WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden’s White House is supporting the study of reparations for black Americans, encouraging Democratic lawmakers who are renewing efforts to create a commission on the issue amid the great racial disparities highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A House panel heard testimony on Wednesday about legislation that would create a commission to examine the history of slavery in the United States, as well as discriminatory government policies that have affected ex-slaves and their descendants. The commission would recommend ways to educate the American public about their findings and suggest appropriate solutions, including government financial payments to compensate descendants of slaves for years of unpaid work by their ancestors.
Biden supports the idea of studying the issue, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday, although she did not say he would sign the bill if he passed Congress.
“He would certainly support a study on the repairs,” said Psaki at the White House meeting. “He understands that we don’t need a study to act on systemic racism now, so he wants to act within his own government in the meantime.”
Biden won the Democratic presidential nomination and, finally, the White House with the strong support of black voters. While campaigning against the backdrop of the highest assessment of racism in a generation after George Floyd’s death, Biden supported the idea of studying reparations for descendants of slaves. But now, as he tries to win Congressional support for other agenda items, including a massive coronavirus aid package, he faces the choice of how aggressively to push the idea forward.
Even with Democrats in control of Congressional chambers and the White House, passing a reparations bill can be difficult. The proposal has stalled in Congress for more than three decades, gaining new attention in 2019 only after Democrats gained control of the House.
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who has 173 co-sponsors for her project, said that descendants of slaves continue to suffer from the legacy of this brutal system and the lasting racial inequality it has generated, pointing to COVID-19 as An example. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that blacks are almost three times more likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19 than whites and almost twice as likely to die from the disease. She offered her account as a way to unite the country.
“The government has sanctioned slavery,” said Jackson Lee. “And that’s what we need, a reckoning, a restorative justice that heals.”
But research has found long-standing resistance in the United States to compensation for descendants of slaves, divided along racial lines. Only 29% of Americans expressed support for the payment of cash damages, according to a survey by the Associated Press-NORC Public Affairs Research Center conducted in the fall of 2019. Most black Americans favored compensation, 74%, in compared to 15% of white Americans.
Congressman Burgess Owens, a first-time Republican from Utah, argued against a reparations committee. He noticed that his great-great-grandfather arrived in America in the belly of a slave ship, but escaped slavery by the Underground Railway and became a successful businessman. He criticized “wealth redistribution” as a failed government policy.
“While it is impractical and an obstacle for the United States government to pay reparations, it is also unfair and cruel to give black Americans the hope that this will be a reality,” said Owens.
Jackson Lee’s bill asks the commission to examine the practice of slavery, as well as the forms of discrimination that the federal and state governments have inflicted on former slaves and their descendants. The commission would then recommend ways to educate the American public about their findings and appropriate solutions.
Kamm Howard, co-president of the National Black Coalition for Reparations in America, considered the commission long overdue and said that “many years have been lost, many lives lost” since the legislation was first introduced by Rep. John Conyers , D-Mich., In 1989.
“The goal here is restoration. Where would we, as a people, be if it were not for 246 years of stolen work and the horrors that accompany it, if it were not for the multiple periods of post-slavery multi-billion dollar plunder? Howard said. “We must be healed.”
Larry Elder, a conservative black radio host, said African Americans had made tremendous economic and social progress, noting that Barack Obama was twice elected to the presidency. He said that racism has never been a less significant problem in America than now and that reparations would represent one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history. “Find out who owes what is going to be a great achievement,” said Elder.
Former NFL star Herschel Walker also spoke out in opposition to the commission, saying the repairs would create separation and division.
“I feel like this continues to let us know that we are still African-Americans, not just Americans,” said Walker.
___
Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.