The Living Consequences

The uncomfortable truth is that the United States owes its position as the most powerful nation in the world to its slave-owning past.

Rep. Jackson Lee

The 118th U.S. Congress convened earlier this month, and legislation to establish a commission to study reparations for slavery and racism has been re-introduced in the House and Senate.

The uncomfortable truth is that the United States owes its position as the most powerful nation in the world to its slave-owning past.

Rep. Jackson Lee

The 117th U.S. Congress convened for the first time at noon on Sunday, and yesterday, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) re-introduced H.R. 40, the bill which would establish a commission to study reparations for slavery.

H.R. 40, proposed in every Congress since the 101st, would acknowledge our nation’s unresolved history of slavery and racial discrimination and establish a commission to study its impact, consider a national apology, and suggest remedies. As Rep. Jackson Lee noted in her remarks introducing H.R. 40, it is “a holistic bill” which “establishes a commission to examine the moral and social implications of slavery,” and not just its economic consequences.

Update, January 25: Today, Senator Cory Booker introduced a Senate version of H.R. 40, to be known as S. 40, as he did in the last Congress.

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Yesterday, Democratic members of Congress introduced joint resolutions in the House and Senate which would amend the U.S. Constitution to strengthen the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of slavery.

The 13th Amendment, as adopted about six months after the Civil War ended, reads as follows:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

(Boldface added to highlight the portion of the amendment at issue.)

The proposed constitutional amendment would remove the exception for criminal punishments, reading as follows:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude may be imposed as a punishment for a crime.

This proposal, which would likely be the 28th amendment to the Constitution, comes after increasing controversy over the exception and would follow movements to eliminate similar language in several state constitutions, including Colorado, Nebraska, and Utah. It was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) with three Democratic co-sponsors, and in the House by Rep. William Lacy Clay and fifteen Democratic co-sponsors.

To secure passage, supporters would have to achieve two-thirds votes in both the House and Senate, and then ratification by 38 state legislatures.

Senator Cory Booker announced this afternoon that he is introducing legislation to study the possibility of reparations for slavery.

The presidential candidate’s proposal is intended to be a Senate companion to H.R. 40, the reparations bill introduced into the House this year by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.).

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The Vermont state legislature is currently considering a bill which would establish a task force to study a state apology for slavery and reparations or other remedies for slavery.

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Yesterday, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) re-introduced H.R. 40 in the new 116th U.S. Congress. This bill, proposed in every Congress since the 101st, would acknowledge our unresolved history of slavery and racial discrimination and establish a commission to study its impact, consider a national apology, and suggest remedies.

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) first proposed H.R. 40 in 1989, and he reintroduced the bill in every new Congress until his resignation from Congress in 2017. Rep. Jackson Lee assumed first sponsorship over H.R. 40 at that time, and has now re-introduced the legislation as required with each new Congress.

H.R. 40 has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, on which Rep. Jackson Lee sits. The text of the bill is not yet available to the public, although it is likely to be the same as in past years.

In the last, Republican-controlled Congress, H.R. 40 received no hearing or other consideration. It will be interesting to see whether there is activity on the bill in the new, Democratic-controlled, and more diverse 116th Congress.

This has certainly been a highly uncertain presidential election season, and more importantly, a rather depressing one.

However, I’ve posted election day predictions here for each of the last several presidential elections. And I’ve noted when my predictions were accurate (50 of 50 states in 2012, 49 of 50 in 2008). So I think it’s only fair that I do the same again this year.

Here is how I see the election as of this morning:

I tend to side with Nate Silver about this year’s presidential race: the election outcome is significantly less certain than many analysts are claiming. There are essentially two related reasons for this uncertainty:

1. Because of the unusual nature of this election (two highly unpopular and polarizing candidates, including one who is especially unconventional and controversial), the polls have been consistently far more varied and volatile than in other recent presidential elections.
2. For those same reasons, we have especially good reason, this time around, to suspect that our assumptions about voter turnout and demographics, used to craft and interpret polling results, may be inaccurate in ways we can’t predict (and can’t even estimate; that is, we don’t know how much we don’t know).

That latter point means that we don’t really know, for instance, the extent to which mainstream Republicans will break for Trump, cross party lines, or simply stay home. We don’t know how many Democrats (especially white, male, and working-class) may cross party lines for Trump or stay home. We don’t know how many voters have been reluctant to tell pollsters the truth about their voting plans, which may cross party and other lines, and seem risky to reveal to others. We don’t know the impact of Trump’s motivational impact on his supporters, but lack of a solid ground game to turn out the vote, on the composition of the electorate.

This is a hasty sketch of several of the most important issues in play. In any event, the electoral map above reflects this uncertainty. The impact is that, while I agree that Clinton has a distinct advantage tonight, I believe Silver is right when he suggests there is more uncertainty than many analysts will admit, such that Trump has a real chance at winning the White House, and Clinton has a real chance at a strong victory in the electoral college.

If pressed, what do I think is the most likely outcome? It’s this:

But I will be looking very, very closely at the early returns tonight, for any hints as to whether, and in what ways, our assumptions have proven wrong this time around.

I posted this announcement over at the Tracing Center earlier this week.

We’re pleased to announce the release of the Tracing Center’s new book, Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

“This seminal work … will make a significant impact.”

— Rex M. Ellis, Associate Director, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Interpreting Slavery, edited by Kristin Gallas and James DeWolf Perry, is the most visible product to date of a three-year Tracing Center project to develop and disseminate best practices in slavery interpretation. This project has also included surveys of the field, workshops at historic sites and museums, conference presentations and instructional sessions, as well as additional publications.

The book is a collaboration with seven leading public historians with deep expertise in navigating the interpretation of slavery:

• Dina A. Bailey, National Center for Civil and Human Rights
• Patricia Brooks, National Endowment for the Humanities
• Richard C. Cooper, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
• Conny Graft, Conny C. Graft Research and Evaluation
• Linnea Grim, Monticello
• Katherine D. Kane, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center
• Nicole A. Moore, Museum Educator and Historic Consultant

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Once again, Bob Vanderbei of Princeton has offered the nation a view of itself as the purple country that it is:

As I mentioned four years ago, this is a much more accurate and revealing look at the nation’s geographic political divisions than the more conventional state-by-state, red-and-blue map. It emphasizes how politically diverse many states are, and how there are red, blue, and purple areas throughout the country.

The county-level data revealed by this map also hints at an important truth that state-by-state color-coding doesn’t: that in terms of geography, our society’s political leanings track closely with not only broad geographic areas, but also with coastal and inland terrain and with urban and rural settings.

[P]olitics is a field perfectly designed to foil precise projections. … You can’t tell what’s about to happen.

— David Brooks on the 2012 presidential election, New York Times, October 23

As of this writing, my state-by-state projection of the presidential election outcome is 49 for 49. If Florida, the only state I said was a close call, ends up in Obama’s column, that record will improve to 50 for 50.

This result says little about my own predictive abilities, however, and a great deal about the ability of political science to make meaningful predictions and to understand the fundamental factors driving presidential election outcomes.

My 2012 electoral college prediction, as posted here on the morning of the election

What quick lessons can we draw here?

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