Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tx.) got her reparations-study bill HR 40 passed in the House Judiciary Committee, something 78-year-old President Joe Biden supported during the 2020 campaign. Lee’s bill is expected to pass the full House vote by a narrow margin, with Democrats holding a 218 to 212 majority. Lee and other advocates think reparations, estimated at $15 trillion would help level the playing field in the United States with African Americans, 13% of the U.S. population at a distinct disadvantage. Lee’s HR 40 authorizes the formation of a commission to study the advisability and feasibility of paying African Americans $15 trillion in reparations from all U.S., taxpayers, where they were responsible for slavery or not. Jackson thinks reparations are the best way the United States can undo the sins of slavery, something abolished by the 13th Amendment Jan. 31, 1865.
In the dreadful Civil War, April 12, 1861 to April 9, 1865, about 40,000 blacks were among the 620,000 war dead, the price paid by the new nation to essentially end slavery. When your consider that President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation Jan 1, 1863, the Confederate South knew what they were fighting for, essentially to continue the Southern slave states. When a bullet ended Lincoln’s life April 15, 1865, it was only six days, April 9, 1865, after the end of the Civil War. His assassin John Wilkes Booth believed in the South’s slave state, motivated to kill Lincoln because of his abolitionist policy. Jackson Lee subscribes to Nikole Hannah-Jones’ New York Times 1619 project, which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the national narrative.”
Jackson Lee wholeheartedly subscribes to Hannah-Jones theory that West African slaves were first brought to the Virginia colony in 1619. At that time there was no United States, something Hannah-Jones conveniently omits in her 1619 Project analysis. West African slaves were brought to the Virginia Colony and all over Europe and parts of the New World in the Caribbean Islands, Mexico, Central and South America. Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project assumes that an organized effort by a precursor to the United States imported slaves to at least the Southern U.S. colonies. If Jackson Lee or Hannah-Jones read U.S. history, they’d know that the Declaration of Independence didn’t happen until July 4, 1776. Jackson Lee and Hannah-Jones know that the Revolutionary War, April 19, 1775 didn’t end until Sept. 3, 1783. There was no U.S. government until the Constitution was signed Sept. 17, 1787.
If you count the date of the officials U.S. government it was either Sept. 17, 1787 Constitution signing date or the Bill of Rights Dec. 15, 1791. From that date forward, slavery was not the official policy of the United States but instead residual, entrenched customs from Colonial America. When you think that between the Constitution signing Sept. 17, 1787 and signing of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery Jan. 31, 1865, it was only 78 years, no reasonable person asking for reparations can blame the U.S. government. Jackson Lee wants to blame the U.S. government for slavery but the historical record clearly shows slavery was never an official policy of the U.S. government but only a continuation of Colonial business activity in the Southern Colonies. Studying the issues of reparations should show, beyond any doubt, that it was not the policy of the United States but rather a lingering artifact of Colonial life.
Jackson Lee’s HR 40 creates a 13-member commission to study the effects of slavery and racial discrimination, hold hearings and recommend “appropriate remedies” to Congress. Commission members would decide what form a national apology for the toxic effects of slavery and racial discrimination would take, whether actual reparations, more affirmative action programs or national anti-racist training in K-12 schools, part of a national curriculum coordinated with the U.S. Department of Education. But before deciding on any apology or remedial steps for slavery and racial discrimination, the panel must decide whether the U.S. government bears any institutional responsibility for slavery or the racial discrimination that followed once the 13th Amendment was ratified Jan. 13, 1865. Holding the U.S. government—and taxpayers—responsible for reparations is not reasonable by any legal standard.
Any examination by the HR 40 commission of the historical record must conclude that the U.S. government as formed after the Constitutional Convention and Constitution’s Sept. 17, 1787 signing date was not responsible for slavery. As a sovereign power, the U.S. did not promote or condone slavery but worked for its eventual end with the 13th Amendment Jan. 13, 1865. When you consider the amount of shattered U.S. families from the prodigious 620,000 Civil War dead, the white population of the U.S. suffered mightily for Lincoln taking a stand against slavery. For Jackson Lee or any other member of Congress to conclude that slavery was an official policy of the U.S. government from the time the Constitution was signed Sept. 17, 1787 is not factual. New York Times 1619 Project establishes only that West African slaves were brought to the Virginia Colony in 1619, not a policy of the U.S. government.
