Pelosi wants to explore paying reparations for slavery

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in New York, Monday, Feb. 25, 2019. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in New York, Monday, Feb. 25, 2019. Photo: Seth Wenig Photo: Seth Wenig Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Pelosi wants to explore paying reparations for slavery 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., waded into historically fraught political waters on Wednesday when she announced she supports forming a commission that would explore the possibility of paying reparations to black Americans as a form of restitution for slavery.

"Reparations is a challenging issue," said Pelosi at a Wednesday event at Howard University. "As you probably are aware, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee has the legislation to study it, and I support that and look forward to an open mind and full participation of the public in that discussion."

The legislation in question, HR 40, was introduced by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas, in January.

It would create a commission studying the impact of slavery, discrimination and segregation on African Americans and would make recommendations "concerning any form of apology and compensation to begin the long delayed process of atonement for slavery," Jackson Lee wrote in a statement.

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"While we have focused on the social effects of slavery and segregation, its continuing economic implications remain largely ignored by mainstream analysis," she added.

Several candidates in the 2020 primary field, including Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs Julián Castro, have announced their support for reparations in some form.

"I think there has to be some form of reparations," said Harris in an interview with The Root this week. "We can discuss what that is, but look, we're looking at more than 200 years of slavery. We're looking at almost a hundred years of Jim Crow. We're looking at legalized segregation and, in fact, segregation on so many levels that exists today, based on race.

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"And there has not been any kind of intervention done understanding the harm and the damage that occurred to correct course, and so we are seeing the effects of all of those years play out still today," she said.

The idea of paying some form of reparations as recompense for the harms of slavery, segregation and exclusionary housing policies has been around for decades but gained renewed attention in recent years with the publication of Ta-Nehisi Coates' Atlantic cover story "The Case for Reparations."

In her comments at Howard, Pelosi also gestured more generally at working to reduce inequality.

"We have to reduce the disparity in income in our country," she said. "We have to reduce the disparity in access to education in an affordable way in our country, reduce the health disparities in our country."