(LifeSiteNews) – With reviews continuing of the far-left record Vice President Kamala Harris has amassed over her career continuing since she replaced President Joe Biden as Democrats’ presumptive nominee for the White House, the Washington Free Beacon reminded the public this week that during her time in the U.S. Senate, Harris co-sponsored legislation that would promote a wide range of radical measures in the name of “reparations” for past generations’ mistreatment of black Americans’ ancestors.
Co-sponsored by Harris in 2019, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act would “examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies” to Congress, according to its official summary. This commission would “examine (1) the role of federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery, (2) forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against freed slaves and their descendants, and (3) lingering negative effects of slavery on living African Americans and society.”
Among its proposals would be the repeal of laws that “continue to disproportionately and negatively affect African Americans as a group, and those that perpetuate the lingering effects, materially and psycho-social,” based on input from “reparations organizations that have historically championed the cause of reparatory justice” among others.
The Free Beacon suggested that a model of what to expect from such a commission can be found in Harris’ home state of California, where last year a similar commission recommended numerous “reforms” that most of the country would find shocking.
California’s proposed “reparations” included payments of $1.2 million apiece to longtime black residents, prohibiting law enforcement officials, including probation officers from school grounds, mandatory school instruction on the “opportunity gap between African-American students and their peers,” and more.
The California commission also recommended decriminalizing public urination, clearing the debt of fathers who are delinquent in child support payments, and barring police from pulling over vehicles showing expired registration, tinted windows, or broken taillights.
Critics argue that reparations misdiagnose the real sources of various maladies facing minority groups and unjustly hold present-day individuals liable for past harms they had nothing to do with, to benefit living recipients who are not the actual victims of the original wrongs. Many argue that the debt for America’s “original sin” of slavery was paid long ago by the deaths of 620,000 Americans in the Civil War, which was followed by the abolition of slavery.
Yet Harris has spoken favorably of reparations throughout her career, declaring in 2019, “we could discuss what that is (the specific form of reparations), but look, we’re looking at more than 200 years of slavery. We’re looking at almost 100 years of Jim Crow.” During the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots of summer 2020, Harris promoted the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) to “help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” The group said it wants to “maximize the number of people we can release from cages through the payment of criminal and immigration bonds.”
The MFF later refused to divulge exactly how many violent criminals it helped free despite the fact that a rioter accused of shooting at police officers, a convicted repeat sex offender, and a woman accused of killing her friend had been identified among its beneficiaries.
National polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH currently indicate that Harris has narrowly overtaken former President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in both national polling and Electoral College projections since replacing Biden as Democrats’ presumptive nominee, although it remains to be seen if her selection of far-left Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate will swing the race back in Trump’s favor.
The Democratic National Convention, where Democrats’ choice for president is supposed to be formally nominated, begins August 19 in Chicago.