HUNT VALLEY, Md. (TND) — Calls for reparations for enslaved men and women and their descendants have endured for more than a century.
The first call dates to 1865, when Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman demanded Confederate lands be split up into 40-acre portions and be given to newly emancipated Black families, deemed the “40 acres and a mule order.” The effort, and subsequent attempts in the years to come, failed.
But some lawmakers are looking to revive the debate and a more than 30-year-old bill that would create a national commission to study reparations for Black Americans, H.R. 40. The goal of the commission would be to identify “the role of the federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery, forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against freed slaves and their descendants and lingering negative effects of slavery on living African Americans and society.”
The bill’s champions say they have enough backers for the measure to make it to the Senate, both as a result of more Black lawmakers in Washington, D.C. and new momentum behind the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We are on the verge. This is one of the most incredible moments in the history of this country, that we are on the verge of H.R. 40 becoming the law,” said Dr. Ron Daniels, the convener of the National African-American Reparations Commission (NAARC), established in 2015. He said the $12 million bill currently has 216 yes votes in the House, but while it would be “an amazing victory” to pass it in the House, it’s doomed in the Senate with zero Republican support, so the more likely route for the bill is through executive order. Daniels said this would be President Joe Biden’s “Abraham Lincoln moment.”
But NAARC recommends local and state leadership ground these efforts in their own communities and build stakeholder structures. The conversation surrounding reparations isn’t new. Last year around this time, Evanston, Ill. became the first state to find a source of funding for reparations. The city began giving eligible Black residents $25,000 grants for down payments, repairs or existing mortgages on their homes. The effort is meant to compensate for historical racial redlining and housing discrimination, and the eligibility was based on a random selection of applicants — Black residents who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969. The funding came from a 3% tax on recreational marijuana sales and from private donors. NAARC certified Evanston’s reparations as a “flexible model.”
Providence, R.I. has a commission that will investigate ways to atone for the role the city played in slavery, systemic racism and the mistreatment of Native Americans. New York and New Jersey (the last state in the North to ditch slavery) are moving closer to creating similar commissions, along with Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina and Iowa.
Nikko Ross stands for a portrait at his home, Thursday, April 15, 2021, in Evanston, Ill. Acknowledging past racist policies, Evanston is giving eligible Black residents $25,000 housing grants for down payments, repairs or existing mortgages this year. He’ll seek a grant, either for his down payment, or for his mother to repair her six-bedroom house. (AP Photo/Shafkat Anowar)
California’s task force is set to publish its first report findings in June 2023, which will include the history of enslavement and its effects on African Americans. Last week, members of the task force took on arguably one of the most difficult and divisive parts of the concept — who’s eligible. After six hours of debate, the task force voted 5-4 in favor of defining eligibility for reparations based on lineage “determined by an individual being an African American descendant of a chattel enslaved person or the descendant of a free Black person living in the U.S. prior to the end of the 19th century.” The report will likely include the cost of cash payments to those eligible, along with a proposal for a formal apology.
The chair of the task force, Kamilah Moore, said not going with a lineage-based approach would “aggrieve the victims of slavery.” CalMatters reported that people who identified themselves as direct descendants of chattel slavery called in to publicly comment on the matter, and supported this approach. Law experts have said that establishing lineage in a “race-neutral fashion” would be less likely to get struck down in courts.
But commission members in opposition of the eligibility said the lineage-based approach is “divisive” and “another win for white supremacy.” Daniels said the vote missed what the “real definition” of reparations is, and that he anticipates there will be challenges to it.
“Reparations are not just for enslavement. Enslavement, of course, of African people is one of the most horrific holocausts in human history. And of course, we obviously want reparations for repair, given the enormity of the pain and suffering and expression of wealth that occurred as a result of enslavement,” he said. “However, reparations, by definition, and I reemphasize ‘definition,’ is for more than enslavement. It is for all of the legacies that are derivative of enslavement.”
In this Jan. 15, 2021, file photo, marker honors five members of the Thompson family of Amherst, Mass., noting that they all served with the colored troops during the Civil War, in Amherst. Decades-long debates over whether to offer reparations to the descendants of slaves in the U.S. finally seemed to be gaining momentum after last summer’s protests over racial inequities. Local governments, including in Amherst, Providence, R.I, and Iowa City, Iowa, are considering whether or how to grant some form of reparations. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
Daniels pointed to racially-exclusionary policies from the Jim Crow era, including The Homestead Act that excluded Black people from owning land; the theft of land from Blacks in the South by the Department of Agriculture; The G.I. Bill that failed to give social benefits to Black soldiers along with white soldiers; Urban Renewal; redlining; the war on drugs; and inequities in the criminal justice system.
