CNN)As a third-generation Japanese American, Kathy Nishimoto Masaoka remembers the fight for reparations during the Japanese redress movement in the 1970’s.
Black leaders in the civil rights movement were among the effort’s biggest supporters, she says. Masaoka said winning reparations gave the Japanese American community strength, a chance to stand up and a sense of responsibility. Now she wants the Black community to have the same.
“I think we always felt very connected to other communities of color and saw similarities of our own situations,” Masaoka, the co-chair of Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, told CNN. “We can fight for it and if we do link together and build solidarity, we can change this country and we can all heal,” she said.
Masaoka’s organization is among an increasingly diverse group of Americans pushing for reparations for Black Americans. Groups like the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, Japanese American Citizens League and Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redresshave become allies in the push to find corrective solutions to systemic disparities that impact some Black Americans. This allyship comes at a time when legislation like H.R. 40 — which proposes the creation of a federal commission to study reparations and recommend remedies for the harm caused by slavery and the discriminatory policies that followed abolition — is gaining momentum in Washington, its sponsor Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee says.
Reparations efforts are also being seen across states, cities, municipalities and historical institutions, as they have begun to explore new ways to address past transgressions.
Last week, a University of Chicago student organization demanded their university pay over $1 billion in reparations to the city’s South Side over the next 20 years. UChicago Against Displacement said in an op-ed that their university has been an “active participant in segregation and redlining” and the money will provide for “long-term true affordable housing.”
Earlier this month, a Boston city councilor proposed a new commission to study reparations and other forms of compensation for the city’s role in slavery and inequality. In two years, the commission would investigate the disparities and “historic harms” experienced by Black Bostonians, drawing on historic documents, archival research and speaking to the community.
The Rev. Robert Turner leads a protest to demand reparations, at Tulsa City Hall in Tulsa, Okla., last year
Last year, California became the first state to establish a reparations task force commissioned with studying the state’s role in perpetuating the legacy of slavery and proposing recommendations. Under AB3121, the task force is expected to recommend legislation this year.
These ongoing conversations at various levels have been spearheaded by Black people supporting the quest for reparations, but other communities are now joining in support.
These diverse groups are part of the more than 350 organizations in support of H.R. 40. The commission would also consider how the U.S. would formally apologize for “perpetration of gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity on African slaves and their descendants.”
Rep. Lee, who reintroduced H.R. 40 last year, told CNN the fact that other communities have received reparations on a federal government level shows Congress they can do the same for Black people.
H.R. 40 was first introduced in Congress by Michigan Democrat John Conyers in 1989. Former Rep. Conyers, who served until 2017, had consistently pushed for legislation on reparations repeatedly over the span of multiple sessions of Congress. Following his departure, Rep. Lee became the bill’s primary advocate.
Early last year, the bill was advanced by the House Judiciary Committee in a 25-17 vote and now faces a full House vote. Rep. Lee is hopeful and says that over 200 of her colleagues are ready to vote to pass the bill. But she is also aware the bill faces pushback in the Senate vote and urges her colleagues to understand that enslaved Black people created the economic engine from which the nation was built.
Support for reparations from people outside the Black community is a sign that Jewish and Japanese American communities are on the side of justice, Kamm Howard says.
Howard, who is the National Male Co-Chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, says if the federal government made attempts to address the harm inflicted on other communities, it’s only right that lawmakers figure out a way to grant reparations to Black Americans.
“There’s been no attempt by the American government to specifically address the harms and continued harms inflicted upon us,” Howard told CNN.
