WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s White House is giving its support to studying reparations for Black Americans, boosting Democratic lawmakers who are renewing efforts to create a commission on the issue amid the stark racial disparities highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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A House panel heard testimony Wednesday on legislation that would create a commission to examine the history of slavery in the U.S. as well as the discriminatory government policies that affected former slaves and their descendants. The commission would recommend ways to educate the American public of its findings and suggest appropriate remedies, including financial payments from the government to compensate descendants of slaves for years of unpaid labor by their ancestors.
Biden backs the idea of studying the issue, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday, though she stopped short of saying he would sign the bill if it clears Congress.
“He certainly would support a study of reparations,” Psaki said at the White House briefing. “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 captured the Democratic presidential nomination and ultimately the White House with the strong support of Black voters. As he campaigned against the backdrop of the biggest reckoning on racism in a generation in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, Biden backed the idea of studying reparations for the descendants of slaves. But now, as he tries to win congressional support for other agenda items including a massive coronavirus relief package, he faces a choice of how aggressively to push the idea.
Even with Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House, passing a reparations bill could prove difficult. The proposal has languished in Congress for more than three decades, winning fresh attention in 2019 only after Democrats won control of the House.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who has 173 co-sponsors for her bill, said the descendants of slaves continue to suffer from the legacy of that brutal system and the enduring racial inequality it spawned, pointing to COVID-19 as an example. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that Black people are nearly three times as likely to be hospitalized because of COVID-19 as white people and nearly twice as likely to die from the illness. She offered up her bill as a way to bring the country together.
“The government sanctioned slavery,” Jackson Lee said. “And that is what we need, a reckoning, a healing reparative justice.”
But polling has found long-standing resistance in the U.S. to reparations to descendants of slaves, divided along racial lines. Only 29% of Americans voiced support for paying cash reparations, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll taken in the fall of 2019. Most Black Americans favored reparations, 74%, compared with 15% of white Americans.
Rep. Burgess Owens, a first-term Republican from Utah, argued against a reparations commission. He noted that his great-great-grandfather arrived in America in the belly of a slave ship but went on to escape slavery through the Underground Railroad and become a successful entrepreneur. He criticized the “redistribution of wealth” as a failed government policy.
“Though it is impractical and a nonstarter for the United States government to pay reparations, it is also unfair and heartless to give Black Americans the hope that this is a reality,” Owens said.
Jackson Lee’s bill calls for the commission to examine the practice of slavery as well as forms of discrimination that federal and state governments inflicted on former slaves and their descendants. The commission would then recommend ways to educate the American public of its findings and appropriate remedies.
Kamm Howard, the co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, called the commission long overdue and said that “many years have been wasted, many lives lost,” since the legislation was first introduced by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., in 1989.
“The goal here is restoration. Where would we as a people be if it were not for 246 years of stolen labor and accompanying horrors, if not for the multiple periods of multibillion-dollar plunder post-enslavement?” Howard said. “We must be made whole.”
Larry Elder, a Black conservative talk radio host, said that African Americans have made tremendous progress economically and socially, noting that Barack Obama was elected twice to the presidency. He claimed that racism has never been less of a significant problem in America than it is now and that reparations would represent one of the greatest transfers of wealth in history. “Figuring out who owes what is going to be a hell of an achievement,” Elder said.
Former NFL star Herschel Walker also spoke in opposition to the commission, saying reparations would create separation and division.
“I feel it continues to let us know we’re still African American rather than just American,” Walker said.
Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.
Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Bill Gates , George Soros, Buffet, Bezos, instead of donating all those millions of dollars to political elections , sent them to reparations fund.
I do not know of any taxpayer that has or had slaves. Reparations, just another socialist way of distributing other people’s money.
Good plan ! Let’s tell them what to do with THEIR money instead of them coming up with a GEE GOLLY plan to tell us what to do with ours !
Here we go, a commission of liberals to study reparations, for people of color. I think we taxpayers should be given “reparations” for all of the money that we spent on welfare. I think we taxpayers should be given “reparations” for all of the damage blm has done to property, for the crimes they have committed, for the looting and burning of buildings, for assaulting citizens and for assaulting the police.
