Democrats move reparations bill out of committee in historic vote

yahoo ^ | April 16, 2021 | Marquise Francis

[MarvinStinson]

On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend the creation of a commission to consider reparations for the Black descendants of U.S. slaves.

First introduced in 1989 by Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, H.R. 40 had never made it out of committee until this week. Twenty-five Democrats in the Committee voted in favor , while 17 Republicans voted against .

“This legislation is long overdue,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler , Judiciary Committee chairman, said . “H.R. 40 is intended to begin a national conversation about how to confront the brutal mistreatment of African Americans during chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation and the enduring structural racism that remains endemic to our society today.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee had reintroduced the bill earlier this year.

“We’re asking for people to understand the pain, the violence, the brutality, the chattel-ness of what we went through,” Lee said during a committee debate on Wednesday.

“No one should be forced to pay compensation for what they have not done,” Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said during the debate on the bill.

The advancement of H.R. 40 marks a victory for proponents of a national redress to the inequities caused by slavery. While the bill does not lay out how reparations would take shape, it establishes a body to study the effects of slavery and the socioeconomic discrimination that followed .

“This is a huge development in terms of a multi-developmental struggle of African Americans in this country,” Dr. Ron Daniels, president of the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC), told Yahoo News Friday. “This bill will go to the floor of the House to be voted on. It’s hard to express what it means that this nation is on the brink of addressing one of its original sins of enslavement and addressing its aftereffects.”

[hanamizu]

So half of the commission will be appointed by democrats, and the other 6 by people from organizations that have “historically championed the cause of reparatory justice.” Seems like a pretty balanced commission to me.
/s

[EBH]

Exactly, there is no balance on the commission. And this is why we’ve got to get a balanced narrative up and running NOW! Not when this comes to the floor of the House or Senate. They are holding this conversation in an echo chamber and that is only going to lead to corrupt answers.