Activists: Biden can win Black vote by forming a reparations commission
Kamm Howard is leading a push to have a reparations commission established by President Joe Biden before the November 2024 general election. Howard, a Chicago-based entrepreneur and real estate investor, is the founder of the grassroots groups Reparations United and Earn the Black Vote. He says his organizations have been working along with several others to send weekly batches of postcards to the White House, urging Biden to fulfill the campaign promise he made to establish a reparations commission during his presidency.
When he campaigned for the presidency in 2020, Biden stated that his administration “will support a study of reparations.” The postcards being sent to the White House call on the president to fulfill that pledge.
(Photo credit: EarnTheBlackVote.net)
The Poynter Institute’s fact-checking website PolitiFact noted this past February that “Biden promised to support the study of reparations. He did not promise to pay reparations—only to support its study.
“Biden could form a commission to study reparations or back a long-standing proposal in Congress to study it. He could give a speech calling for a study on reparations,” PolitiFact added, “We found no evidence that he took any such steps.”
Four years of waiting for Biden to take that step is no longer acceptable, Howard told the AmNews.
It’s a goal that has been fought for since the end of African enslavement in the United States. It was most recently a crusade waged by the late Rep. John Conyers Jr., who re-introduced his “H.R.40 – Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act” bill in every session of Congress from 1989 to 2017.
Howard, a long-term reparations scholar, worked with Rep. Conyers for 12 years. He is a 16-year member of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) and has most recently been assisting Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee after she took on the task of championing H.R. 40 in Congress. Lee has sponsored the bill every year now since 2017.
Talks about the creation of a reparations commission had been moving forward, Howard said, because several meetings have been held with the president’s team and the congresswoman. But a few weeks ago, Rep. Jackson Lee announced that she has pancreatic cancer, and reparations commission talks have been postponed while she looks after her health.
Biden’s Emancipation Proclamation moment
The Earn the Black Vote campaign kicked off in August 2023, based on the understanding that some 83% of Black registered voters support the Democratic Party, and Black voters are widely seen as being able to carry the Democratic Party to electoral victory. Progressive policies that lead to greater inclusion of Black people tend to come from center-left politicians, who are usually Democrats.
Howard said they base their campaign on the following data: “One, that the president cannot win [re-election] with the amount of Blacks who have defected from the Democratic Party. A company that we’re working with put that number at about 2.9 million Blacks who voted for him in 2020 and disapprove of him now –to the point where they’re talking about not voting at all, voting third party, or possibly voting for Trump. We’re messaging that he definitely can’t win if those numbers stay the same, and that in order to turn those numbers around, he needs to establish a reparations commission. That’s one message.
“The second message is that we’ve already demonstrated the political will in the Democratic Party for reparations. In the last Congress, when the Democrats controlled the Congress, 88% of Dems in the House and the Senate pledged support for the bill if it came to the floor. We had 96 House sponsors and over 23 Senate sponsors of the Senate bill. And then there were others who pledged [that] once it comes to the floor, they would vote for it. We had the votes if passed by the House; we just didn’t get it to the floor.
“The third message is that this is his [Abraham] Lincoln moment,” Howard continued. “Lincoln had to do what he clearly did not want to do: He clearly did not want to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, he didn’t want to [let[ enlist Blacks in the army, he didn’t want to give Blacks weapons when they were allowed to join the army. But he did what he had to do in order to save the union. We’re saying this is Biden’s Emancipation Proclamation moment: He has to do what’s necessary if he wants to save democracy, which is at risk in this election.
“Our fourth message is that Black reparations [are] good for all of America. We have economic data, social data, to back that claim up.”
Simply establishing a reparations commission could help restore the faith of Black people in U.S. democracy, Howard said; a faith that has been tested frequently. It would also help the nation view itself as capable of facing its past and dealing with that past justly.
“It would be great if we could get reparations established without the commission, but the policies that the president has been pushing are pretty nonspecific,” Howard said. “They’re not targeted toward the descendants of the slave system in this county; they’re pretty general.”
Howard said the creation of a reparations commission would drive more Blacks to vote for Biden. Plus, establishing a commission now would give it time to get up and working within the next administration. The commission’s tasks can be completed within the first two years of Biden’s next presidency, and, by the third year, legislation and resources about it could pass through Congress.
The Earn the Black Vote campaign is not specifically targeting Republican party representatives because the GOP has not voiced any interest in supporting reparations for African slavery, activists say. But Howard said that conservatives are also welcome to push for a reparations commission.
“Our message to the Republican Party[is] if you really want Black votes, then have [Speaker of the House] Mike Johnson call the bill to the House, have the Senate Republicans not filibuster the bill, let it come to a vote––we have enough Democrats for the vote––and we could expect it to pass.
“That’s really our message: Our campaign is about before the election, what can happen before the election. After the election, then we’re going to go back and roll up our sleeves and see what’s available to us.”
The post Activists: Biden can win Black vote by forming a reparations commission appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.