Biden signals green light for reparations study

The White House has confirmed President Joe Biden’s support for studying reparations, boosting a push in Congress to seek “appropriate remedies” for slavery and discrimination against black Americans dating from 1619 to today.

Biden “certainly would support a study of reparations” and the “continuing impacts of slavery,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday. “He continues to demonstrate his commitment to taking comprehensive action to address the systemic racism that persists today,” and the reparations study is one part of that “across-government” approach, she added.

The statement came as a House subcommittee debated a bill that would fund a study of “slavery and discrimination in the Colonies and the US from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies,” including possible reparations to black people. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, reintroduced the bill in January.

The latest progress in the push for reparations marks a shift in the Democratic Party, after such leaders as former President Barack Obama, 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) declined to endorse such a program. But with identity politics becoming even more of a driving force in Democrat campaign strategy, reparations became a serious issue in the party’s primary elections.

Biden wouldn’t commit on the campaign trail to funding reparations, but he did signal support for studying the idea. He told the Washington Post that “there can be no realization of the American dream without grappling with the original sin of slavery.” With Democrats also controlling the House and Senate, the study may finally have a chance to go forward after being proposed for decades.

The political push is so intense that CNN reported Tuesday on a Harvard Medical School study asserting that reparations could have reduced Covid-19 deaths among blacks.

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