Thread by @Yamiche

I'm at the House hearing on reparations. Long line to get in w/ many standing outside.

Rep Johnson is getting booed by some in the crowd after saying slavery was carried out by a "small subset of Americans" & that reparations would be "unconstitutional" and "nearly impossible."

Rep Johnson also said passing reparations would "say external forces are directing the fate of African Americans today" and therefore he is against the idea.

Many in room, in support of reparations, said "yes" expressing that slavery is very much impacting people today.

Rep Sheila Jackson Lee, sponsor of reparations bill in the House: "Slavery is the original sin. Slavery has never received an apology...Reparations and the idea of this commission should be welcomed by all Americans."

Rep Jackson Lee said she spoke with former Rep John Conyers who originally introduced a reparations bill in Congress some 30 years ago. She said he told her to "move on and lead on."

She ended her opening statement saying,"Why not? And why not now? If not all of us, then who?"

Senator Cory Booker starts his testimony by saying that seven men were shot in his predominately black neighborhood. He also asked whether if any other senator had that many people killed in their community whether it would be a national crisis.

Sen Booker stressing that policies of the past have enduring impacts on African Americans w/ health, wages & other areas. "I believe this is an urgent moment...This bill is the beginning of an important process...to find practical ideas to address the enduring injustices."

Ta-Nehisi Coates testifies slavery was "torture, rape, (and) child trafficking" and that it is not just about making amends but about deciding whether America can face it's complete history.

Coates said of slavery and its impacts: “It was 150 years ago and it is right now."

Ta-Nehisi Coates painstakingly pointed out that Sen Mitch McConnell was alive to witness the terror that black Americans faced that led to needing the Civil Rights Act. "For a century after the Civil War, black people were subjected to a relentless campaign of terror," he said.

Ta-Nehisi Coates laid out a rebuttal to Sen Mitch McConnell's argument that reparations are not needed. He laid out that black people suffered & continue to suffer impacts of slavery & that McConnell should essentially know better since he was alive for some of the worst of it.

Coleman Hughes now speaking against reparations and getting booed by some in the room. He says reparations won’t help black people and will instead “only divide the country further” and “insult” black Americans.

“Paying reparations to all descendants of slaves is a mistake,” Coleman Hughes said, adding only people who lived under Jim Crow should be compensated.

He also said, “People who are owed for slavery are no longer here.”

It’s about an hour & a half into the hearing and emotions are so raw inside the hearing room and oustide where people are still lining up. Supporters of H.R. 40 have pointed to specific impacts of slavery that continue today including health, wage, land and education injustices.

Those against H.R. 40, a bill that would study how U.S. would implement reparations, essentially argue that slavery was a longtime ago, people need to move on, no compensation can deal with any lasting prejudices against black Americans, and no one alive is still being impacted.

Burgess Owens, a black former NFL player, has been testifying against reparations. In doing so, he has said people should "pull themselves by their boot straps," that men shouldn't be allowed to call people their "baby mamas," and that "open borders hurts our race."

Rep Jamie Raskin laying out how slavery touched so many parts of America. He pointed out that enslaved Americans built the Capitol Building, the White House and that there was a slave market across the street from where this hearing is happening on grounds of the Supreme Court.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on what reparations might look like: "I don't believe we should rule out cutting checks."

Rep. Johnson: What advice would you give to young people?
Coleman Hughes uses Q to rebut a point made by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Coates said if US really understood slavery we would no longer have statues of figures from the Confederacy. Hughes says that is not the case.

Katrina Colston Browne, who made a doc on her family owning enslaved ppl, says it needs to be mentioned that race and the very idea of being black and white was invented to justify and enforce slavery. "Race is a fiction," she said while stressing real life consequences of race.

Rep Sheila Jackson Lee said: Why does the Congress have to do it? Because the Congress is the lawmaking body and it was state and federal government that made slavery an act of the states.

"We have to correct our error,” she added.

Reparations hearing just wrapped.

Emotions were so raw here.

But many people like this was quite a historic day.