Supporters of a House bill that would create a commission to study and develop reparations for African Americans are working to push the legislation forward, three decades after it was introduced.
US Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who is a co-sponsor of the bill, has called on President Biden to sign an executive order establishing the House Resolution 40 committee. The bill was first proposed by the late John Conyers, who introduced the legislation in 1989 and spent years defending it.
At a two-day conference last week in Evanston, Ill., congressional leaders, experts and organizations met to discuss how to promote HR 40. Last year, the city north of Chicago became the first in the nation to begin implementing reparations for its African American population. residents
“HR 40, that’s 38 years on the books waiting for someone to say yes,” Lee said at the conference. “Today, we unapologetically call for an executive order to be established.
“I want for once an acceptance of the story of the journey that African Americans have taken to be an accepted reality in the United States,” he added.
According to a 2021 Pew Research Center study, 68% of Americans believe that African-Americans should not receive reparations.
“I don’t think it’s right to write checks based on race. It’s probably illegal,” former New York Republican Gov. George Pataki told the New York Post. Some New York lawmakers are working on a bill similar to the House bill that would create a reparations commission.
Thomas Craemer, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut, told Yahoo News that opposition to reparations is not abnormal. “Some opponents of slavery say that abolishing it at great cost of blood and money was enough reparation, but I would argue that ending an injustice is not the same as compensating for its lasting effects.”
Support for the bill has grown since it was first originated decades ago. “There are now 196 members of the House of Representatives who are cosponsors of the legislation, and I was proud to be one of the original cosponsors,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., told Yahoo News.
The Schakowsky district includes Evanston, which allows black residents to apply for grants from the city’s repair fund. “The implementation was really the hard part, it’s not like there was public resistance to the idea in the city of Evanston, which has a long history of having African-Americans as part of the founding of the city, hundreds of years ago,” Schakowsky told him. to Yahoo News.
Experts say repair initiatives are increasing across the country, as cities like Asheville, NC, Providence, RI, and St. Louis have introduced repair programs. At the state level, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation creating a remedial task force in 2020. The panel plans to release a final recommendation next year.
But others argue that reparations at the state and local levels are not enough and that the debt should fall entirely on the federal government. “States and localities do not have the capacity to deliver the kind of scope and magnitude of a reparations plan that would eliminate the racial wealth differential in the United States,” William Darity, author of From Here to Equality: Reparations for African Americans in the 21st Century, he told Yahoo News.
Darity says the amount owed should be enough to eliminate the racial wealth gap in the United States. “That gap amounts to approximately $840,000 per household, per black and white household. That is the differential. If we tried to turn that into an individual measure, it would be around $350,000 for black or black and white individuals,” Darity told Yahoo News.
Darity says that’s not the only reason the federal government should foot the bill. “The federal government is the ultimate guilty party,” she said. “So if we think about this series of atrocities, beginning with the enslavement of the ancestors of the current progeny of freedmen, it was deeply immoral, but completely legal, under United States statutes.”
Ron Daniels, president of the National Black Reparations Commission, a caucus of reparations supporters, told Yahoo News that reparations mean much more than just providing money. It’s also about community benefits that will help repair and rebuild the country, he said.
“We are talking about politics. We are also talking about how do you repair a town? How are communities repaired? We are talking about how to build infrastructure for economic development, healthcare, like community hospitals and public clinics,” he said.
Still, experts say deciding who will receive reparations will be difficult, because not all African-Americans may be eligible.
“There are many African Americans who are not descendants of slaves, but who have been harmed in other ways, by discrimination or by systematic de facto discrimination in the kind of private sphere,” said Raff Donelson, an associate professor of law at the Illinois Institute of Law. of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law, told Yahoo News.
With the structure of federal reparations unclear, Schakowsky says it’s essential to establish HR 40. “Find out how to really implement it in real life, for real people,” he said. “Those questions will come up nationally, about who is qualified to request reparations. Those are the things we’re going to have to take some time to figure out and agree on.”
Although slavery ended in 1865, African Americans have never been compensated for their work, but HR 40 supporters hope that will change. “We have faced many things where people say it is absolutely impossible. And you keep fighting, you keep organizing, you keep growing your following, and suddenly it’s inevitable.” Schakowsky said.
