Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke voiced his support on Wednesday for a commission tasked with looking at options for reparations.
The former congressman from El Paso, Texas, who last year failed to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in a close race to represent the Lone Star State, said he would sign a law proposed by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, that would create the body if it passed both chambers and he were elected to the White House.
“Yes,” O’Rourke said when asked by the Rev. Al Sharpton at the civil rights figure’s 2019 National Action Network convention in New York. “Absolutely, I would sign that into law.”
Jackson Lee introduced the legislation in January, saying at the time that the commission would “study the impact of slavery and continuing discrimination against African-Americans, resulting directly and indirectly from slavery to segregation to the desegregation process and the present day.”
“The commission would also make recommendations concerning any form of apology and compensation to begin the long delayed process of atonement for slavery,” she said.
O’Rourke’s backing of the idea represents a pivot in his position, given the Associated Press reported last month he told voters at an Iowa house party that he was against traditional reparations. He was confronted about his stance last week during a rally at the University of Southern Carolina.
“Why should I, as a black man, vote for you when you oppose reparations?” O’Rourke was asked. The Texas Democrat pointed to systematic racism, racist voter ID laws, and the economic divide between white Americans and black Americans.
“That is the path that I would pursue, after listening to and reflecting on those who are much smarter, and frankly, as a white man, much more experienced in the injustice and the indignities that I just described,” O’Rourke concluded in his more than four-minute answer.
