In an interview with Jemele Hill’s podcast on Monday, Sen. Kamala Harris declared that the idea of slavery reparations is “complicated” and “writing a check” to the descendants of slaves is not “going to be enough.”
“We need to address how we’re going to do it,” Harris said. “So there’s a lot that has to be about looking at this in a way that is about structural and systemic investment in communities…”
“So that’s why I’m reluctant to have a simple answer to it because frankly I don’t believe that writing a check is gonna be enough,” she added. “I really don’t… And the worst thing that I think could happen is that checks get written and then everybody says ‘ok, stop talking about this now’ without addressing the systemic inequities that are deep and require investment.”