The radical left is pressuring its ally, Vice President Kamala Harris, to continue to support the controversial idea of reparations for Americans of African heritage.
Harris remained silent on Monday about whether or not she supports a newly proposed package of reparations bills in California. The Harris campaign ignored Breitbart News’s request for comment and the Washington Post’s multiple requests for comment on her current position on reparations.
Though 68 percent of Americans oppose reparations according to a Pew Research poll in 2022, Harris pledged several times to force taxpayers to pay reparations for descendants of Africans enslaved.
“I think there needs to be some form of reparations and we can discuss what that is,” Harris told The Root in 2019 when asked if “black people should get reparations.”
While running for president in 2020, Harris told Reverend Al Sharpton, an MNSBC host and activist, that she would sign a reparations bill if she became president.
“In the area of reparations for descendants of Africans enslaved: If you’re elected president would you sign that bill [Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act proposed by Representative Shelia Jackson Lee] if it came across your desk?” Sharpton asked.
“When I am elected president, I will sign that bill,” Harris replied:
When running for president in 2020, Kamala Harris told Al Sharpton that she would sign a reparations bill once elected:
— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) September 1, 2024
Al Sharpton: "In the area of reparations of for descendants of Africans enslaved: If you're elected president would you sign that bill [Commission to Study and… pic.twitter.com/NuawfxhUQJ
The radical left is holding Harris’s feet to the fire.
“We have a Black woman with a lived experience and a heart for the Black community,” Robin Rue Simmons, a former alderman in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, told the Post. “I believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is the leader to advance this conversation at the federal level.”
Trevor Smith, executive director of the BLIS Collective, an organization that seeks recompense for black and Native Americans, said Harris should address the controversial issue.“We can’t keep kicking it down the road,” he said. “In 2020, we were all talking about racial justice and anti-Blackness because we all watched a Black man get murdered on video.”
“It shouldn’t take that level of an atrocity for us to be able to have these conversations,” he added.
Amos Brown, a member of California’s reparations committee who also served as Harris’s pastor, said black people should embrace reparations.
“In the state of California, we’re working to get land that has been taken away from black people returned, getting educational programs and addressing mass incarnation,” Brown said. “We have got to be pragmatic. We have got to be deliberative.”
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
