The Rev. Al Sharpton asked Democratic presidential candidates the same question at his New York conference last week: Should the U.S. government research how to make amends for centuries of enslavement and oppression of African-Americans?
One by one, the candidates said yes.
“There's a direct connection between exclusion in the past and exclusion in the present,” Pete Buttigieg—the mayor of South Bend, Ind., who is white—told a mostly African-American crowd gathered in a Manhattan ballroom. “That's exactly why we need a rigorous, serious study.”
Studying reparations for slavery has moved from theoretical fodder for essayists, economists and historians into the mainstream of Democratic politics, a phenomenon owed to top-tier presidential candidates embracing the idea and the single bill in Congress addressing it. That legislation, known as H.R. 40, was first introduced in 1989 and for decades was ignored by presidents and congressional leaders of both parties.
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