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Democrats Call for Reparations for African Americans in Wake of Covid-19
Posted
February 17, 2021
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2:16Now PlayingSupporters of forming a commission to study and consider reparations for Black Americans are renewing their efforts as the death of George Floyd in police custody and the ravages of COVID-19 bring renewed attention to the country's racial disparities.
A House panel on Wednesday debated the merits of legislation forming such a commission, but the prospects for passage are still daunting even with Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who has 173 co-sponsors for her bill, said the descents of slaves continue to feel the sting of that barbaric practice and pointed to COVID-19 as an example. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that Blacks are nearly three times as likely to be hospitalized due to COVID-19 as whites and nearly twice as likely to die from the illness. She offered up her bill as a way to bring the country together.
"The government sanctioned slavery," Jackson Lee said. "And that is what we need, a reckoning, a healing reparative justice."
But polling has shown longstanding resistance to reparations to descendants of slaves. Only 29% of Americans voiced support for paying cash reparations, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll taken in the fall of 2019.
Most Black Americans favored reparations, 74%, compared with 15% of white Americans. It's unclear how much the events of the past 18 months have moved that needle.
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