Yes, and BLM has not given any of the MILLIONS of $$ collected by them to rebuild any properties in any of the towns they rioted looted, or burned. Just bail money for rioters.
THEY WON’T. Even if told to by courts, they’ll NEVER (IMO) give any of those billions they’ve received, to Recompense businesses they looted or burned down.
Let the colored race repay FOR all the years that they have received welfare in the form of money, education, links cards, medical,ETC, then the WHITE RACE WILL BEGIN TO THINK ABOUT ”REPARATIONS” DAVID HOROWITZ WROTE, TEN REASONS REPARATIONS ARE A BAD IDEA FOR BLACKS AND RACIST TOO, ANYBODY FOR REPARATIONS SHOULD READ THIS FIRST.
How’s about they start, with EVERY NFL/NBA/BLM Player who makes over 1 million a year. THEN MOVE ONTO all the hollywood rich…
TELL THEM TO GIVE for the cause, THEN they can come and demand i do so.
The ( Reverent,) Al- Sharpton, ever one to grap the opportunity to get TV. CAMERA TIME, appeared at NEEDLY FURNAL to raise his voice in protest against a MARINE who used a CHOCK-HOLD TO SUBDUE a homeless person on board a train who was threatening passengers, A ‘eye witness to Pennies’ chock-hold ON NEEDLY, said Penny was a HERO.
BOOKER T. Washington, a Black, said this,” There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, The Wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro RACE before the Public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs partly because they want sympathyand partly because it pays. Some of these do not want the Negro to lose their grievances, because they do not want to lose their JOBS. Does this remind one of ( REVERENT) Al. Sharpton.?
Store owners from the burned out towns should demand reparations from blm
No this needs not to be done, because you destroyed all the statues that were from slavery owners and anything that had to do with slavery so forget this because it is history and it had to do with slavery. Double minded men are unstable in all their ways.
I just wonder, when will MOunt Rushmore be next, on their chopping block.
Democratic lawmakers who are renewing efforts to create a commission on the issue amid the stark racial disparities highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now you know that the Wuhan Virus is Racist.
Look at everything we wouldn’t be aware of if it weren’t for the Radical Left.
Didn’t you know. EVERYTHING in the world is racist. BUT ONLY TO blacks.
Only to white leftist demorat idiots.
“Most Black Americans favored reparations, 74%, compared with 15% of white Americans.”
Well Daaa….. the Negroes will get MORE money for Drugs and White Americans will have to pay for the Negroes drug habit.
About slavery, do our mostly left-wing educators teach that slavery was not unique to America and is as old as humankind? As economist and author Thomas Sowell says: “More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than Blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after Blacks were freed in the United States.”
I am sure that Scruffy, knows, but for others’ benefit I mention that Dr. Sowell is Black and a FORMER Marxist. He is very data driven, rather than by ideology. He says data turned him from Marxism. After interning for the government for a summer while he was a grad student, he witnessed firsthand incompetence and corruption of government and concluded that “these people are not the answer to our problems”.
Doctor Sowell is a VERY intelligent man, who happens to be Black. I really wish that every Black child would read about him, and what he has to say. If they did, I think that they would be so much better off in every way !
Biden is considering: Biden is thinking about: Biden is planning:
Hold your breath, all you reparation seekers. This is just another teaser, democRAT press release to keep you voting for them while you wait. And wait, and wait, and wait, and wait ………..
You will see the tooth fairy, in person, before you see anything like reparations.
They’ve done it before and you fell for it !
Just wait until tomorrow and you all will get riches beyond your dreams because your great-great-great Grandpa was a slave and you had to grow up in America instead of being free in a mud hut !
KEEP WAITING !
Maybe Biden’s handlers are thinking about those things.
We all know Biden’s brain is broken. He’s no longer capable of independent thought.
What ever happen to “i have a dream…..content of their characternot the color of their skin”?
MLK, would be a victim of Cancel culture, these days.
DUH. Robbing peter to pay paul, WILL ALWAYS MAKE PAUL Happy…
Reparations: John F. Kennedy vs. Robert F. Kennedy
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By Larry Elder
May 27, 2021
(Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP, File)
When did the civil rights movement go off the rails?
