Reparations are becoming a major issue in the coming election cycle. A plethora of presidential hopefuls, including Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) who are constantly being asked about their positioning on reparations which is turning into a key 2020 policy issue.
Now presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) has announced Monday that he will take the legislative lead and write a bill that would begin a group to study the possibility of reparations to the African descendants of slaves.
As CNN has reported, Booker has said the commission would work to find solutions for the decades-long “overt policies fueled by white supremacy and racism that have oppressed African-Americans economically for generations,” and “that have ushered millions of Americans into the middle class,” while they, “systematically excluded blacks.”
“This bill is a way of addressing head-on the persistence of racism, white supremacy and implicit racial bias in our country,” said Booker. “It will bring together the best minds to study the issue and propose solutions that will finally begin to right the economic scales of past harms and make sure we are a country where all dignity and humanity is affirmed.”
The bill, H.R. 40, seeks to “examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies.”
