WASHINGTON (AP) – President White Biden’s White House gives its support to the study of compensation for Black Americans, which strengthens the Democratic legislators who are renewing efforts to create a commission on the issue amid the serious racial differences caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was highlighted.
A panel of the House heard evidence on Wednesday about legislation that would create a commission to investigate the history of slavery in the U.S., as well as the discriminatory government policies that affected former slaves and their descendants. The commission will 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 supports the idea of studying the issue, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday, though she no longer said he would sign the bill if it was approved by Congress.
“He will definitely support a study on compensation,” Psaki said during the White House briefing. “He understands that we do not need a study now to act on systemic racism. That is why he wants to act within his own government in the meantime.”
Biden won the Democratic presidential nomination and eventually the White House with the strong support of black voters. While campaigning against the backdrop of the greatest reckoning of racism in a generation after the murder of George Floyd, Biden supports the idea of studying compensation 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 the choice of how aggressively to promote the idea.
Even if the Democrats control both chambers of Congress and the White House, it can be difficult to pass a bill on compensation. The proposal weakened in Congress for more than three decades and only received fresh attention in 2019 after the Democrats gained control of the House.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who has 173 co-sponsors for her bill, said the descendants of slaves are still suffering from the legacy of that cruel system and the lasting racial equality it has produced, and on COVID-19 shown as an example. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that due to COVID-19, black people are almost three times as likely to be admitted to hospital as white people and that they die almost twice as much as a result of the disease. She offered her account as a way to bring the country together.
“The government has approved slavery,” Jackson Lee said. “And this is what we need, a settlement, a healing right of restoration.”
In the US, however, resistance was found in the US against compensation to descendants of slaves, divided by race. Only 29% of Americans expressed support for paying cash back, according to a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted in the fall of 2019. Most black Americans were in favor of compensation, 74%, compared to 15% of white Americans.
Rep. Burgess Owens, a first-term Republican from Utah, argued against a compensation commission. He noted that his great-grandfather arrived in America in the belly of a slave ship, but slavery escaped through the Underground Railroad and became a successful entrepreneur. He criticized the “redistribution of wealth” as a failed government policy.
“While it is impractical and that the United States government should not be compensated for paying compensation, it is also unfair and heartless to give black Americans the hope that it is a reality,” Owens said.
The Jackson Lee Bill calls on the commission to investigate the practice of slavery as well as forms of discrimination that federal and state governments have inflicted on former slaves and their descendants. The commission will then recommend ways to educate the American public about its findings and appropriate remedies.
Kamm Howard, co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Repairs in America, called the commission long ago and said that ‘many years have been lost, many lives lost’, since the legislation was first passed by Rep. John Conyers was introduced, D-Mich., In 1989.
“The goal here is recovery. Where would we be as a nation if it were not for 246 years of stolen labor and concomitant horrors, even if it were not for the multiple periods of million-dollar looting after slavery? Howard said. “We need to be healed.”
Larry Elder, a black conservative radio host, said African Americans had made great progress economically and socially, pointing out that Barack Obama had been elected president twice. He claims that racism has never been such a major issue in America as it is now and that compensation would be one of the greatest transfers of wealth in history. “To find out who owes what a hell of an achievement is going to be,” Elder said.
Former NFL star Herschel Walker also spoke in opposition to the commission, saying compensation would create separation and division.
“I feel it continues to let us know that we are still African Americans, rather than just Americans,” Walker said.
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Associated Press authors Josh Boak and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.