Six on History: Reparations for Slavery
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1) House Lawmakers Advance Historic Bill To Form Reparations Commission, NPR
A House committee has voted to move forward with a bill that would establish a commission to develop proposals to help repair the lasting effects of slavery. The vote came nearly three decades after the bill was was first introduced.
Fresh debate over the issue of reparations for the descendants of enslaved people comes amid a national reckoning over race and justice.
The House Judiciary Committee took up the bill on Wednesday evening. The vote was the first time the committee has acted on the legislation since former Democratic Rep. John Conyers initially introduced it in 1989. This year, the legislation has the support of more than 170 Democratic co-sponsors and key congressional leaders.
Some proponents of H.R. 40 acknowledge that it would be challenging to get it passed in the Senate, given the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster and Democrats' narrow majority. The bill faces Republican pushback in both chambers.
Utah Republican Rep. Burgess Owens, who is Black, said Wednesday that while "slavery was and still is an evil," the issue of reparations is divisive and "speaks to the fact that we are a hapless, hopeless race that never did anything but wait for white people to show up and help us, and it's a falsehood."
In 2019, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rejected the reparations idea after the House held a hearing on the issue. He argued that it would be "hard to figure out whom to compensate."
"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," McConnell said then.
Asked about the prospects for passage in the Senate, Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, the chair of a House Judiciary subcommittee, said Monday that "the Senate is not a good place to be with this legislation, or with any legislation that's progressive and advances interests of African Americans, in particular."
"You've got to have 10 Republicans right now," he added, "and there are not that many of them that are going to quit and not run again, and going to have a come to Jesus moment."
President Biden met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus at the White House on Tuesday, and reparations was one of the topics discussed, according to lawmakers who participated in that meeting.
Texas' Jackson Lee told reporters that "we have heard from not only the president, but the White House and his team, that he is committed to this concept." ....
"The US House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to advance a bill that would create a commission to study the idea of reparations for slavery, an idea that has also been gaining ground in Europe since Black Lives Matter protests went global last summer
Legislation to create a commission to study slavery reparations for Black Americans cleared a House committee in a historic vote this week, sending it on its way to a full House vote for the first time more than three decades after it was introduced. If the legislation, HR 40, is passed by the Democrat-controlled House, it would go to the evenly divided Senate, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.
“Reparations are ultimately about respect and reconciliation – and the hope that, one day, all Americans can walk together toward a more just future,” said Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, a sponsor of the bill.
Some Republicans voiced opposition to the bill, arguing that the suffering wrought by slavery happened too long ago.
“No one should be forced to pay compensation for what they have not done,” said Republican Congressman Steve Chabot of Ohio. “Paying reparations would amount to taking money from people who never owned slaves to compensate those who were never enslaved.” ...
"Paying cash reparations garnered support from just 29% of Americans in an Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll taken in the fall of 2019. Black Americans overwhelmingly favored reparations with 74% supporting the idea, compared to 15% of White Americans.
Mr. Biden supports the idea of a commission, said a White House aid.[sic]
However, the aid also said the administration doesn’t need a study to act on racial justice, pointing to the president’s executive order directing agencies to address systemic racism.
The bill’s author, Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, did not immediately respond to Mr. Hoyer’s remarks."
"Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) is among the progressive lawmakers whose blunt, liberal outspokenness regularly annoys me. Recently, she particularly upset me while discussing the latest congressional study of reparations for descendants of enslaved people, when she said, “If you through your history benefited from that wrong that was done, then you must be willing to commit yourself to righting that wrong.”
Only this time I was bothered because her comments hit home.
Like most conservatives, I’ve scoffed at the idea of reparations or a formal apology for slavery. I did not own slaves, so why would I support my government using my tax dollars for reparations or issuing an apology? Further, no one in the United States has been legally enslaved since 1865, so why are Black people today owed anything more than the same freedoms and opportunities that I enjoy?
I remain unconvinced that an apology would have much real value, but the more substantive notion of reparations is worth discussing. In fact, it could be argued that the idea fits within the conservative philosophy. We’ll come back to that. But it is undeniable that White people have disproportionately benefitted from both the labor and the legacy of slavery, and — crucially — will continue to do so for generations to come.
When slavery was abolished after a bloody civil war, African Americans were dispersed into a world that was overtly hostile to them. Reconstruction efforts were bitterly resisted by most Southern Whites, and attempts to educate and employ former slaves happened only in fits and starts. The government even reneged on its “40 acres and a mule” pledge. After slavery, prejudice and indifference continued to fuel social and economic disparity.
The result is unsurprising. As noted by scholars A. Kirsten Mullen and William A. Darity Jr., co-authors of “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century,” data from the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances showed that median Black household net worth averaged $17,600 — a little more than one-tenth of median White net worth. As Mullen and Darity write, “white parents, on average, can provide their children with wealth-related intergenerational advantages to a far greater degree than black parents. When parents offer gifts to help children buy a home, avoid student debt, or start a business, those children are more able to retain and build on their wealth over their own lifetimes.”
Black author and activist Randall Robinson has argued that even laws such as those on affirmative action “will never close the economic gap. This gap is structural. … blacks, even middle-class blacks, have no paper assets to speak of. They may be salaried, but they’re only a few months away from poverty if they should lose those jobs, because … they’ve had nothing to hand down from generation to generation because of the ravages of discrimination and segregation, which were based in law until recently.”
The cost can be debated, along with the mechanics of a compensation package. But in the current drunken haze of government spending, appropriating trillions for the noble purpose of bringing Black Americans who remain economically penalized by the enslavement of their ancestors closer to the fiscal universe of White citizens surely seems less objectionable than some recent spending proposals.
It is a tenet of conservatism that a level playing field is all we should guarantee. But that’s meaningless if one team starts with an unsurmountable lead before play even begins.
It’s not necessary to experience “White guilt” or buy into the notion of “White privilege,” a pejorative that to me suggests Whites possess something they should lose, when in fact such benefits should extend to all. Supporting reparations simply requires a universal agreement to work toward, as Jayapal said, “righting that wrong.”
