Vice President Kamala Harris expressed openness to reparations during a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists on Tuesday.
Harris has previously been silent about if she remains supportive of a package of reparations bills in California.
Sixty-eight percent of Americans oppose reparations, a Pew Research poll found in 2022.
“Do you have a position on whether that [reparations] should happen — this [reparations] commission should happen through executive order or via Congress?” Politico reporter Eugene Daniels asked Harris.
Harris replied that reparations legislation could be made law through Congress but did not discount “the importance of any executive action.”
Harris replied:
I think Congress ultimately will have the ability to do this work. I’m not discounting the importance of any executive action, but, ultimately, Congress because if you’re going to talk about it in any substantial way, there will be hearings, there will be a level of public education and dialog that — and I think that was part of the spirit behind the congressional action thus far — to ensure that everyone can participate in this conversation in a way that elevates knowledge about history and the reference points that have, that are the impetus of this conversation, especially, again, when people are trying to deny history, when people are, you know, so-called leaders are saying that enslaved people benefited from slavery. I mean, let’s talk about the delta here in terms of the work that needs to be done. It’s profound.
Harris, who hails from California, pledged to force taxpayers to pay “reparations for descendants of Africans enslaved” many times.
While running for president in 2020, she told Reverend Al Sharpton, an MNSBC host and activist, that she would sign a reparations bill if she became president.
Sharpton asked:
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?
“When I am elected president, I will sign that bill,” Harris replied:
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.
