House panel enters fray over slavery reparations
The debate WASHINGTON — over reparations for descendants of slaves catapulted from the campaign trail to Congress on Wednesday with an impassioned plea from actor Danny Glover and others for lawmakers to address compensation for America’s blighted heritage of racism and Jim Crow laws.
Glover, who told a House Judiciary panel that his great-grandfather was enslaved, called a national reparations policy “a moral, democratic and economic imperative.”
It was Congress’ first hearing in a decade on the topic and comes amid a growing discussion in the Democratic Party on reparations and sets up a potential standoff with Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opposes the idea. “This hearing is yet another
important step in the long and historic struggle of Afri- can Americans to secure reparations for the damage that has been inflicted by slavery and Jim Crow,” Glover told the panel.
Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who drew new attention to the issue with his 2014 essay, “The Case for Reparations,” told the panel “it’s impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery.”
Sen. Cory Booker , D-N.J., a presidential contender, testi- fied that U.S has “yet to truly acknowledge and grapple
with the racism and white supremacy that tainted this country’s founding and continues to cause persistent and deep racial disparities and inequality.”
But another writer, Cole- man Hughes, who at times testified over boos from the audience, called reparation a “moral and political mistake.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who became the spon- sor of a measure to study reparations after the retirement of Democratic Rep. John Conyers, said to the packed hearing room, “I just simply ask: Why not and why not now?”
But McConnell opposes reparations, telling reporters Tuesday he doesn’t want reparations for “something that happened 150 years ago.” “We’ve tried to deal with
the original sin of slavery by passing civil rights legislation,” McConnell said, and electing an African American president, Barack Obama.
“It would be hard to figure out who to compensate” for slavery, the Kentucky Republi- can said, and added: “No one currently alive was respon-
sible for that.”
In a Point Taken-Marist poll
conducted in 2016, 68 per- cent of Americans said the country should not pay cash reparations to African Amer- ican descendants of slaves to make up for the harm caused by slavery and racial discrimination. About 8 in 10 white Americans said they were opposed to reparations, while
about 6 in 10 black Americans said they were in favor.