White House says Biden supports study of slavery reparations

[My Pet Orangutan]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden supports a study on whether descendants of enslaved people in the United States should receive reparations, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Wednesday, as the issue was being debated on Capitol Hill.

Psaki told reporters that Biden “continues to demonstrate his commitment to take comprehensive action to address the systemic racism that persists today.”

Reparations have been used in other circumstances to offset large moral and economic debts - paid to Japanese Americans interned during World War Two, to families of Holocaust survivors and to Blacks in post-apartheid South Africa.

....

HR-40, a bill to fund the study of “slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies” has been floated in Congress for more than 30 years, but never taken up for a full vote.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-slavery/white-house-says-biden-supports-study-of-slavery-reparations-idUSKBN2AH2K9

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Biden told the Washington Post last year that “we must acknowledge that there can be no realization of the American dream without grappling with the original sin of slavery, and the centuries-long campaign of violence, fear, and trauma wrought upon Black people in this country.”

[DBoon]

1. We may want to look at compensation for broken treaties with Native Americans

In both cases, there was clearly economic harm to the injured parties, and perhaps redress is needed.

[scarletwoman]

3. Yes, yes, yes! Still, how to come to terms with attempted cultural genocide?

[Bayard]

7. This

Many Nations still live in third-world conditions.

I'm reading a book now, "Killers of the Flower Moon". Its the true story of the Osage being murdered in Oklahoma in the '20's when it was discovered that the desolate land they had been shoved on to, had vast oil fields under it. They became more wealthy than others could stand.

[JoeOtterbein]

2. K n R ! Thanks for posting!

The time is now.

[Roy Rolling]

4. Morally Essential

Financially, too.

But translating a moral obligation into a financial compensation after 400 years is virtually impossible.

Nonetheless, it must be studied about how it may be accomplished.

And equally important, how to protect the powerless from exploitation from those with wealth and weapons. Because the wealthy will, and are, doing it again in 2021.

[djacq]

5. Let's do this!

[3Hotdogs]

6. -- wait for the backlash on this.

[CTyankee]

8. Yep. "Why do I have to pay reparations? My family never owned slaves."

or "My family came here after the Civil War. They were dirt poor and arrived here with no money and in rags and not speaking English."

I have lived through this raging debate back in the 1960s when the culture war really got heated up.

I thought reparations was a moral reckoning, but I saw what happened politically. It wasn't pretty.