As a senator from California, Vice President Harris sponsored a bill in 2019 to create a federal commission to explore slavery reparations, but has been silent on the issue since announcing her candidacy for the White House.
Harris sponsored HR 40, a bill first introduced by former Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) in 1989 and which has been reintroduced in every Congress since.
After Rep. Conyers passed away, Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee (D-Texas) took over and moved the bill forward.
“I think reparations means different things to different people,” Harris said.2019 NPR interview “But what I would say is that we need to study the effects of generations of discrimination and systemic racism to determine what we can do to change course in terms of intervention.”
When asked in an interview with The Hill about the vice president's views on reparations,Switch Up Podcast,Jasmine Harris, the campaign's Black media director, said Harris is focused on empowering all hardworking Americans to get ahead.
“I think the main thing that's on the table right now is, as I said, making sure that there's a level playing field across the board, making sure that all Americans, hard-working Americans across the board, have the opportunity to get ahead, not just get by,” Harris said.
“So the vice president and the people that she brings in to help run the administration are going to work from every angle to make things a little easier for hardworking Americans, because we know the costs are just too high.”
H.R. 40, officially known as the “Commission to Study and Develop Proposals for Reparations for African Americans Act,” would create a federal commission to study not only the legacy of slavery but also the continuing harms that legacy causes.
The Commission will collect evidence of slavery in the United States, study the role that federal and state governments played in supporting slavery, analyze discriminatory laws against freed African slaves and their descendants, and recommend ways for the government to redress the effects of slavery and discrimination against African Americans, including through a formal apology and reparations.
The bill has been introduced in every session of Congress since 1989, but was voted on in the plenary session for the first time on April 14, 2021.
Senator Cory Booker (R-Nashville, Jersey) introduced the bill in the Senate with the support of 19 Democratic co-sponsors and one independent co-sponsor.
In 2021, the bill had 196 cosponsors in the House, all of them Democrats. Rep. Jackson Lee reintroduced the bill in 2023, this time with 130 Democratic cosponsors.
“Slavery is America's original sin, and this country has yet to atone for the atrocities inflicted upon enslaved Africans and their descendants over generations.” Jackson LeeWritten in 2020“HR 40 is intended to create a framework for a national discussion about slavery's lasting impacts and its complicated legacy and begin the necessary process of reparations.”
Jackson Lee passed away in July, and the bill's future status is unclear.
According to the Pew Research Center, 57% of Black Americans are affected by the legacy of slavery, yet support for reparations varies widely by race.
77% of black Americans are descendants of people who were enslaved in the United Statesbe repaid in some way,Only 18 percent of white Americans say the same.
Still, the movement for reparations has grown across the country since the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
In October 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom (Democrat) created the nation's first task force to study and recommend reparations for slavery. In January of this year, the California Legislative Black Caucus released a bill of 14 reparations bills to implement the policies outlined in the task force's report for 2023.
In June, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order creating a similar task force focused on reparations for the city's Black residents.
But in 2019, former President Trump told The Hill that he didn't think reparations would come at the federal level.
“I think this is very unusual,” Trump said of the possibility of reparations. “There's a lot of very interesting discussion going on. I don't think reparations will happen.”
