Harris Silent on Democrats Paying Reparations

Curious. Curious indeed.

The headline in the Washington Times was this:

Reparations advocates find hope in Harris despite silence ahead of election

The story reports:

Vice President Harris, who is open to convening a federal commission to examine reparations for Black Americans, will face pressure from advocates to take concrete steps to advance the cause nationally if she wins the White House.

Ms. Harris has signaled explicit support in recent years for providing reparations for Black Americans to compensate for slavery and discrimination. She signed on to a Senate bill in 2019 that would have created a federal commission to study the matter, and she called for “some form of reparations” when she ran unsuccessfully for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

She also made a public promise in 2019 to support reparations legislation if elected president, telling Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, “When I am elected president, I will sign that bill.”

Notice anything? Anything as historically obvious as, say, the Civil War?

That would be this.

Which of the two major American political parties — Democrats and Republicans — was founded by — gasp! — slave owners? That would be the two Democrat presidents for whom, for ages, Democrats named their annual February fundraising dinner: The Jefferson–Jackson Day Dinner. Named for Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. (Something that only recently has started to change, with some Democrats slowly aware that having a celebration in terms of slave owners is not a good look.)

And obviously, it was the Republican Party that was formed by opponents to slavery and very much in opposition to slavery.

Question? Which political party was a staunch supporter of slavery in its political platforms? As I noted long ago in this space when discussing what Democrats completely ignore when discussing their party history in their platforms.

There is no reference to the number of Democratic Party platforms supporting slavery. There were 6 from 1840-1860.

And as if that weren’t bad enough, there was this:

There is no reference to the fact Democrats opposed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth banned slavery. The Fourteenth effectively overturned the infamous 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott decision (made by Democrat pro-slavery Supreme Court justices) by guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves. The Fifteenth gave black Americans the right to vote.

All of that decidedly vivid history of Democrat Party support for slavery is aside from these other facts:

There is no reference to “Jim Crow” as in “Jim Crow laws,” nor is there reference to the role Democrats played in creating them. These were the post-Civil War laws passed enthusiastically by Democrats in that pesky 52-year part of the DNC’s missing years. These laws segregated public schools, public transportation, restaurants, rest rooms and public places in general (everything from water coolers to beaches). The reason Civil Rights heroine Rosa Parks became famous is that she sat in the front of a “whites only” bus, the “whites only” designation the direct result of Democrats.”

There is no reference to the fact Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It was passed by the Republican Congress over the veto of Democratic President Andrew Johnson. The law was designed to provide blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, sue and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding.

There is no reference to four Democrat platforms, 1908-1920, that are silent on blacks, segregation, lynching, and voting rights as racial problems in the country mount. By contrast the GOP platforms of those years specifically address “Rights of the Negro” (1908), oppose lynchings (in 1912, 1920, 1924, 1928) and, as the New Deal kicks in, speak out about the dangers of making blacks “wards of the state.”

There’s more here in terms of the history of the Democrat Party. The use of the Ku Klux Klan as what historians call the party’s “terrorist arm” against black Americans. Etc., etc., etc.

With all of this and more in the party’s history — and the Democrats current and soon-to-be-past leaders — Harris and President Joe Biden — are utterly silent on their party paying reparations?

Really? Really?

How about Harris, Biden, and the rest of Democrat Party leaders at all levels apologizing to America’s African American population for their decidedly serious support for slavery? Their use of federal and state governments to support slavery? And issuing a pledge that the Democrat Party will start payouts on financial reparations from the party’s treasury and millions of white members to black Americans and the descendants of slaves? Descendants whose ancestors were in fact enslaved by the then-leaders of the Democrat Party to get votes from the pro-slavers of the day?

And note as well this interesting sentence about Harris in that Washington Times article:

She also made a public promise in 2019 to support reparations legislation if elected president, telling Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, “When I am elected president, I will sign that bill.”

Say what? Where is Al Sharpton’s National Action Network demanding that the party that enslaved black Americans pay up? Maybe with its first check to Sharpton and his African-American members in his National Action Network? Yet Sharpton was silent as a mouse on the subject of Democrats paying reparations.

In short? Reparations is not a serious subject unless and until the Democratic Party and its leadership pays up for the party’s history of supporting slavery.

Will that ever happen?

Are you kidding? What Kamala Harris is about in the reparations discussion is purely politics. And that’s all. Most assuredly, she has not the slightest intention of leading her party in an apology for its decidedly slavery-supporting history.

Much less for paying reparations for that history.

Imagine that.

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