Conyers bill for Black Reparations

[Yochanan Zev]

Patient Conyers hopes to move slavery bill during an Obama administration
By Bob Cusack
March 13, 2007
After waiting nearly two decades, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) is well positioned to move legislation that could lead the federal government to apologize for slavery and pay reparations.

But the Judiciary Committee chairman is willing to wait two more years, when he hopes Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) will be in the White House.

In every Congress since 1989, Conyers has introduced the controversial measure that falls under the sole jurisdiction of the Judiciary panel. But the legislation was dormant in the Republican-led House and failed to move through committee when then-Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Texas) headed the Judiciary Committee before the GOP revolution of 1994.
Despite having finally arrived at the head of the powerful committee, the 77-year-old Conyers is prepared to wait yet longer and is biding his time.

Conyers noted that his bill calls for the president to appoint three members to a seven-member commission to analyze the effects of slavery. The House Speaker would make three appointments, while the president pro tempore of the Senate would tap one member.

Even if he had the votes to make his bill law — a big if — Conyers does not want President Bush’s appointees to have a role on such a panel.

The Michigan lawmaker, who has strongly backed Obama for president, said he has not called on the senator to endorse his measure. “I don’t want to put him on the spot,” Conyers told The Hill.

Obama’s campaign did not respond to requests for information about the senator’s position on the bill, H.R. 40. Yet Obama’s stance could be extremely important as he and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) vigorously court the black vote and wrap themselves in the mantle of the civil rights movement.

Both front-runners visited Selma, Ala., this month to commemorate the sacrifices of black demonstrators who were assaulted crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965.

The Clinton campaign also did not comment on the Conyers bill.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), another 2008 White House hopeful, supports the Conyers measure and a formal apology for slavery. In a statement, Richardson said, “Slavery is one of the most tragic periods of our great nation, and we continue to struggle with the legacy of slavery.”

Conyers’s measure recently attracted the cosponsorship of civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).

Lewis said he believes the federal government should follow Virginia’s recent lead and apologize for slavery, though he opposes reparations.

The Bush administration indicated opposition to Conyers’s bill in 2001, when then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said living African-Americans should not be paid for the wrongs of slavery.

Conyers countered that reparations should not be dismissed prematurely, pointing out that trust funds have been established for Holocaust survivors, World War II-era internment victims and Native Americans.

The bill instructs the commission to review whether “any form of compensation to the descendants of African slaves is warranted.” The legislation adds that if the commission approves such compensation, it should determine who should be eligible for the reparations. The commission would be appropriated $8 million.

Most of the cosponsors of the measure are black, including Reps. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.). White members who back it include Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and John Olver (D-Mass.).

Senior leadership lawmakers, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), have never cosponsored H.R. 40.

Freshman Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a white member who replaced Rep. Harold Ford (D), recently introduced a bill that calls on the U.S. to apologize for slavery. The measure has 36 cosponsors, including Conyers.
Cohen said he was aware that Conyers wants to wait on H.R. 40, but expressed optimism that the 110th Congress would move forward on his measure.

The number of the Conyers bill, H.R. 40, was chosen by Conyers as a symbol of the 40 acres and a mule that the U.S. initially promised freed slaves. Conyers said the Judiciary Committee will likely hold a hearing on H.R. 40 this fall.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) formally backs the Cohen bill, but is not a cosponsor of the Conyers measure. The presidential campaigns of Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and former Sens. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) did not comment for this article.

Stacey Pistritto contributed to this report.


http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/patient-conyers-hopes-to-move-slavery-bill-during-an-obama-administration-2007-03-12.html

[fjack]

Does all the change I have given to black pan handlers, break dancers and subway beggers count as reparation? As far as I am concerned let us pay these worthless meat eaters and get them out of the country. We first must calculate the cost of the civil war, the trillons and trillons given to these creatures, the affirmative beggers, the welfare, special ed, aid to their dependent aids infected low IQ nigle undesireables,the foodstamps, the pandering that the media gives to these creatures. If they want reparations, they must renounce their US citizenship and leave the country for africa. They will be forbidden to return, under any circumstances and all aid must stop to africa. These creatures are nothing but ungrateful blood suckers. By the way charlie the red rangel is not black, he is of hindu decent. These blacks are so stupid they will vote for anyone that will give them a free ride. Also, does anyone know what was the outcome of conyers drunken ho wife that was involved in the bar room brawl with another ho? That has been covered up.

[Hail Columbia]

We had already gave reparations to the schvartzas, it was called the Great Society, introduced by Lyndon B. Johnson for the purpose of "getting the nighers to vote Democratic for 200 years".  40 years and $6 trillion dollars later, the schvartzas have turned neighborhoods, and in quite a few cases entire cities, into filthy, uninhabitable slums, they fill up our prisons, they breed illegitimate children just to collect more welfare, and do lots of other things that generally pisses the rest of us off while leeching off of society.  What if they had remained on Africa?  The slaves that the black rulers sold to the sailors of the white slave ships would have had otherwise killed them outright, or made them into food.  Today, the only traces of modern civilization that the Africans know is what the white colonists had built decades ago.  The blacks in America should be damn lucky that they were born on the greatest country in the world.  Hell, all that the typical black African dreams about is making it to the US.  For example in Ghana, the natives call the black American tourists "white", and tell them how lucky they were to have had been born in America.

[Yochanan Zev]

I remember seeing a slogan somewhere on an extreme right wing site that went something like "No Reparations Without Repatriation".

What I find interesting is the timing of his statements, and that he would have you assume that Obama would be so much on board with a black reparations bill just because of his color.   It echoes back to that " is he black enough" thing.

Rangel does look sorta Indian.  He may be descendent from some Caribbean peoples who mixed with East Indians.  I met Rangel's son a few months back who even looks a lot blacker than I do.   It was election night and he was with this smoking hot Italian woman who was working on his campaign.

[mord]

Charles Rangel is part Hispanic he once mentioned it on T.V.