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.

As anticipated by my lengthier blog post this morning, Professor Goodwin Liu’s nomination to be a federal appellate judge has been successfully filibustered by Senate Republicans opposed to his judicial philosophy.

The vote was 52-43 in favor of voting on the nomination, but the motion to invoke cloture and take an up-0r-down vote on Liu required the support of at least 60 senators.

In all likelihood, this vote means that Liu’s nomination is effectively dead. This was almost certainly a foregone conclusion, and the cloture motion here was being used by Senate Democrats as a way of putting Republican opponents on record as filibustering this nomination before next year’s elections.

For more on Liu’s nomination, including the role of our organization and its PBS documentary, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, see here.

At this hour, the U.S. Senate is meeting in executive session to debate the nomination of Goodwin Liu to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

If Liu’s supporters are able to muster 60 votes in favor of cloture, which is scheduled to be voted on around 2:00pm ET, this will end the threatened filibuster and result in an up-or-down vote on the nomination itself.

The situation does not look promising for Professor Liu, as three key senators who believe that filibusters should be rare—John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.)—have said they will vote to extend debate indefinitely, thus filibustering the nomination.

After the jump, I discuss the controversial video of Liu speaking at one of our events, and what role it does (and should) play in his nomination.

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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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“Quick Takes” offers a mix of interesting news, opinion, and research related to race, privilege, and inequality.

Today’s “Quick Takes” includes discussion of Europe and reparations for slavery, Native American team mascots, the contributions of immigrants to Arizona’s economy, questions about the Tea Party and race, and the media’s negative portrayal of single black women.

Readers are encouraged to share these stories and to comment at the end of the post.

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