In a hearing Wednesday on Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s bill to establish a commission to study reparations, Sen. Cory Booker said the U.S. has failed to address “the white supremacy that tainted this country’s founding.”
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties invited presidential hopeful Booker, actor/activist Danny Glover, author Ta-Nehisi Coates, and others to discuss Lee’s bill H.R. 40.
Booker said the U.S has “yet to truly acknowledge and grapple with the racism and white supremacy that tainted this country’s founding and continues to cause persistent and deep racial disparities and inequality… The stain of slavery was not just inked in bloodshed, but in policies that have disadvantaged African Americans for generations,” he added.