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It was simple, accurate and he clearly expressed it to a number of leading Democratic presidential candidates for 2020 who visited his National Action Network conference in New York this week.
Would they support a House bill, introduced for the first time three decades ago, that would create a congressional committee to study the possibility of reparations for slave offspring?
One by one, the candidates responded in the affirmative, some not for the first time. In 2020, the issue of reparations, which had existed for decades on the sidelines of the general political debate, has become a litmus test for Democrats vying to overthrow President Donald Trump next year.
"It's the bill that says you are forming a commission." You study the damage caused by slavery and the legacy of slavery, then you try to find the best way to fix it, "Coates said. "It's pretty simple."
Democrat candidates, among them Sense. Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, as well as the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Julian Castro, have all touched on the issue of reparations during the election campaign in recent weeks.
At a public meeting at CNN in Jackson, Mississippi in March, Warren argued that "due to discrimination related to housing and employment," we live in a world where the average white family has $ 100 (and) average family has about $ 5 ".
"So, I believe it's time to start the national conversation about repairs in this country," Warren said. "And that means that I support the bill in the House, which is to appoint a group of congressional experts, people who study this issue and talk about different ways that we may be able to do and report back to Congress, so that we can nation do what is right and begin to heal. "
Booker, the New Jersey senator, expressed frustration over the reparations conversation – stating that she was "reduced to a box to check a presidential list, while the conversation is so much more serious".
"Do I support legislation that is concerned with preserving balance between economic and race-conscious balances? Not only do I support it, but I have legislation that actually does it", told CNN's Jake Tapper at the end of the evening at CNL in Orangeburg, South Carolina. March.
At the Sharpton Conference in New York this week, other candidates offered their full support to HR 40, including Mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg, former Maryland Representative, John Delaney, Senator from New York. , Kirsten Gillibrand, former Texas Representative, Beto O. Rourke. , Ohio Representative Tim Ryan and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
When asked for repairs during an early March appearance at the popular radio show "The Breakfast Club", Sanders had seemed to dismiss the idea of "writing a check" to every African-American "Well, then there is a check for every Native American, which was almost eliminated when the settlers arrived here," Sanders told the Breakfast Club's guests. "I think that to go forward, we have to build America together."
Sanders told NAN Friday that "if the House and Senate pass this bill, I will sign it of course."
"There must be a study," said Sanders. "Let me also say this.I think what we need to do is pay real attention to the most distressed communities in America.We must use 10% of all federal funds to make sure that the children who need it get education, get the jobs, get the environmental protection they need, and that would be a major goal of my efforts. "
California Senator Kamala Harris has promised to sign H.R. 40 in an interview Friday morning at the SiriusXM radio show "Make it Plain with Mark Thompson". Later, during her speech at the NAN Congress, she added, "When I am elected president, I will sign this bill."
The former Colorado governor, John Hickenlooper, called slavery "America's inflexible and persistent shame, which continues to deny the country's true promise to too many of its citizens." "at the NAN convention, Friday.
"We must own our past and recognize the shame, the sin, the injustice and the permanent consequences of the slavery of a whole race of people," said Hickenlooper, who approved the legislation. "And we must apologize and these excuses should come from the Oval Office."
Endorsing Jackson Lee's proposal again this week, former HUD secretary, Castro, said he had been talking for several weeks about the campaign on his belief that the country "will never really heal until it's over." that we remedy the original sin of slavery ".
"I said that if, under our Constitution, we compensate if we take their property, why would not we compensate people considered property and sanctioned by the state?" Castro said during his appearance at the NAN conference Wednesday. "I believe that for the black community, for the white community, for every other American – that it is important to tackle this original sin, and until we do it, we may feel that we are moving forward – we do not think we'll ever do it. "
Former Starbucks President and CEO Howard Schultz, who is studying the possibility of going to the White House independently, said he would not support the repairs at a public meeting on Thursday. evening at Fox Town Hall, adding that he would rather be "looking to the future". make a major investment in education that could start with historically black colleges. He was not asked about Jackson Lee's legislation.
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