America Has Never Truly Atoned For Slavery. John Conyers Has Pressed the Issue for Nearly 30 Years. [View all]

[Sunlei]

Every year, the Michigan congressman introduces a bill to study reparations. Every year it fails.

Last month’s torch-lit white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, a response to the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a public park, kickstarted a national dialogue about how communities should address this nation’s centuries-long history of violence and discrimination against African Americans. Democratic politicians and others, pushing back against the old arguments about maintaining our “heritage,” have called for the removal of additional Confederate statues and monuments from public spaces. Black people, they say, should no longer be faced with laudatory memorials to people who fought to keep their ancestors enslaved.

Among those calling for the removal of what President Donald Trump called “beautiful statues and monuments” was 88-year-old John Conyers of Michigan, the nation’s longest serving congressman. For nearly three decades, in fact, Conyers has been arguing that there is much more the government can and should be doing to atone.

The 13-member commission Conyers’ bill calls for would spend a year reviewing the existing research on the scope and lasting impact of African American enslavement and Jim Crow-era discrimination, and ponder what the government might do to help remedy the problem—including the form that any compensation might take, how much would be appropriate, and who should receive it. Although it does not authorize actual reparations payouts, it does allocate $12 million for the operation of the commission, which would have authority to compel federal agencies to hand over relevant records and documents. The panel also would look at federal policies that harm African Americans and suggest changes—as well as advise Congress on how to educate the public about the findings.

“What we want to do is have people more appropriately understand the relationship between [historical discrimination and] the racial tensions that are still quite evident,” Conyers said. “This legislation will make people see this [connection] and become more supportive of the notion that all of us have a responsibility to do something to make things better.” The reparations conversation has been reenergized thanks in part to fresh research and moves by some universities and companies to make amends for their own complicity in the slave trade. Last year, for instance, Georgetown announced it would grant admissions preference to the descendants of 272 slaves the university sold in 1838 to keep its doors open.


http://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2017/09/in-some-parallel-universe-congress-is-debating-how-america-could-atone-for-slavery-1/