The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights sent a letter last week to Jerrold Nadler, chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary and Jim Jordan, ranking member of the House Committee on the Judiciary in support of H.R. 40, The Commission to the Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act.
The letter states, “Over the course of the past year, millions of individuals across the country have protested systemic racism and its manifestation in incidents of police brutality, declaring it is past time for the nation to begin to unearth the true severity of the trauma inflicted upon Black communities and begin the process of healing.
H.R. 40 represents a step towards this reckoning by finally forcing the U.S. government to recognize and make amends for the decades of economic enrichment that have benefited this nation as a result of the free labor that African slaves were forced to provide.”
The letter goes on to state that the Leadership Conference, a coalition of more than 220 national advocacy organizations, expresses its strong support for H.R. 40, which has been introduced in each Congress since 1989.
“H.R. 40 reflects an important step towards the economic and racial justice that has for too long been denied to Black individuals,” it reads. “The bill would require the federal government to undertake an official study to analyze the impact that America’s original sin of slavery has had on the social, political, and economic life of our nation, and make recommendations to repair those impacts.
The Leadership Conference further stated that reparations are not only a fair, but also feasible, solution to the institutional racism endured by African-Americans, as well as a solution based on federal precedent.
For example:
• While ultimately insufficient, the federal government provided many Native American tribes millions in reparations for the illegal land seizures that fostered the expansion of this country.
• Upon the abolishment of slavery, slaveowners’ perceived losses were rectified with reparations – a right and privilege the African-American community has yet to receive – as President Lincoln signed an act granting former slave owners up to $300 for every slave they freed.
• Each surviving Japanese American and others who were interned during World War II were provided $20,000 in compensation.
“While both the House and Senate passed resolutions over ten years ago apologizing for more than two centuries of slavery and the subsequent years of racial segregation, these non-binding resolutions were insufficient,” the Leadership Conference wrote. “They were merely symbolic gestures rather than a substantial and active acknowledgment of the fundamental injustice and inhumanity of slavery and structural racism in the United States. Passage of H.R. 40 would change this by providing the meaningful atonement and means of restitution that is so desperately needed.”
The commission would make recommendations to Congress on how to compensate descendants of enslaved Africans. The letter concluded with a quote:
“As Martin Luther King Jr. observed more than 50 years ago: ‘White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo.’
We thank the Committee for holding this hearing to consider H.R. 40’s proposal to do so, and we urge members of the House Judiciary Committee to support H.R. 40’s swift passage in the 117th Congress.”
