AMNA NAWAZ: As we reported earlier, undergraduates at Georgetown university voted to create a
reparations fund that, if approved, would be the first of its kind.
As Yamiche Alcindor reports, it's also become an issue on the campaign trail, where it hasn't
always been front and center.
SEN.
ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), Presidential Candidate: America was founded on principles of liberty
and freedom and on the backs of slave labor.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: An unexpected 2020 topic: reparations.
JULIAN CASTRO (D), Presidential Candidate: Until that original sin is addressed, we may
think that we're moving forward as one nation, but I don't think that we ever really will.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Now on the campaign trail, there are repeated questions about how to
deal with the lasting impact of slavery.
QUESTION: Do you think there should be actual monetary payments to descendants of slaves?
QUESTION: Do you support reparations for slavery?
QUESTION: About reparations.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: From progressives to moderates, Democratic candidates are jumping into this
decades-long debate.
Columbia University's John McWhorter:
JOHN MCWHORTER, Columbia University: What they're doing is saying, in the way that it
happens to be the fashion in 2019, rather than 2009, of saying, I am concerned with
the plight of black America.
And I'm glad that they are.
SEN.
AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN), Presidential Candidate: What I'm tired of doing is admiring the problem.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: The issue has become a hot topic, but there's no agreement on a solution
or even a definition of the term itself.
Eva Paterson is a founder of the Equal Justice Society.
EVA PATERSON, Equal Justice Society: For centuries, kidnapped Africans worked for free to make
America great, and to make businesses very wealthy, and we recouped none of the benefits.
In addition, centuries of discrimination and bias have also put African-Americans in a
very untenable situation, and so reparations are a way to make us whole.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Some candidates want to study the issue.
Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is a co-sponsor of a House bill that would look into and come
up with suggestions for reparations.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is backing that legislation.
And Senator Cory Booker recently introduced a Senate version of that bill.
SEN.
CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), Presidential Candidate: This conversation cannot just become a political
box-checking exercise, or a litmus test without meaning.
The boldest policies we're talking about right now can't just be about sentiment or about
acknowledging the past.
They need to be about actually balancing the economic scales and confronting the biases
that exist right now, in the present.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: If elected, former Housing Secretary Julian Castro plans to create a
task force.
JULIAN CASTRO: If, under the Constitution, we compensate people because we take their
property, why wouldn't you compensate people who actually were property?
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Other presidential hopefuls are talking cash.
EVA PATERSON: One school of thought is to amass all that money and put it into housing,
education, health and the like.
Another school of thought has the whole idea of 40 acres and a mule, which would now I
think translate into 40 acres and a Tesla, which would mean that individual black people
who could show they were the descendants of enslaved people would get checks.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Candidate Marianne Williamson is an author and spiritual adviser.
She wants to appoint a council that would allocate $100 billion to projects that would
help African-Americans over 10 years.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON (D), Presidential Candidate: It's a moral argument.
If I take $1,000 from you and then I apologize to you, wouldn't you also feel, thank you,
I appreciate the apology, and I'd like my money back?
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Entrepreneur Andrew Yang wants to create a universal basic income.
Every American, regardless of race or income, would get $1,000 per month.
ANDREW YANG (D), Presidential Candidate: I 100 percent agree with the moral case for
reparations.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: He believes that money, or dividends, could help move the country
toward reparations.
California Senator Kamala Harris is also pushing a plan that would benefit people of all races.
Her bill gives a tax credit to middle-class Americans.
SEN.
KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), Presidential Candidate: People aren't starting out on the same base,
in terms of their ability to succeed.
And so we have got to recognize that and give people a lift up.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Then there is Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
He rejects the idea of direct payments to descendants of slaves.
QUESTION: What about straight cash payouts?
SEN.
BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), Presidential Candidate: No.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Sanders says he will help all oppressed communities by taking on big
banks and other entities he argues hurt those groups.
SEN.
BERNIE SANDERS: I think what we have got to do is pay attention to distressed communities,
black communities, Latino communities and white communities, all over this country.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: McWhorter believes policies like that have been happening and are already
a form of reparations.
JOHN MCWHORTER: Affirmative action in all of its effects is reparations.
Black History Month is reparations.
The fact that we're having this conversation and taking reparations seriously can be seen
as reparations.
Welfare reform, which enabled more poor people, and it was aimed mainly at black people to
take advantage of welfare in the late 1960s, that was reparations.
The only thing is, those things weren't officially titled reparations for slavery and Jim Crow.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Others argue policies that are not race-specific can't be called reparations.
Again, Eva Paterson:
EVA PATERSON: I think it is foolish to say that if we help all people, we will help African-Americans.
If you look at any programs that have been instituted in our country, when you lump everybody
in, white people get a leg up.
It's just the way it is.
It doesn't mean they're evil.
The system is set up to privilege and favor white people.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar argues reparations can be done without exchanging
money.
SEN.
AMY KLOBUCHAR: I believe we have to invest in those communities that have been so hurt
by racism.
It doesn't have to be a direct pay for each person.
But what we can do is invest in those communities, acknowledge what's happened.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: As an alternative, she points to investments in community college, child
care and a higher minimum wage.
Fellow Midwesterner Pete Buttigieg also doesn't back giving out cash.
He does think policies should address inequities created by slavery.
PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), Presidential Candidate: I absolutely believe that we need to have
some kind of accounting for the persistent racial inequities today that are there by
design because of past and present racism.
And so it means our policies and our policy interventions on everything from criminal
justice to housing need to be designed in such a way that they're targeting those areas
in our economy and our society.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke is also against cash payments.
He told Iowa voters recently it's important to -- quote -- "confront the truth" about
how black Americans are treated.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee doesn't have a policy prescription.
Last month, he told the "NewsHour" last month something should be done to make up for the
history of slavery.
GOV.
JAY INSLEE (D-WA), Presidential Candidate: And the kind of things we should do, I think,
should focus on ending intergenerational poverty.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Some, like McWhorter, don't think reparations will be enough to remedy
that history.
JOHN MCWHORTER: Unless a person could, after reparations happened, look America in the
eye and say, America has turned a corner on race, serious progress has been made, the
second shoe has dropped, if people couldn't be comfortable saying that and really sitting
in it and feeling it, then I'm not sure why we should go through trying to get reparations
at all.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: One veteran politician still weighing whether to run for the Democratic
nomination is facing criticism for past statements.
In 1975, then-Senator Joe Biden told a Delaware newspaper -- quote -- "I don't feel responsible
for the sins of my father and grandfather.
I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation.
And I will be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago."
For Democrats running in 2020, it remains to be seen whether reparations will become
a litmus test.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Yamiche Alcindor.