Joe Biden wants provisions for Native Americans included in any cash payment form of reparations to African American descendants of slaves.
Biden was asked repeatedly during an NAACP town hall Wednesday night whether he would go on the record as supporting reparations if a dollar amount was presented to him as president.
“The answer is it depends on what it was and will it include Native Americans as well,” the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee told host Ed Gordon.
Biden reiterated that he backed H.R. 40, a bill reintroduced last year by Democratic Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. If passed by Congress and signed by President Trump, the legislation would establish a commission to study reparation possibilities, including an apology and compensation. Proposed calculations to make amends for two centuries of slavery so far include a $14 trillion estimate.
“Let’s do the study and decide whether there should be direct cash payments, but in the meantime, you know what has to be done,” Biden said Wednesday.
Biden pointed to housing and education policies that could be enacted faster as stopgap measures to bridge the economic divide between white and black America.
“If, in fact, there are ways in which to get direct payments for reparations, I want to see it. But why are we waiting around for the study?” he asked.
H.R. 40 was first introduced to Congress in 1989 by former Democratic Michigan Rep. John Conyers but was never seriously considered by lawmakers. Reparations is receiving another look after George Floyd’s death in police custody last month reignited anger and frustration regarding systemic police brutality and racial injustice.
