Washington – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, supports the federal government issuing reparations to black Americans who were economically affected by slavery, she said on Thursday.
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“We must confront the dark history of slavery and government-sanctioned discrimination in this country that has had many consequences including undermining the ability of Black families to build wealth in America for generations,” Warren, who is white, said in a statement to Reuters.
She pointed to a bill she has introduced in Congress that would provide help to minorities in making a down payment on a home.
“Black families have had a much steeper hill to climb – and we need systemic, structural changes to address that,” she said in the statement.
Warren first made similar comments on Thursday to the New York Times.
She is competing in a crowded field of Democrats hoping to be their party’s pick to challenge Republican President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election.
U.S. Senator Kamala Harris also recently said she would support some form of reparations.
Previous Democratic Party leaders have declined to support reparations for African-Americans, including former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Issuing reparations to all living people who are descendents of slaves or who have suffered from the ills of racial discrimination targeted at black people has been estimated to cost trillions of dollars.
The United States waged a civil war from 1861 to 1865 over legal slavery. The practice was abolished in most states in 1863 and completely at the end of the war and with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865.
The U.S. federal government has never approved reparations.
A 2016 poll by Marist College commissioned by WGBH radio station in Boston found that 68 percent of Americans do not think reparations should be paid to the descendents of slaves, compared with 26 percent who said they should. Among African-Americans, 58 percent support paying reparations and 35 percent oppose them.
Please she’s the Jussie Smollett of congress.
#1 who will pay this bill , ? the federal govt.?if so ,
everybody will be paying it even people who arrived this year.# 2 who will receive payments? as most african americans , today are racially mixed, if someone had a great grandparent who may have been enslaved but all the other grandparents were not enslaved , how much will this person get?# 3 new york freed its slaves in 1835 or so. do they get the same as in states that freed slave in 1860s # 4 there was a system of indentured servants who were treated as slaves, who had a master that they labored fo for a period of years just as slaves ,Will they also be paid ? #5 many slaveholders emancipated their slaves way before the civil war are they also entitled to payments.?
This is another ill conceived ploy by politicians who wish to be elected and who are pandering to a certain voting block for votes.
This is the problem with democracy, politicians, in order to get votes, are “pro messing” things that are not good for the country. To pay for renting homes? How much is going to cost when debt/gdp is already at an all time high? How does slavery over 100 years ago prevent them from renting today? Do we Jewish people get any help despite all of our persecution? Didn’t we just pick ourselves up and built our life again on our own? Germany is making reparations, payments for those who went though camps and are still alive, but not to their descendants. We also don’t go after UK, France, Portugal, Spain for the past expulsions and confiscation of property…
If anyone deserves reparations it is the natives whose lands were stolen and lives and culture destroyed. The very fact that they are ignored by this person speaks for itself.
I support reparations to every American black family, with the provision that aid to education, housing, welfare, affirmative action, food stamps, etc be permanently terminated.
How do Black Americans verify that they are descendants of slaves? I assume that only a small percentage could trace ancestry back even 100 years. Not all Black Americans have ancestors who were in this country prior to emancipation, many having come here from the Caribbean.
Anyway slavery ended over 150 years ago and it should be holding anyone back from achieving all that one can be.
What about the Indians? Maybe we should pay them for the land we took. That’s next.
And what about her people? American Indians live in ghettoes called reservations, where are the reparations for stealing the land, killing the people. How about it, pay your people first.
I agree that Native born American (American Indians), should receive compensation from the Federal Government.