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HARRIS: Supporter of Reparations
In January 2019, Democrat Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee introduced legislation, H.R. 40, designed to address, by means of reparations payments, the “lingering negative effects of slavery on living African Americans and society.” The bill had 125 co-sponsors, all Democrats. Senator Harris, for her part, said “we need to study the effects of generations of discrimination and institutional racism and determine what can be done, in terms of intervention, to correct course.”
In a March 2019 interview with NPR, Sen. Harris said that “we need to study the effects of generations of discrimination and institutional racism and determine what can be done, in terms of intervention, to correct course.” When NPR host Steve Inskeep asked Harris to outline “one possible form” that “reparations for slavery and racial discrimination … could take,” she answered:
“Sure. You can look at the issue of untreated and undiagnosed trauma. African-Americans have higher rates of heart disease and high blood pressure. It is environmental. It is centuries of slavery, which was a form of violence where women were raped, where children were taken from their parents — violence associated with slavery. And that never — there was never any real intervention to break up what had been generations of people experiencing the highest forms of trauma. And trauma, undiagnosed and untreated, leads to physiological outcomes. […] You need to put resources and direct resources — extra resources — into those communities that have experienced that trauma.”
In April 2019, Sen. Harris delivered a speech at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network convention. After Harris had finished her remarks, Sharpton asked her if she would, as president, sign H.R. 40 into law. “When I am elected president, I will sign that bill,” Harris replied, eliciting thunderous applause and Black Power fist salutes from those in attendance.
In August 2019, Sen. Harris said: “This stuff [the case for reparations] needs to be studied. Because America needs a history lesson, to be honest about it, and we need to study it in a way that we are having a very comprehensive and fact-based conversation about policies and the connection between those policies and harm if we’re going to have a productive conversation. It can’t just be, ‘Hey … write some checks.’ […] I don’t support an idea or a notion that after all this, we’re going to say, ‘Okay, I’m going to write you a check, and then be quiet.’ Because that won’t solve the problem, which is the systemic issues that are present and will continue to exist, whether or not you write a check.”
In July 2024, Newsweek quoted Harris as having told the black publication The Root: “I think there has to be some form of reparations and we could discuss what that is, but look, we’re looking at more than 200 years of slavery. We’re looking at almost 100 years of Jim Crow. We’re looking at legalized segregation, and in fact segregation on so many levels that exist today based on race, and there has not been any kind of intervention done understanding the harm and the damage that occurred, to correct [the] course. And so we are seeing the effects of all those years play out still today.”
BIDEN: Open to the Possibility of Reparations
In a February 2021 news briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that President Biden “certainly would support a study of reparations” by a special commission.
WALZ: His Church Supports Reparations
Walz attends the St. Paul, Minnesota-based Pilgrim Lutheran Church, whose “Pilgrim Advocates for Racial Equity” team recently drafted a reparations program for the church. A similar team, known as the Pilgrim Racial Justice Task Force, hosted a forum titled “Whiteness and Privilege” in October 2019.