The answer is when proponents went from justly demanding equal rights to unjustly demanding equal results. As to exactly when this occurred, that’s more difficult to answer. But consider statements, made five years apart, from the Kennedy brothers, John F. and Robert F.
Recommended
Neither brother was asked about nor used the word “repara
Anyone who has been a slave deserves reparations from those who enslaved him. I’ve never enslaved or even discriminated against anyone and I don’t owe anyone reparations with my tax money.
You are correct!
ONLY those who were (personally) a slave should DEMAND reparations from the Democrat Party!
Perhaps, the Republican Party should charge “Reparations” to the Democrats for the COST of the Civil War (plus interest)!
Will there also be a monetary benefit for families who lost members who fought for the North & helped in freeing the slaves??.
Those soldiers who survived Confederate prisoner camps ended up with terrible lifelong illness. Just asking, but doubt there will ever be a fair answer.
AND when will they EVER even ask (let alone demand) THEIR FELLOW tribesmen, and muslims who were party to the slave trade, give for ‘reparations’?
IMO, our sun will die out, before that ever happens.
Bribeme is proceeding rapidly to those issues that will make revolution necessary and civil war unavoidable. Abrogation of the Second Amendment and gun confiscation by decree. Limitation of the First Amendment by executive order and legislation, and appointment of a “czar” who will determined what it is permissible to say and what is not. Repeal of the Hyde Amendment and compulsion of taxpayers to fund abortion up to term and even after birth despite conscientious objections. Now the compulsory redistribution of wealth from those who never owned slaves to those who never were slaves solely on the basis of race. It is like a delta of Rubicons before communist dictatorship, and the senile crooked pedophile rapist Chinese lackey and election-stealer seems determined to cross them all. Down with the dictatorship! Biden delendum est!
How much will African countries pay for Preparations ??? How much will Muslim slave traders pay ??? They sold them to us ,so how much will they pay ???
Not
One
Dime.
I think its only fair to pay former slaves their wages—trouble is there are no living former slaves
Maybe All of us who’s relatives from years ago should get reparations. The Irish, italians, etc were ALL picked on and disciminated against. Money for all!!
A LOT of BLACK people owned Slaves, including Kamala Harris’s father’s family !
Now you know that does not count because their intention was always to give them their freedom…after just one more crop.
How dare you bring facts, into their insanity..
I was taught, in school, that, when those that were slaves (many blacks, here, were free) were freed, they were offered a boat trip home, to africa, or 40 acres and a mule. Which, my family wished they could have received that 40 acres and a mule. My family, and so many white people that were in this country, in the early 1900’s, were poorer then the blacks. Then, the blacks were given reparations of public aid that whites were not. Then, at some point, the blacks were offered affirmative action. So, even if they didn’t qualify for a school, or job, or raise in position, they got it over whites. So, when will it be enough? None of us have enough money to pay for this next reparations. And, none of the current blacks, were anywhere near slaves. When obama gave them money, they spent it on drugs. Which is the biggest reason they are not doing as well as many whites. So, joe, give them all your money. and the rest of you white rich people that want to feel good about yourselves. Give your money to the blacks that don’t think they got a fair shake in life. BTW-a great many black people have worked hard, and taken care of themselves and family. Use those adults to look up to and emulate. Stop trying to steal it from others, because of the color of their skin!
WE literally, could give them EVERYTHING every white owned, after taking it From every white person.. AND IT WILL STILL NEVER EVER be enough.
When anyone is given something for nothing they never appreciate it and only continue to beg for more. As long as the government “gives” people money they own them.
Exactly!!
Every person ive ever spoken too, RE government housing, that these “poor” are given (even though most can afford to buy a NEW car every 4-5 years, have brand name shoes, clothes and cell phones), THEY ARE DILAPIDATED, in poor repair and generally stank…
CAUSE THOSE “poor” who live there, have NO DAMN INCENTIVE TO DO A DAMN THING to take care of the property.
