Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn’t support legislation that would provide reparations for the descendants of slaves, he told reporters Wednesday.
“I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, for whom none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea,” McConnell, R-Ky., said.
McConnell made the remarks in response to a reporter’s question about reparations, which will be the subject of a House hearing on Wednesday.
McConnell said it would be difficult to determine who should be compensated and added waves of immigrants have arrived in the country over the last century and a half who have experienced “dramatic discrimination in one form or another.”
McConnell said the United States has already taken action to make amends for slavery.
“We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, passing landmark civil rights legislation,” he said. “We’ve elected an African American president. We are always a work in progress in this country, but nobody alive currently is responsible for that and I don’t think we should be trying to figure out how to compensate for it.”
A House Judiciary subcommittee will hold a hearing Wednesday on legislation that would create a commission to study reparations for slavery.
Witnesses include reparations proponent Ta-Nehisi Coates, who wrote a long Atlantic article supporting it, and actor and activist Danny Glover.
