A slavery reparations proposal, which faces overwhelming public opposition and could cost more than $12 trillion, is picking up support in the Democratic-majority House.
Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee on Wednesday held a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing about H.R. 40, “The “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act.”
The reparations commission would study the history of slavery, the role that federal and state governments played in supporting slavery, and racial discrimination against the descendants of enslaved Africans. The commission would make recommendations regarding “any form of apology” or compensation.
The proposal doesn’t include a price tag, but most estimates suggest it would be well into the trillions of dollars. A 2020 study by William Darity, a professor of public policy at Duke University, and his wife, Kirsten Mullen, “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century,” noted it would cost between $10 trillion and $12 trillion.
The legislation last came into focus in 2019 when Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her support for reparations. Since then, the bill picked up support from over 170 members of Congress, including every single Democratic presidential primary candidate who attended the 2019 National Action Network conference, hosted by Al Sharpton.
Jackson Lee said her bill would help unify the country through “reparative justice,” referencing and comparing Black Lives Matter protests over the summer to the Capitol riot on Jan.6.
“Since our last hearing, we have also seen hundreds of thousand peacefully take to the streets in support of black lives and accountability for law enforcement,” she said. “Many of these protesters carried signs in support of HR 40 and made the important link between policing reform and the movement for reparative justice.”
Despite support for the legislation on Capitol Hill, public sentiment has yet to come around. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from last June, only 1 in 5 respondents agreed the United States should use “taxpayer money to pay damages to descendants of enslaved people in the United States.” Other polls on the topic in recent years have shown similar, limited support.
Rep. Burgess Owens, a Utah Republican, responded to committee Democrats’ support for the bill and talked about his own great-great-grandfather Silas, “who arrived here in the belly of a slave ship and sold to the Burgess plantation. He escaped through the Underground Railroad and died a successful entrepreneur.”
Owens, a first-term lawmaker, said the proposal would only further divide an already fractured country.
“Reparations is not the way to right our country’s wrongs,” Owens said. “The reality is that black American history is not one of a hapless, hopeless race oppressed by a more powerful white race.”