”The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Ronald Reagan
I do not understand where Joe is going to get the money for all the illegals flooding into the country going to get welfare, healthcare, unemployment and another spike in covid and blue states will shut down businesses, he is the direct cause of many above normal paying jobs and those citizens will be going on unemployment instead of paying taxes and spending money on cars, and necessary items to live on! The country is now dependent on other countries for energy and gas is going up and will be close to $5 a gallon! I know one thing positive for the country a whole lot of DemocRAT Politicians are going to lose in 2022! We just have to survive to that and then the tide will turn because it will be DemocRATS that will throw out th DemocRAT Politicians!
Went out today and saw that gas is up $.40 per gallon, so I can see $5/gallon gas – $6 in CA/OR/WA of course. Hope the Biden voters are living their wet dream by now, or at least after a few more freezing days without electricity.
Same here. Last week, it was 2.39 a gal. NOW ITS 2.69 a gal.
Sorry William, but your dream of democraps losing in 2022 is jut that. A dream. The fix is now in cement. democraps will NEVER be out of power again. The dominion voting machines, media, silicon valley, and mail in voting, will make sure of it.
WHY should this “current crop” get any kind of money for something that the “real slaves” of 200 years ago actually “earned it”. This is just another political ploy to get the votes of this group, by paying them to vote for them
The Welfare system broke black families. Up until the Great Society, black people were gaining ground and approaching parity with white people. Can’t have that! So the KKK Party implemented the Great Society, which included the modern Welfare system. Young women are encouraged to have children out of wedlock and so they do. Black fatherlessness is at ridiculous levels.
Who needs a father when you have Uncle Sam?
And fatherlessness is the #1 proximate cause of kids growing up to be criminals.
Women choosing to be single mothers aren’t heroes. They are creating criminals.
In the meantime, as we phart around with “social justice,” to quote Joe, “China will eat our lunch.” And Russia and Iran and…………… We have taken our eye off the ball – big time.
Slavery was and is a terrible thing, this “virtue signaling” by leftist loons is nothing more than that, virtue signaling. Fact Donald Trump has done more for “MODERN DAY TRAFFICING AND SLAVERY” than ANY other president short of Lincoln, more than the rest combined, not a peep out of the virtue signaling commie networks about that. Fact, as bad as slavery is, we still have millionaire athletes shilling for shoe manufactures who have their products made in a country that STILL uses slave and child labor to produce said products. Fact, there is not a person alive today who was ever a slave, or owned a slave, get over it and move on, the “victim mentality” is holding you back, imagine, when you start every day with, “poor me” you don’t have time to see anything else. Fact, despite it all, consider, IF your great great grand parents had not been brought here as slaves, you could still be living in a grass hut in the middle of a jungle somewhere.
We all knew this was coming if Biden won. But if they honestly want to be fair they will have to compensate the descendants of the 300,000 soldiers who sacrificed their very young lives, and the decedents of a near equal number of survivors who were so incapacitated for the rest of their lives from the shell shock of their horrendous experience they could never make a living, only to be supported by their families. Truly the forgotten ones not even memorialized by a marker.
Plus, fair compensation must be allotted to reimburse lower-middle income families who lost their inheritances ever since because they simply couldn’t pay their federal taxes necessary to pay for that war and every war since. Yes, families of all races. And then also make provisions for……(the list can’t end)….
This is a fools’ game played only among fools. OR, OR very devious people who want to divide the country for decades to come, AND OR by a political party who will promise anything it takes to win an election. Most likely all three.
FAIR? WHEN have demonrats EVER been fair?
Well, I suggest Congress get a subscription to Ancestry.com and track down all the tribal leaders who sold their fellow countrymen to Spain and others for money. It all started with their own countrymen and trickled down to other countries. Not getting a dime from me, infact Congress should be giving us reparation for being enslaved by them and their horrific laws and scheming way to rob us of our hard earned money.
The slave descendants will need to pay federal income taxes on their reparations in order to help pay for all the poor illegal immigrants’ social benefits, because most of us white supremacists will be tapped out, leaving slave descendants and the Silicone Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street, and DC billionaires to pay the tab. Love it.
Will the illegal immigrants have to chip in their share?
Hells no. IN FACT, they’ll be encouraged to send yet MORE money back home to their prior country.
