The reparations bill supported by Vice President Kamala Harris would set up an independent commission similar to the one in California that called for sweeping changes to the criminal code in addition to monetary payouts to black Americans.
The Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, which was reintroduced in April 2019 and cosponsored by then-senator Harris, would create a 13-member commission to "study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, its subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans." The commission would then offer their recommendations for "remedies" to Congress.
Current laws that "continue to disproportionately and negatively affect African-Americans as a group, and those that perpetuate the lingering effects, materially and psycho-social," could be on the chopping block as well, the bill reads. That provision is left vague. Specifics, the bill states, would be hashed out by individuals from "civil society and reparations organizations that have historically championed the cause of reparatory justice."
Although the bill does not specify which federal laws could be slashed, a reparations task force in California may offer some clues. That task force concluded last year that longtime black residents were entitled to $1.2 million each, as well as recommended sweeping changes to the criminal code.
Among the changes recommended were decriminalizing public urination and letting those arrested for public indecency sue the state for damages. Fathers who are delinquent on their child support would see their debt wiped, and police would no longer be allowed to pull over cars with expired registration, tinted windows, or broken tail lights.
Police and probation officers should also be barred from public school property, the committee said. Those same schools, however, would be required to teach high school students about reparations and the "opportunity gap between African American students and their peers," the task force wrote.
Support for the reparations bill is consistent with other far-left positions that Harris staked out that year. Her failed 2020 presidential campaign's criminal justice reform plan called for the end of cash bail as well as "an end [to] mandatory minimums."
Harris also applauded cities that slashed their police budgets and called for voting rights to be restored to convicted murderers and rapists. Steps such as those, Harris said in 2019, are part of her vision to "fundamentally transform how we approach public safety."
Harris's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
A House resolution introduced in May 2023 by Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) claimed that reparations could cost "at minimum" $14 trillion in an effort to "eliminate the racial wealth gap that currently exists between Black and White Americans." That figure, Bush's resolution stated, was determined by "respected economists."
Harris's support for reparations goes beyond attaching her name to a bill in 2019. During her first presidential run, which started that year, Harris said, "I think there has to be some form of reparations."
"We could discuss what that is, but look, we're looking at more than 200 years of slavery," she continued. "We're looking at almost 100 years of Jim Crow."
Harris in a March 2019 interview with NPR offered a somewhat different take from the congressional proposal she went on to cosponsor. Rather than explicitly endorse monetary compensation or repealing any federal laws, Harris said, "I think reparations—yeah. I think that the word, the term 'reparations,' it means different things to different people."
Harris at an April 2019 CNN town hall was asked again about whether she supports transferring cash to the descendants of African slaves. When pressed on the issue, she said, "I support that we study that."
"We should study it and see," Harris continued.
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