H.R. 40 is a reference to an order signed in the waning days of the Civil War aimed at helping newly freed Black people survive and make a fresh start after 200 years in bondage. The government would take land that had been confiscated from Confederates and redistribute it, with each Black family receiving 40 acres. However, after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, the order was rescinded and the land was returned to white Confederate landowners.
Conyers proposed the legislation in the wake of President Ronald Reagan signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned by the U.S. government during World War II.
Conyers went on to introduce the bill 20 times, once during every legislative session from 1989 to 2017. After Conyers resigned from Congress in 2017 in the wake of sexual harassment allegations, Jackson Lee became the bill’s primary champion. After 30 years on the Hill, the bill made it out of committee for the first time last April. It was approved by the House Judiciary Committee in a 25-17 party-line vote. Earlier this month, nearly every major civil rights organization and a host of celebrities, including Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover, signed a letter urging congressional leaders to bring H.R. 40 to the floor for a vote.
Jackson Lee said she and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who introduced the bill in the Senate, have secured 260 sponsors and “yes” votes for the measure across both chambers of Congress, though none from any Republicans.
“This groundswell of support sends a clear message to President Biden,” said Kennis Henry of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations. “We are ready for the opportunity to have this racial reckoning. And if not now, when?”