Will slavery reparations be key issue in 2020?

WASHINGTON — The question of whether to pay restitution to descendants of slaves is emerging as an issue in presidential politics, enabling 2020 Democratic hopefuls to woo African-American voters while opening the party to criticism for moving too far left.

The reparations issue largely has been avoided in mainstream politics because of the controversy it generates as well as the unspecified but potentially vast sums of public money at stake.

Former President Barack Obama said there’s no practical way to administer reparations or means to build political support. Two-time presidential candidate Hillary Clinton opposed it, as have other Democratic nominees in recent times.

But Julián Castro is among several contestants for the Democratic nomination who have embraced the issue, and entrants into the race can expect to be grilled on the matter.

In Congress, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, is chief sponsor of a resolution calling for a reparations study commission. She received a boost recently when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., endorsed the plan.

Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and housing secretary in the Obama administration, has been the most straightforward among Democratic candidates endorsing reparations. Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey have signed on in one way or another. Castro wants a presidential task force to take up the matter.

“I’m convinced that it’s worth figuring out, because I see this as an issue of right and wrong,” he said in a recent interview. “I believe that we should compensate the descendants of people who were taken as property and sanctioned by the state as property. That was wrong then and it continues to be wrong and has not yet been made right.”

He added: “I know there’s plenty of disagreement about whether there ought to be reparations. But I don’t see this issue from a political lens; I just see it as right or wrong. Even if there’s liability, so what?”

Harris appears to have softened her earlier support. Referring to a tax credit proposal she has offered, she told an interviewer recently: “I’m not going to sit here and say I’m going to do something that’s only going to benefit black people. No. Because whatever benefits that black family will benefit that community and society as a whole and the country, right?”

Unpopular in 2016 poll

Heading toward 2020, Republicans are skewering Democrats for left-of-center policies such as the Green New Deal and so-called Medicare for All, which call for expanded federal roles in the energy and health care sectors.

Pat Buchanan, the conservative columnist and former GOP presidential candidate, offered a glimpse of the blowback Democrats can expect if reparations endures as a campaign issue.

“Are the Democrats going to say this in their national platform in 2020? And how much will the rest of America be forced to pay and for how long?” he asked in a column.

“Politically, the party of slavery, secession and segregation was the party of Jefferson, Jackson, Clay, Calhoun, Wilson and FDR, who put a Klansman on the Supreme Court, the Democratic Party. It was the Republican Party that was formed to contain and end slavery and did,” he wrote.

Reparations for slavery always has been a polarizing issue. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans opposed it in a 2016 Marist poll, including more than 80 percent of white adults. African-Americans supported payments 58-35 percent, and Latinos split evenly on the question.

“This has not been an idea that has been richly supported in the popular imagination in a long time,” said William Darity, Jr., a Duke University economist whose forthcoming book, “From Here to Equality,” explores the issue.

“The real question is whether or not the public conversation about this moves the needle. If we can get 40 or 45 percent of whites, then the game is on,” he said.

Charlton McIlwain, co-director of New York University’s Project on Race in Political Communication, said that there are “clearly a lot of electoral strategies in play.” He was referring to the bidding for African-American primary votes from members of the diverse field of 2020 Democratic candidates.

But McIlwain sees the country beginning an overdue discussion spurred by years of scholarly focus on reparations by Darity and others.

“The topic enjoys a place of seriousness today in a way that it didn’t even two or three years ago,” he said.

In Congress, Jackson Lee’s House Resolution 40 recalls the post-Civil War promise of 40 acres and a mule to former slaves, a promise not kept. Her legislation asserts that 4 million Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States and colonies.

The legislation sets up a commission that would conduct a wide-ranging review of slavery and develop reparation proposals. In addition to examining what occurred from the 16th century until after the Civil War, the commission would study “the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery” and its effects “on living African-Americans and on society in the United States.”

In a year’s time, the 13-member panel would consider programs for “reversing the injuries” of slavery and plan how the United States government could formally apologize for “perpetration of gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity on African slaves and their descendants.”

Precedent for payouts

Determining a structure for payments could be challenging.

Marianne Williamson, a bestselling author and lesser-known candidate for the Democratic nomination, proposes that African-Americans receive payments of $10 billion yearly for ten years. Social scientists who have looked at the question say the tab would be far greater, perhaps in the trillions.

Proponents point to examples of reparations in the past. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation authorizing $20,000 each to more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent who were incarcerated in internment camps during World War II.

The German government has paid tens of billions of dollars over the years to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. In 2019, Germany is set to pay out more than $500 million globally.

Who gets the payments is another thorny question. Darity believes that rather than requirements such as DNA tests or blood quantum standards, a system could be devised in which self-identified African-Americans or blacks would have opportunities to prove that ancestors were enslaved in the United States.

Darity believes that ultimately, legislation in Congress is the only way to offer restitution to descendants of slaves in the form of reparations.

“If you have already not established broad consent for such a program, it’s going to be corrupted, destroyed or undermined,” he said.