B. Hussein Obama said he was for slavery reparations in many forms, but the only one that got applause was for more "investment" in schools. In Obama's defense, the precise question was: "But is African-Americans ever going to get reparations for slavery?" So a switch to the subject of education was only natural. Moreover, a question on reparations has got to be confusing when you're half-white and half-black. What do you do? Demand an apology for slavery and money from yourself? I guess biracial reparations would involve sending yourself money, then sending back a portion of that money to yourself, minus 50 percent in processing fees — which is the same way federal aid works.

Would I [support reparations for descendants of black slaves]? Very much so. Not just African Americans. We ourselves didn't own slaves, but we — me — are rich and privileged because of the torture of blacks for centuries. And yes, we owe them reparations. The same with the remnants of Native Americans. Same with countries that we've destroyed. What about Iraq? I mean we've devastated Iraq, killed hundreds of thousands of people, generated millions of refugees, created a sectarian conflict that's destroying the place. Is it our responsibility? Sure. I think the call for reparations is very legitimate. Take Europe and Africa. People are fleeing from Africa to Europe, not the other way around. Is there a reason for that? Yeah, a couple of centuries of murderous, brutal colonialism. So sure, they owe reparations, not just taking in the refugees, but do something about it, create conditions in their own societies in which there won’t be refugees. That’s the real answer to the so-called refugee problem. But it requires those who have been wielding the whip to say "okay, we benefitted from it, it’s our responsibility, we’ll do something about it."

I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, for whom none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea. We’ve, you know, tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We’ve elected an African-American president. I think we’re always a work in progress in this country, but no one currently alive was responsible for that. And I don’t think we should be trying to figure out how to compensate for it. First of all, it would be pretty hard to figure out who to compensate. We’ve had waves of immigrants, as well, who have come to the country and experienced dramatic discrimination of one kind or another. So, no, I don’t think reparations are a good idea.

The underlying cause has to do with deep, deep, deep realms of racial injustice, both in our criminal justice system and in our economic system... The Democratic Party should be on the side of reparations for slavery for this very reason... I do not believe that the average American is a racist, but the average American is woefully undereducated about the history of race in the United States.

It is time for them to make reparations to the descendants of chattel slavery in the Americas. This is our global truth, the truth we as human beings understand with stark clarity: There can be no atonement if there’s no repair. It is time — it is long past time — for reparations for the transatlantic slave trade and all the devastation that it has wrought, and all the devastation that it continues to reap.

Reparations are ultimately about respect and reconciliation — and the hope that one day, all Americans can walk together toward a more just future. We owe it to those who were ripped from their homes those many years ago an ocean away; we owe it to the millions of Americans- yes they were Americans – who were born into bondage, knew a life of servitude, and died anonymous deaths, as prisoners of this system. We owe it to the millions of descendants of these slaves, for they are the heirs to a society of inequities and indignities that naturally filled the vacuum after slavery was formally abolished 154 years ago. Today represents the first time in history that the House of Representatives will host a hearing on H.R. 40.

It is a fact that slavery flourished in the United States and constituted an immoral and inhumane deprivation of African slaves' lives, liberty and cultural heritage. As a result, millions of African Americans today continue to suffer great injustices. But reparation is a national and a global issue, which should be addressed in America and in the world. It is not limited to Black Americans in the US but is an issue for the many countries and villages in Africa, which were pilfered, and the many countries, which participated in the institution of slavery..the concept of reparations is not a foreign idea to either the U.S. government or governments throughout the world.

Though there is historical cognition for reparations and it is a term that is fairly well known in the international body politic, the question of reparations for African Americans remains unresolved. And so, just as we've discussed the Holocaust and Japanese internment camps, and to some extent the devastation that the colonists inflicted upon the Indians, we must talk about slavery and its continued effects... Last year the Democratic Party included this issue in the platform it asks that country engage in a discussion at the federal legislative level would send an important signal to the African American community and other people of goodwill.

Reparations amount to a societal obligation in a nation where our Constitution sanctioned slavery, Congress passed laws protecting it, and our federal government initiated, condoned, and practiced legal racial segregation and discrimination against Black Americans until half a century ago. And so it is the federal government that would pay [reparations].

In January of 1989, I first introduced the bill H.R. 40, Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. I have re-introduced HR 40 every Congress since 1989, and will continue to do so until it's passed into law... One of the biggest challenges in discussing the issue of reparations in a political context is deciding how to have a national discussion without allowing the issue to polarize our party or our nation. The approach that I have advocated for over a decade has been for the federal government to undertake an official study of the impact of slavery on the social, political and economic life of our nation.

Yesterday, when asked about reparations, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a familiar reply: America should not be held liable for something that happened 150 years ago, since none of us currently alive are responsible... This rebuttal proffers a strange theory of governance, that American accounts are somehow bound by the lifetime of its generations. But well into this century, the United States was still paying out pensions to the heirs of Civil War soldiers. We honor treaties that date back some 200 years, despite no one being alive who signed those treaties... But we are American citizens, and thus bound to a collective enterprise that extends beyond our individual and personal reach.

If there is any hesitation in some minds about the paying of reparations, it is worth considering the fact that when slavery was abolished, the slave owners were compensated for the loss of the slave because human beings were labelled as property deemed to be commodities. Surely, this is a matter that the world must confront and can no longer ignore

What will they do to make reparations for those who suffered so much in the past?” she says“Because without something being done – both symbolic and real – reconciliation is going to be very difficult.”

Almost all successful examples of reparations [...] have been to the specific individuals who were harmed, not to their grand-grandchildren. My ancestors were on Thomas Jefferson's plantation; we can prove it; we have the documentation. The question from a policy perspective is, in a condition with limited resources where we are trying to fix the broken public education system, where we have health care costs that are so far gone compared to our peer countries, [...] that we can either allocate limited resources based on who needs it the most, or you can give it to someone like me because my grandparents were on Monticello. The second thing doesn't make sense, and doesn't make sense to most Americans, and it shouldn't make sense.