It’s sort of the opposite of attainder or as happened in some cultures the son paying for the sins of the father only worse since none of those sinned against are around to collect.
I still haven’t heard a Democrat explain how immigrants will be handled and whether or not they would be POed legitimately or not if not considered to be a participant.
Dems just buying their slaves back from the almost extinction of slavery. Some just cannot be taught a lesson.
Who needs to pay for reparations?
The ones who are destroying our country with their insane agendas and the “peaceful protesters” that are looting, setting our cities on fire and squatting on public lands.
The demonrats
RINO’s
BLM
Antifa
And all the people who support the above!
Reparations should be paid to those who can confirm that their great great grand parents were slaves, and paid by those who actually were slave owners.
That is the current Democrats. Every person who voted for Biden/Harris fiasco, should have to pay out of their bank accounts and the Republicans, the ones who actually freeded the slaves should get a little taste.
Another thing–they have been getting reparations for decades. Welfare, food stamps, affirmative action, EEO, not held accountable for their actions. Did I miss anything?
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not covet
SINCE the left rabidly hates god, WHY WOULD THEY CARE which of his commandments they are breaking?
I really doubt that there are very many black Americans who can honestly say they had relatives enslaved on some plantation before 1863. Beside that, my relatives didn’t come here until the Civil War had been over for 15 years and none has ever owned a slave. So %$#@ you Biden! How about YOU and your dummycrat friends cough up the reparations money. After all, when slavery was around in the southern U.S. the slave owners were ALL democrats.
SINCE when has honesty, been a requirement? LIBTARDS care not about honesty.
Sounds like yet another blue state bailout to me.
The blacks got their reparations already. It came in the form of 600 thousand soldiers killed in the Civil War fighting for their freedom. It came in the form of Affirmative Action elevating black students over more qualified white students for seats in colleges. It came in the form of “diversity hiring” where blacks were hired over whites so corporations could be politically correct. It came in the form of the Watts Riots and most recently in the form of the Baltimore and Ferguson riots and the BLM riots in Seattle, Portland, NYC and Kenosha this past year. We were told that burning and looting property was reparations for all the past “oppression” the recipients of affirmative action and “safe spaces” suffered. And yet, has any of these actions satisfied blacks? No. And do you really think reparations will stop the complaining about “oppressions”. No it won’t. Black victimhood is an industry that doesn’t plan on going away anytime soon.
Reparations is just another Democrat give-away to buy more votes with someone else’s money. Let the rich, guilty, self-hating, liberal whites out their money where their mouths are. Gates, Bezos, Soros and Buffet could probably gift every living descendant of a slave and never feel it. It never was the hardworking poor and middle class who owned slaves, it was always the elites. Let the elites pay, the elites created the problem; let the elites solve it. Leave the taxpaying, non-slave owning people out of it.
Don’t forget, BILLIONS worth of welfare!
Biden is merely following the path set by his Chinese communist masters:
Bankrupt America by shutting down the economy.
Reinforce stark fear of a disease that is no more lethal than the flu.
Waste TRILLIONS of dollars on socialist “stimulus” plans plus TRILLIONS on additional counter-productive give-aways to states near bankruptcy because of incompetent governors and mayors.
All designed to cause useful idiots welcome communism with enthusiasm; leading to total enslavement of the entire world.
If the foolish idea of ‘reparations’ is to be considered, so must be the idea of ‘compensation’.
How many families gave the lives of their sons, daughters, mothers and fathers in the Civil War? Shouldn’t their descendants be entitled to compensation for their losses?
What about all the soldiers who fought and suffered to help free the slaves?
Any one whose ancestors fought in the war are as entitled to compensation for the efforts made are as entitled to compensation as the descendants of slaves who were freed by the North.
They were white. They don’t matter.. to the left.
Reparations Have Been Paid!
• 360,000 Union Troops Gave their Lives to End Slavery.
• 55 Years and Trillions of Dollars Spent on Great Society and Welfare Programs.
• Dozens of Preferential Treatment Programs for Scholarships, College Acceptance, Jobs, Promotions, and Minority Business Set Asides.
• All Kinds of Government Paid Job Training Programs.
• Enough is Enough.