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Source: Reuters
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks at a rally to launch her
campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination in
Lawrence
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Source: Reuters
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FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks at a
rally to launch her campaign for the 2020 Democratic
presidential nomination in Lawrence, Massachusetts, U.S.,
February 9, 2019. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
"We must confront the dark history of slavery and
government-sanctioned discrimination in this country that has
had many consequences including undermining the ability of Black
families to build wealth in America for generations," Warren,
who is white, said in a statement to Reuters.
She pointed to a bill she has introduced in Congress that would
provide help to minorities in making a down payment on a home.
"Black families have had a much steeper hill to climb - and we
need systemic, structural changes to address that," she said in
the statement.
Warren first made similar comments on Thursday to the New York
Times.
She is competing in a crowded field of Democrats hoping to be
their party's pick to challenge Republican President Donald
Trump in the November 2020 election.
U.S. Senator Kamala Harris also recently said she would support
some form of reparations.
Previous Democratic Party leaders have declined to support
reparations for African-Americans, including former President
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Issuing reparations to all living people who are descendents of
slaves or who have suffered from the ills of racial
discrimination targeted at black people has been estimated to
cost trillions of dollars.
The United States waged a civil war from 1861 to 1865 over legal
slavery. The practice was abolished in most states in 1863 and
completely at the end of the war and with the ratification of
the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865.
The U.S. federal government has never approved reparations.
A 2016 poll by Marist College commissioned by WGBH radio station
in Boston found that 68 percent of Americans do not think
reparations should be paid to the descendents of slaves,
compared with 26 percent who said they should. Among
African-Americans, 58 percent support paying reparations and 35
percent oppose them.
(Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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