House committee votes to study reparations

Video - In wake of COVID-19, renewed calls for reparations"/>

WASHINGTON – Legislation to create a commission to study slavery-related reparations for black Americans authorized a House committee on Wednesday in a landmark vote – going to the full House for the first time over three decades after its initial introduction.

The legislation, HR 40, was first introduced 30 years ago and is now subject to a vote in the plenary chamber. If passed in the House, the measure will go to the equally divided Senate.

The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday 25-17 to move the bill forward.

The bill would create a 13-person commission to study the enduring effects of slavery and continued racial discrimination throughout the country’s history. The panel would submit its findings to Congress and recommend any necessary solutions, including compensation to black Americans.

The legislation, or the Commission to Study and Develop Redress Proposals for African Americans, is currently sponsored by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas.

In a statement, Jackson Lee said the vote on the Judicial Committee was “long overdue.” For more than two decades before her, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., Introduced her year after year without success.

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Lee said Conyers entrusted him with maintaining the legislation as he retired.

The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other black Americans – including the recent death of Daunte Wright – have drawn attention to racial inequality in public consciousness and renewed debate on how to remedy the America’s history of racism against African Americans – including reparations.

Representative Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., Deputy Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, told USA TODAY on Tuesday evening that she hoped there would be an opening to have real discussions on the matter and asked: “Didn’t the last year educate us or re-educate us about injustices, historical injustices? ”

Reparations – or compensation for historic crimes and wrongdoing with the aim of redressing injustices and helping specific groups of people or populations to prosper – have mostly been experienced in international contexts.

“By enacting HR 40, Congress can also start a movement towards the national recognition we need to bridge racial lines. Reparations are ultimately a matter of respect and reconciliation – and the hope that one day all Americans can walk together towards a more just future ”. Jackson Lee said.

Dean said she thought “the repair study was the reasonable thing to do.”

According to an estimate by William Darity, an economist at Duke University whose research is devoted to inequality in the context of race, and Kirsten Mullen, a historian, the cost of compensating Americans descended from slaves for the legacy of bondage and subsequent racial oppression could be as much as $ 12 trillion.

In the United States, support for reparations for the federal government’s role in slavery is both growing and prompted by skepticism. Although Congress formally apologized for slavery for the first time in 2008, HR 40 has always faced opposition.

Opponents of the bill called it a divisive source and argued that Americans today should not be held responsible for the consequences of slavery, which ended with the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

“No one should be forced to pay compensation for what they didn’t do,” said R-Ohio Rep. Steve Chabot. “Paying reparations would be taking money from people who never owned slaves to compensate those who were never enslaved. “

Representative Thomas Massie, R-Ky., Member of the House Judiciary Committee, told USA TODAY on Tuesday evening that he would not vote for reparations or create a commission to study the matter, but that he ” eagerly awaited “Wednesday’s discussion.

Texas Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat Committee Member,said ahead of the vote that she hoped Republicans would approach the issue “with an open mind and an open heart.”

“I hope we can approach the idea of fairness, the idea of justice, the idea of looking back on our history in order to do what is right in the future. I hope they will approach it with an open political mind, ”she concluded.

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Studies have shown that the net worth of a typical white family is almost 10 times that of a black family. Black Americans are also less likely to own a home than other racial and ethnic groups. The poverty rate for blacks is double the rate for whites.

According to an analysis by Mullen and Darity, reparations could lead to closing the wealth gap between blacks and whites within 10 years.

If the bill went to a vote in the plenary chamber and passed, it would have a slim chance of going through the Senate.

Asked about the matter in 2019, then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Whose great-great-grandfathers enslaved people on Alabama cotton farms, said said at a hearing on the matter that he didn’t think the repairs that happened 150 years ago, for which none of us are currently living is responsible, is a good idea. We have tried to tackle our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, passing historic civil rights legislation, electing an African American president. “

Senator Cory Booker, DN.J., tabled a companion version of the bill that would need the support of at least 10 Senate Republicans to advance to the Senate beyond filibuster.

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President Joe Biden said in February that he supported the study of reparations for black Americans.

Leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus met Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House for the first time on Tuesday and outlined their political vision, which included a conversation with the administration on reparations.

Contribution: Kim Hjelmgaard, Matthew Brown, Chelsey Cox

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