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By Associated press
Several Democratic presidential candidates accept reparations for the descendants of slaves – but not in the traditional sense of the term.
Last week, Senator Kamala Harris of California, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro emphasized the need for the US government to count and compensate for centuries of stolen work and legal oppression. But instead of supporting the direct compensation of African Americans for the legacy of slavery, Democratic candidates are talking about using tax credits and other grants.
Long defined as a type of direct payment to former slaves and their descendants, the changing definition of reparations comes as White House hopes seek to strengthen their ties with African-Americans whose support will be crucial to winning the day. Democratic nomination. But this is likely to elicit both harsh Republican criticism and a shrug of the shoulders of black voters and activists if the proposals are seen as an empty gesture that only renames existing political ideas into reparations.
"Universal programs are not specific to the injustices inflicted on African Americans," said William Darity, an economist at Duke University, a senior repair lawyer. "I want to make sure that everything proposed and potentially promulgated as a reparations program actually constitutes a substantial and dramatic intervention in patterns of racial wealth inequality in the United States – and not some superficial or minor thing called reparations, then politicians say the national responsibility has been assumed. "
Montague Simmons of the Movement for Black Lives, who sought reparations, said the debate was "not just cash payments".
But "unless we talk about something that has to be systemic and transfers power to the community, it probably will not be what we would consider repairing," he said.
For now, this is not the way most Democratic presidential candidates talk about reparations.
Harris offered monthly payments to qualified citizens of all races in the form of a tax credit. Warren called for universal child care guaranteeing the benefit of birth until the entry of a child into school. Families whose income is below 200% of the poverty line would benefit from free access and the others would not pay more than 7% of their income.
These benefits would likely have a disproportionate impact on African Americans. But aside from Marianne Williamson, a long-time candidate, no Democrat White House candidate has demanded financial compensation for blacks.
Harris told Sunday to the press in Iowa that "we must all recognize that people have not started on the same basis and have not had the same chances of success."
Castro told The Root, a black online news site, that America would be "better off" if the government tackled the issue of repairs, which it said it would explore for. He was elected.
And on Friday, in New Hampshire, Warren said that the United States had to deal with "the ugly story of racism" and "talk about the right way to remedy the situation". When asked if she would support the repairs for Native Americans, she replied, "This is an important part of the conversation".
Warren was criticized for claiming the Native American identity early in his career and recently apologized to the Cherokee Nation for publishing the results of his DNA tests as evidence that she had an Amerindian in his lineage, although at least six generations back.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, questioned Monday at CNN City Hall about his position on reparations given the comments of Warren and Castro, said, "What does that mean? What does it mean? I'm not sure anyone is very clear. " He said the United States should dedicate resources to communities in distress to improve the lives of people affected by the legacy of slavery.
Sanders did not support the repairs during his 2016 presidential campaign.
In terms of direct payment, repairs could be a difficult political sell. In a 2016 Taken-Marist Point survey, 68 percent of Americans said the country should not pay cash reparations to descendants of African-American slaves. About 8 out of 10 white Americans said they were opposed to redress, while about 6 black Americans said they were in favor.
Republican strategist Whit Ayres said the reparations issue was "symptomatic of the fundamental debate that haunts the Democratic Party today."
"There is no doubt that race issues have been and remain of paramount importance in American society," he said. "But the idea of solving these problems by taking money from whites and giving it to blacks will only worsen racial relations, not better." Republicans would like to have this debate. "
The chairman of the National Democratic Committee, Tom Perez, said the issue was "a topic that will be debated during the presidential nomination process," Sunday's Fox News Sunday said on whether the repairs would end in the democratic platform.
Although the Democrats are rethinking the definition of reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who sparked a national debate on the issue with a 2014 essay in The Atlantic, said the recent talks were promising. He noted that a comedy sketch by Dave Chappelle had made fun of this idea in 2003.
"It has generally been considered a total madness," said Coates. "You do not make fun of me now The first step is to get people to stop laughing."
When Barack Obama ran to become the country's first African-American president, he opposed the reparations. But in an interview with Coates in the last days of his presidency, he did not question the legitimacy of the concept.
"Theoretically, you can argue in an obvious way that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the main cause of all these shortcomings," said Obama, referring to the racial disparities faced by black Americans.
"That these are wrongs done to the Black community as a whole, and to Black families in particular, and that, to bridge this gap, a society has the moral obligation to make a large and aggressive investment, even if that "It's not in the form: repairs, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, to fill those gaps," said Obama, referring to the US initiative to provide assistance economy in Western Europe after the Second World War.
Nevertheless, he stated that it was politically difficult to achieve such an objective.
If presidential candidates want to prove that they are serious about reparations, some supporters say that they should support Law 40, the Reparations Study Act, introduced by the former Michigan representative, John Conyers, in 1989. He introduced the bill at each session until his resignation in 2017.
The Democratic representative of Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee, passed the bill after the departure of Conyers and presented it again in 2018, but it has not yet been presented to the current Congress.
"It's not wrong to say that we need to cure cancer – that's what I consider to be support for the repairs – but we have not yet a full diagnosis," Coates said. . "If you can actually get a study describing what has really happened, what are the needs, the debt and how it has been contracted, you can design programs to fix it. saying that you support the repairs. "
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