Reparations: Now Is the Time to Push for It

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[Reparations]
The Nation: “If this is not the moment to finally come to terms with the United States’ 401-year legacy of government-sanctioned, anti-Black oppression, then, pray tell, when will that moment be?”
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Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is pushing the Reparations conversation in Congress.

What are we waiting for? If this is not the moment to finally come to terms with the United States’ 401-year legacy of government-sanctioned, anti-Black oppression, then, pray tell, when will that moment be?

The current iteration of that bill, HR 40, was introduced by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee last year and languished in the House Judiciary Committee ever since, awaiting action in a chamber controlled by Democrats.

What are they waiting for?

There has never been a more promising period for action on this legislation than the one we are in now. Even before the recent wave of protests for Black lives swept the nation, the bill already had unprecedented support. As of today, 135 members of Congress have added their names as cosponsors—compared to the two cosponsors that the previous iteration of the bill had in 2014. Largely in response to the tenacity of African-American New York Times reporter Astead Herndon, many Democratic presidential candidates explicitly expressed support for reparations when interviewed last year; The Washington Post reported that 15 of the candidates said the issue should be “studied.”

The current uprisings have made the imperative for this conversation even more compelling.

For the rest of this The Nation story log on to: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/black-reparations-hr40-congress/

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