“Black people, because of our skin color, because of our racial identity, have been victimized by racially targeted policies, which are a direct lineage, in that sense, and legacy of enslavement,” Daniels said.
Black immigrants in California were excluded from eligibility in the recent vote, due to concern about people coming to the U.S. to collect reparations and leave. Daniels said the “great irony” is the eligibility California’s task force decided on would exclude figures like Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Ture, Susan Taylor, Shirley Chisholm and Colin Powell. He said Evanston’s decision to allocate reparations to people who were victimized by redlining, no matter when they came here, is the “kind of inclusive, expansive approach that we need to employ.”
Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., raises her fist as she speaks during the March on Washington, on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 2020. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool Photo via AP, File)
The California task force’s recommendations will have to pass through the state legislature before they can reach Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, which requires 41 votes on the assembly side and 21 in the house. Daniels said he doesn’t see the lineage-based approach as something that will take hold nationwide, even if that’s what some of those who pushed for the criteria had as their objective.
But he said a nationwide reparations program would have to have some sort of criteria, and advocates of H.R. 40 say prioritization is necessary based on a locality’s resources. This could mean allocations to members of the Black community struggling to meet their needs for things like education, housing, health and wellness and communications infrastructure.
“There might be some means [of] testing. These awards would be on the basis of those who have the most need in the Black community,” Daniels said. He said this expands the conversation to not just direct benefits, but community benefits “that both repair and heal Black America and its families and communities as a whole.”
A person walks a dog past a street sign reading “Welcome to Evanston” in the predominantly Black 5th Ward in Evanston, Ill., Tuesday, May 4, 2021. The Chicago suburb is preparing to pay reparations in the form of housing grants to Black residents who experienced housing discrimination. (AP Photo/Shafkat Anowar)
Republicans have long opposed the idea of reparations on its face, no matter how the eligibility is hammered out. Hearings were held last year in the House on H.R. 40, on spending $20 million for a commission to study reparations. The traditional conservative argument is that Black people today are not enslaved, and white people today did not enslave them, so the movement is too late, and throwing more money at it won’t undo the tragedies. They particularly oppose any sort of federal tax as a funding mechanism.
Spend $20 million for a commission that’s already decided to take money from people who were never involved in the evil of slavery and give it to people who were never subject to the evil of slavery,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said during a hearing.
Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, one of two Black Republicans in the House, said reparations are “divisive.”
“Reparation where you take people’s money that they’ve earned — it’s punishment, it’s theft, it’s judgment,” he said during a hearing. “It’s saying that because of your skin color, you owe me. That is not the American way. We’re not racist people. This American country is based on meritocracy.”
In this June 3, 2020, file photo, a protester waves a city of Chicago flag emblazoned with the acronym BLM for Black Lives Matter, outside the Batavia, Ill., City Hall during a protest over the death of George Floyd. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
However, in theory, Republican support may not be needed. Advocates for reparations point to Biden’s nomination of Federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court as a sign that he’s already making history and wants to make more.
Biden is on the record supporting studying reparations. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said so last year at a briefing.
He certainly would support a study of reparations,” she said. “He understands we don’t need a study to take action right now on systemic racism, so he wants to take actions within his own government in the meantime.”
Biden hasn’t come out and said he supports reparations for Black Americans, but Daniels said the killing of George Floyd in 2020 has the nation rethinking the issue of race and systemic racism. He also referred to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol last year on Jan. 6, where several of the participants in the riot were carrying Confederate flags who he said, “are pushing for a restrictive return to America dominated by white men.”
People join hands as they pose for a photo in the Reflecting Pool in the shadow of the Washington Monument as they attend the March on Washington, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on Friday, Aug. 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
He said it’s a “cross-generational movement” that’s using the momentum from decades, nearly centuries, of advocacy alongside newfound activism from younger generations who are “enhancing it and adding to it in terms of the depths and kinds of injuries that they say must be repaired.”
Daniels said there’s no amount of cash that can pay for the suffering and trials Black people have had to go through.
“We believe that all Americans who were harmed by America in America must be repaired in America by America,” he said. “But we also believe that all black people are entitled to not only direct benefits, but equally important, and perhaps more importantly, we’re entitled to community benefits that will really, really strengthen Black families, communities, and indeed, Black America as a whole.”
