Biden supports the idea of a compensation study during his own presidential bid in 2020, but stops fully endorsing the legislation himself. His administration did not testify during a Wednesday hearing in a subcommittee of a House Judiciary Committee on the compensation measure, but the House’s Democratic efforts to put the issue back on the party’s agenda could offend the White House. take a more direct stand.
“It is clear … that the leadership of the Democratic Party is in favor of this legislation,” said Kamm Howard, a witness in Wednesday’s trial and national male co-chair of the National Council for Blacks. “The president has a duty to move the legislation that his party is in favor of in Congress.”
Biden has advocated for benevolence among black activists and social justice for early steps in his presidency, which they say is a sign of his commitment to take the work of racial equity beyond talking. Witnesses who would appear during the trial said its planning within the first 100 days of Biden’s government was an important first gesture to make progress on the bill.
The White House reaffirmed Biden’s support for a compensation study while refusing to endorse HR 40 as a vehicle, citing the president’s earlier actions on racial equality as proof of his commitment to tackling systemic racism .
“The president knows we do not need a study right now to act on systemic racism that occurs today,” one official said.
Even longtime advocates of compensation have acknowledged the challenges of getting the legislation passed. It will certainly face a severe setback of Republicans in both chambers, making his chances disappear in light of the Democrats’ narrow majority. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has publicly opposed the idea of compensation in 2019, noting that his stance reflects former President Barack Obama’s.
“We are very active in getting the number of fellow citizens and the number of votes needed to pass the legislation from the House. “We know we will have a harder time in the Senate,” Howard said. ‘With the Democrats losing a few seats in the House, they were [a majority] will be a little harder, but we think we can do it. ‘
If passed, the legislation would create a commission of more than a dozen experts to review the role of the U.S. government in enslaving African Americans from 1619 to 1865 from a financial and legal perspective. It would then recommend to Congress ways to educate Americans about the legacy of slavery and to alleviate its damage.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), chief sponsor of the legislation, indicated his growing support during Wednesday’s hearing. But Utah Mayor Burgess Owens, the judge on the judiciary’s sub-panel and the only black Republican, opposed the recovery bill as ‘impractical and a non-beginner’.
Owens said he viewed the compensation as a quasi-socialist redistribution of the wealth program and rather proposed changes in education and health care policies with a focus on black youth.
“It is also unfair and heartless to give Black Americans the hope that this is a reality,” Owens continued.
Black Americans make up 13 percent of the country’s population, but make up less than 3 percent of its wealth. While advocates for compensation are experiencing a new opening during the Biden government in light of more recent racial injustice, they have also included centuries of systemic inequalities against African Americans in their argument for passing the bill. Several cited Jim Crow laws, discriminatory housing practices and a legal system that has excessively affected black communities through mass incarceration and police violence.
Nevertheless, the progress of HR 40 remains in the early stages, and the bill will have to compete for attention with higher-profile proposals that will help black communities struggle with systemic economic disadvantage. Most important among them is Biden’s $ 1.9 billion relief pandemic bill, which provides for businesses owned by minorities and health care centers in colorful neighborhoods.
In addition, the Congressional Black Caucus has placed housing subsidies and access to vaccines at the top of the list of legislative priorities, pointing out that it is the most immediate way to mitigate the crises that affect black communities excessively.
Democrats also supported smaller-scale solutions to take the place of direct payments to African Americans. Harris proposed a tax credit in 2018 that would provide financial relief to black and middle-income households.
But advocates for the continuation of the compensation debate say the narrowed proposals should not be a substitute for studying the comprehensive concept of restoring slavery to generations of African Americans. The excessive toll of the coronavirus on the black population and the protests of the past summer have only added to the pressure on Biden, which makes HR 40’s pull in this Congress a new test of the new president’s commitment to to deliver black communities.
“The solution is very specific to the damage that is being experienced and that people are still suffering from,” said Dreisen Heath, a Human Rights Watch program lawyer who will testify during Wednesday’s hearing.
William Darity, a professor of public policy at Duke University whose work has focused strongly on compensation, said that if the Democrats’ goal is to reduce the gap in racial prosperity, a handful of individual programs will it does not achieve.
“We’re talking about moving from about two and a half billion dollars to 13 billion dollars in wealth among black Americans,” Darity said. ‘So I want to see how each of these individual initiatives would actually do it. And I have never seen anyone demonstrate this in any convincing way. ”
Howard, who will also testify at Wednesday’s hearing, pointed out that HR 40 has the most co-sponsors in its history – 173 Democrats – and support from Democratic leaders as a sign that the bill has power.
Although the bill may have Biden’s approval and subsequent signing, repair experts see the next four years as their best chance to make progress on the case, either through direct payments or by acknowledging the legacy of slavery – something which the U.S. government has not formally done before.
‘In so far as we are finally having a national discussion on compensation, and in so far as [as] “There seems to be evidence of increasing support for recovery for black Americans,” Darity said. “I think we need to do it the right way.”