https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...SOn?li=BBnb7Kz
WASHINGTON — With the support of a string of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, the idea of reparations for African-Americans is gaining traction among Democrats on Capitol Hill, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi backs the establishment of a commission that would develop proposals and a “national apology” to repair the lingering effects of slavery.
Nearly 60 House Democrats, including Representative Jerrold Nadler, the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, support legislation to create the commission, which has been stalled in the House for 30 years. The bill will be the subject of a hearing on Wednesday — the first congressional hearing on reparations in more than a decade, and the first on the measure itself.
“Reparations is a challenging issue,” Ms. Pelosi said in February at Howard University, adding that she supports the bill and looks “forward to an open mind and full participation of the public in that discussion.”
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It is rare for Ms. Pelosi to weigh in on legislation before it works its way through the committee process, and in doing so she is entering an arena that is politically fraught for her party.
Conservatives have
ridiculed the call for reparations as unnecessary, unworkable and a cynical ploy for black votes, and Republicans will almost certainly oppose them and use the hearing to paint Democrats as left-wing socialists seeking a redistribution of the nation’s wealth.
“I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, for whom none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, told reporters on Tuesday. “We have tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation, elected an African-American president. I think we’re always a work in progress in this country, but no one currently alive was responsible for that.”
The current debate over reparations was fueled in part by the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose 2014 article “
The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic documented systematic discrimination by the Federal Housing Administration, which for decades classified black neighborhoods as undesirable and refused to insure loans for black homeowners.
“This is about more than slavery; this isn’t about litigating things that happened 150 years ago,” Mr. Coates said in an interview. “There are people who are alive today who are impacted by policies that came out of slavery.”
But Mr. Coates said Americans needed to reckon with how they view the past.
“If we’re going to be a country that feels like Jefferson is important and Washington is important and the Declaration of Independence is important, and we’re going to be patriotic on July 4, then we have to be the same way about the things that shame us,” he said. “We can’t say that things that ended 150 years ago don’t matter but somehow the American Revolution does matter. Either the past matters or it doesn’t.”
The House bill, titled the “
Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act,” would authorize $12 million for a 13-member commission — three members appointed by the president, three by the House, one by the Senate and six from organizations that have championed racial justice. The panel would study the effects of slavery and racial discrimination, hold hearings across the country and recommend “appropriate remedies” to Congress.
© Cole Wilson for The New York Times The current debate over reparations was fueled in part by the writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates. Wednesday’s session, before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, does not guarantee that the bill will be taken up by the full committee or get a vote on the House floor. A Democratic aide characterized it as “an educational opportunity to elevate the dialogue nationally” around reparations. And even if the bill passed the House, it has virtually no chance of Senate passage or President Trump signing it.
But its backers say they are looking to the future and the possibility of a Democratic president and perhaps a Democratic-led Senate, where Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey and a presidential candidate, has introduced a companion to the House bill.
“This is not symbolic,” said Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas and the chief sponsor of the measure. “It’s not a symbolic hearing; it’s not symbolic because of the day; it’s not symbolic because of the commission. It’s legislation that we think has finally reached its moment.”
A recent government survey found that 52 percent of Americans — including growing percentages of whites, blacks, independents, Democrats and Republicans — believe the government does not spend enough money on improving the conditions of African-Americans,
according to The Associated Press. But the survey found that just three in 10 Americans think the government is obligated to make up for past racial discrimination.
Advocates emphasize that reparations would address more recent policies, and do not necessarily mean the government would be writing checks to black people.
Rather, they say, the government could engage in a wide array of assistance — zero-interest loans for black prospective homeowners, free college tuition, community development plans to spur the growth of black-owned businesses in black neighborhoods — to address the social and economic fallout of slavery and racially discriminatory federal policies that have resulted in a huge wealth gap between whites and blacks in America. It would be up to the commission to explore such options and others.
Ms. Lee and other backers of the bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union, view the measure as a first step toward opening a national conversation about what they call “reparatory justice.”
On the presidential campaign trail, most of the leading Democratic candidates — including Mr. Booker; Senators Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren; and Representative Julián Castro — have embraced it. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has not taken a position.
But even backers of reparations acknowledge that there is no set definition about what it actually means, and that creating a plan for reparations on a national scale would be extraordinarily complicated.
Ms. Harris told NPR that the idea “means different things to different people,” and agreed with the host’s suggestion that it could mean mental health treatment for black people.
Both the hearing and the bill are freighted with symbolism. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the
first documented arrival of Africans to the port of Jamestown in what was then the colony of Virginia. Wednesday, June 19, is
Juneteenth — the holiday that celebrates the end of slavery in the United States. And the bill carries the designation H.R. 40, a reference to the first proposal for reparations: the unfulfilled “40 acres and a mule” promise to freed slaves after the Civil War.
Correction: June 19, 2019: This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article misnamed a candidate campaigning for president in 2020. He is Julián Castro, not his twin brother, Joaquin Castro.
The DPST's are at it again with wealth redistribution and increased txes for black votes.
Gimme your vote and I8ll pay you
It is flagrant vote-buying- DPST's are shameless. And Racist Plantation politics.
Danny Glover is testifying for reparations today - other than being black and an actor - who is wealthy - what is his expertise??? Just wants more money!!!
I refuse to vote for any candidate supporting this nonsense.
No One alive has been a legal slave in this country .
I refuse to bear responsibility for Slavery in this country ending 150 yeers ago.
"Minority entitlement drives this - and it is disgusting.
House Democrats, With Pelosi’s Support, Will Consider a Commission on Reparations
