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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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.

Four years ago, I wrote a short blog post about a preliminary settlement in the case of Mexican braceros denied wages earned as guest workers in the U.S. in World War II.

Since that time, the post has attracted a steady flow of visitors searching the web for information about receiving compensation for family members who were braceros. These visitors, and the comments they’ve left asking for information, indicate just how many uncompensated braceros remain in the U.S. and Mexico, as well as the rampant confusion surrounding this case.

I have no expertise in the handling of claims for the braceros program. However, because of the number of visitors who’ve asked for information, and the fact that this exchange is buried in the comments on that page, I want to provide here a summary of what I know.

My understanding from reading newspaper and scholarly accounts is that the process for claiming compensation depends upon whether the former braceros, or any heirs, live in Mexico or in the United States.

In the case of residents of the U.S., the class action lawsuit dictated the process to be followed, and the first step was to contact the nearest Mexican consulate for information and to file a claim. For example, as of a year ago, the Mexican consulate in Yuma, Arizona was actively seeking former braceros who had filed a claim but not yet received compensation. Each claimant is apparently receiving about $3,000 U.S.

In the case of residents of Mexico, all claims are handled by the Mexican government. I believe that requires contacting a Mexican federal office for information or to pursue a claim.

If anyone has better or more recent information than this, please leave it in the comments, and I will update the main post.

The White House announced late yesterday that President Obama has re-nominated Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Professor Liu’s nomination became controversial when it was discovered that he had addressed the subject of reparations for slavery on a panel following a special screening of our documentary, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, in Washington, D.C. in 2008. Liu’s scholarship has also drawn considerable attention for its intellectual heft and for what conservative senators have declared to be a left-leaning philosophical approach to the law.

Professor Liu was originally nominated to the appellate judgeship in February, and passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 12-7 vote. His nomination expired, however, when the Senate recessed in August without having held a full vote.

Professor Liu’s nomination, along with several others who were re-nominated yesterday, must now pass the Senate Judiciary Committee again. A committee meeting has been scheduled for Thursday at which these nominations will be discussed.

President Obama’s nomination of controversial law professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has been blocked by Senate Republicans and returned to the White House.

Professor Liu became the subject of controversy in late March, in part due to remarks he made on a panel convened to discuss our documentary, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. That evening, in response to the topic of reparations for slavery, Liu observed that any effort to compensate for our nation’s history of slavery and racial discrimination would inevitably require trade-offs which would diminish the privileges enjoyed by people who benefit from that history today.

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Professor Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates, Jr. has an op-ed in this morning’s New York Times in which he takes on the issue of reparations for slavery.

Gates will, no doubt, attract enough controversy for his general approach to the issue. He is convinced that our society must address the issue of reparations, and that we must reach a “just and lasting agreement,” which he believes will have to be “a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime.”

Remarks like these will land any public intellectual in the U.S. in hot water these days. Just consider the case of Goodwin Liu, whose mild remarks related to reparations at one of our events in 2008 became a central issue in his nomination by President Obama for a seat on the Ninth Circuit.

However, this essay is most notable for telling difficult truths about the central role of Africans in the transatlantic slave trade, and thus about the shared culpability of people of different races in the resulting history of slavery.

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I’ve written before about the movement in Rhode Island to remove the words “Providence Plantations” from the state’s name. Supporters argue that these words constitute an offensive reminder of the state’s, and the nation’s, history of slavery.

Last night, the R.I. state legislature approved the constitutional amendment which would change the state’s name. The measure will go before the voters of Rhode Island next year.

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