The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) supports Congressional legislation to study slavery reparations. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders flat out opposes the NAACP and reparations for Blacks. Sanders doesn’t even support creating a commission to study reparations for descendants of Black slaves.
Curiously enough, Sanders — a self-declared enemy of “economic inequality" — supported reparations for Jews, their survivors and their descendants. To support reparations for descendants of Jewish holocaust victims while opposing reparations for Black descendants of slavery victims is to promote “reparations inequality”. To Sanders, reparations for Blacks are bad and divisive; reparations for Jews are good and unifying.
Sanders Supported Reparations For Jews
On March 17, 2011, Sanders co-sponsored the Holocaust Rail Justice Act. The purpose of the Act was to allow payment of reparations or restitution to Jewish Nazi concentration camp survivors and/or their heirs and survivors. (source) Sander never withdrew his support for Jewish reparations.
In November, 2015, “...U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) announced that the State Department will officially begin accepting applications for restitution from Holocaust victims and family members….” (source)
Sanders Opposed Reparations For Blacks
On November 20, 1989, John Conyers -- a Black Democratic member of Congress from Detroit -- first introduced the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act.
Rep. Conyers has tweeked the bill and re-introduced it every year since 1989. Now called the "Reparations Act" it would establish a federal commission to review the institution of slavery, the resulting racial and economic discrimination against African Americans, and the impact of these forces on African Americans who are living today. The bill would also acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and make recommendations to help correct the residual effects of these acts.
Bernie Sanders joined Congress on January 3, 1991. He has been a member of the Congress ever since. He has never co-signed or supported reparations for Blacks. Sanders made this point clear in January, 2016. He was asked if he supported reparations for slavery and responded no. (source)
Sanders Very Proud To Be Jewish
At a debate last night in Flint, Sanders said he is very proud to be Jewish and being Jewish is so much of what he is.
The Huffington Post quoted Sanders saying this:
"Look, my father's family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust," he continued. "I know about what crazy and radical and extremist politics mean. I learned that lesson as a tiny, tiny child when my mother would take me shopping and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in Hitler's concentration camp. I am very proud of being Jewish and that's an essential part of who I am as a human being."
Last month, The New York Times published a story titled "Bernie Sanders Is Jewish, but He Doesn't Like to Talk About It". This is from the story:
As important to Mr. Sanders's outlook was the Holocaust's impact on his family. Three of his father's siblings -- two brothers and a sister -- were slaughtered by the Germans, and other relatives perished.
….
Mr. Sanders was forever mindful, as he once said, that the appointment of Hitler as Germany’s chancellor in 1933 “ended up killing 50 million people around the world,” six million of them Jews.
“Bernie learned that politics is a very serious matter,” Larry Sanders said.
Reparations is a serious political matter. Who can fault Bernie Sanders for supporting reparations for his fellow Jews?
Black Voters Not Feeling The Bern
Sander has been in Congress for 30 years. Now that he's running for president, he has decided to declare himself a Democrat and court Black voters -- the most loyal part of the Democratic Party’s base. Sanders tells Blacks like me that he's our friend, he's on our side.
When it comes to Sanders’ vote in favor of the 1994 Crime Bill (that once passed became the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act) which is widely credited with accelerating the mass incarceration of Black people, Sanders and his supporters have basically asked Blacks to ignore that vote and consider Bernie’s good intentions, or at least give him a pass since Hillary Clinton, who wasn’t in Congress and didn't have a vote, lobbied for the bill.
The people of Michigan, including those who live in Mr. Conyers' district, get to vote tomorrow. So do the people of Mississippi. In today’s polling roundup, Kos told us what we already know: the vast majority of Black voters are opting for Hillary. (I used the photo from the polling roundup because it gave me a happy feeling inside.)
On the issue of reparations, it is fair for Blacks to ask: if Bernie Sanders is indeed our friend, why has he used his position of power in Congress to help his fellow Jews get reparations while steadfastly opposing even the study of reparations for us. Reparations Inequality is just as bad or worse than Economic Inequality. Bernie’s political revolution missed me with this.
(A version of this story was cross posted to The Cincinnati Black Blog. Here’s a link.)