The statue of General Robert Lee, Commander of the Confederate Army in the Civil War, in Congress in WashingtonMANDEL NGAN
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A commission of the American Congress decides Wednesday on the principle of financial compensation to repair the misdeeds of slavery in the United States, a historic first vote in a country still marked by racial discrimination.
The “reparations” bill seeks to create a commission of experts to make proposals on compensation for the descendants of the estimated four million Africans enslaved in the United States between 1619 and 1865, the date of l ‘abolition of slavery.
The legislation, an early version of which was drafted almost 30 years ago, has long stuck in the works but has become central again since several murders of African Americans prompted Americans to look into the history of slavery in the United States. their country and the multiple forms of discrimination suffered by the black minority, which represents nearly 13% of the population.
The vote comes as a white policeman is on trial in Minneapolis, accused of having killed during an arrest a black forty-something, George Floyd, who has become a global symbol of victims of police violence.
This “historic” vote is intended to “continue a national debate on how to combat the mistreatment suffered by African Americans during slavery, segregation and structural racism which remains endemic in our society today,” said said in a statement the chairman of the judicial committee of the House of Representatives, Jerry Nadler.
“Reparations are ultimately a matter of respect and reconciliation,” Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee, who supports the text, said in the statement.
He should pass the obstacle of the judicial commission. The Lower House of Congress, where Democrats are in the majority, will then for the first time approve it in plenary session, at an unspecified date.
But the fate of the text is uncertain in the Senate, where Democrats will have to obtain the votes of at least ten Republicans for it to be finally adopted.
In 2019, Mitch McConnell, then leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, said he was against the idea.
“I don’t think repairs for something that happened 150 years ago, and for which people alive today are not responsible, is a good idea,” he explained.
– “Fundamental inhumanity” –
In 2019, the median annual income for a black household was $ 43,771, compared to $ 71,664 for a white household, according to official statistics.
Despite advances in the struggle for their civil rights in the 1960s, African Americans still have less education, have poorer social security coverage, and live shorter lives than whites. They are also incarcerated disproportionately compared to the rest of the American population.
The bill addresses “the injustice, cruelty, brutality, and fundamental inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865.”
He instructed a group of 13 experts “to study and consider national apologies and compensation proposals for the institution of slavery and (the) racial and economic discrimination against African Americans.”
These experts are to make recommendations on how to calculate compensation for descendants of African slaves, what form this compensation should take and who will be eligible. Some of these members will come from organizations supporting reparations.
The issue of compensation had been raised by several candidates for the 2020 Democratic primary in the larger debate on racial inequalities and income differences.
Before a decision at the federal level, the issue of reparations had already been addressed at the local level.
The small town of Evanston, near Chicago, in March became the first to decide to compensate its black residents to the tune of $ 10 million over the next 10 years.
Residents who meet the criteria will each receive $ 25,000 to finance their mortgage or the renovation of their homes.
In 2019, students at the prestigious Georgetown University in Washington approved the creation of a fund for the benefit of descendants of slaves sold in the 19th century by the Jesuits who created the establishment. This referendum, however, had no regulatory value for the university founded in 1789.
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