When the California congresswoman Barbara Lee first introduced a bill proposing a national commission on racial healing, the US had erupted in grief and rage over the murder of George Floyd.
Since then, the movement to provide restitution and reparations to Black Americans has gained momentum. As has the backlash.
Several US cities are exploring similar efforts to acknowledge and apologise for systemic injustices. And in Lee’s home state, a taskforce has suggested billions in compensation to Black residents for decades of state-sanctioned discrimination.
Meanwhile, Florida blocked the teaching of AP African American studies, book bans sweeping US school districts have targeted writings about race, and nearly two dozen US states have tried to stifle attempts to teach an honest version of American history by banning the teaching of “critical race theory”.
Lee, the highest-ranking Black woman appointed to Democratic leadership in the House and a candidate for the US Senate, told the Guardian that she was undeterred. Last month, she and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey reintroduced the legislation to create a commission of “truth, racial healing and transformation” that would work in conjunction with other congressional efforts to study reparations and educate the public about the historic atrocities undertaken and sanctioned by the US government.
The bill establishes the arrival in America of the first ship carrying enslaved Africans as the event that “facilitated the systematic oppression of all people of colour”. And it tasks a commission of experts with memorialising the injustices inflicted on Black Americans as well as the abuse of Native Americans, the forced removal of Mexican migrants, the discriminatory ban against Chinese labourers and the colonisation of the Pacific.
The Guardian spoke with Lee about the country’s long road to accountability. This interview has been condensed and edited.
What does it mean to push for this commission on truth and racial healing, and to push for reparations amid unprecedented rightwing efforts to erase African American history from schools and public libraries?
I think what gets lost is that people need to see this as a unifying movement.
A lot of people push back on reparations because they get defensive, thinking it’s about them.
But this was a government-sanctioned system of slavery. It was a policy of the United States government to enslave Africans. So we’re talking about policies that have brought us to this point of systemic racism. And so the government has a responsibility, and the private sector has a responsibility to step up and repair the damage. There’s no need to get defensive.
I find that more people are beginning to understand. To the legacy of slavery, all you have to do is look at the disparities in criminal justice, in mass incarceration, in healthcare and employment. There’s generational trauma as well as generational impacts which we see each and every day in this country.
You have people who are racist and uncertain about African Americans, for example, and who don’t know the history, who don’t know the context. But once the truth is told, healing occurs – that’s a human phenomenon. Once you have the truth told, then you can move towards unification. As Americans, you can move towards healing.
How do you get such an effort going amid a growing, extreme rightwing movement in Congress?
Well, this is the moment to push it forward. There’s no better moment given what we see taking place in terms of trying to deny and destroy our history in this country, and before we were brought here, enslaved. You have to keep educating the public.
And you just have to keep going. Just like Dr King said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice – and we have to believe in that.
This idea of a truth commission first emerged in South Africa, and now more than 40 countries have launched similar efforts.
This is not a unique concept. This is an international concept of what the right thing to do means. And it’s already happened here, in our own country.
The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians investigated the forced relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during the second world war, and formed the basis of 1988 Civil Liberties Act to grant survivors a public apology and monetary reparations.
And I’m so proud of the fact that Japanese Americans are supporting the reparations movement for African Americans.
And I’m really proud of California. We had legislation, which Governor Newsom signed, to establish a taskforce, which is coming forward with some recommendations on how to repair the damage in California. And I think California has established a model for the country, and I think other states need to do this as well.
And that model is having a government-sanctioned entity that has certified experts, activists and academics, elected officials who go around and listen to people, listen to the descendants of slavery, listen to what the laws were and policies were, and listen to how they are impacting people today. And I think that once that happens, then, again, you have the healing that can take place.
Your bill to set up a truth commission complements another bill, HR 40 – the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act – which has been reintroduced every year since 1989. Do you see a future in which monetary reparations might be provided for Black Americans?
Whatever the commissions come up with is the appropriate form of reparations – whatever the experts come up with will help repair this damage, I support.
