Vice President Kamala Harris’ previous stance on reparations could cause problems in her coalition as the November election approaches.
Harris, at multiple points in her 2020 campaign for president and during her time as a senator, appeared to endorse the idea of giving some sort of reparations to the descendants of slaves, though her campaign has not responded to recent requests on whether or not she still supports the idea. The issue puts Harris in a bind as a commanding majority of Americans oppose reparations, but African Americans, who make up a key part of the Democratic coalition, overwhelmingly support the idea.
“I think there has to be some form of reparations, and we can discuss what that is,” Harris told The Root, a black publication, in 2019. “We’re looking at more than 200 years of slavery. We’re looking at almost 100 years of Jim Crow. We’re looking at legalized segregation and, in fact, segregation on so many levels that exist today based on race. And there has not been any kind of intervention done understanding the harm and the damage that occurred to correct [the] course.”
Harris also told a radio host in 2019 that she supported reparations, and later reaffirmed her support for the policy in a statement to The New York Times that same year.
“We have to be honest that people in this country do not start from the same place or have access to the same opportunities,” she said in a statement shared with the NYT. “I’m serious about taking an approach that would change policies and structures and make real investments in black communities.”
Harris avoided going into the specifics about what her reparations policies would look like while on the 2020 campaign trail. She co-sponsored a bill during her time in the Senate that would have created a commission to study reparations for slavery in 2019, and a year prior proposed a tax credit for black households, according to Politico.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond when the Daily Caller News Foundation asked about the vice president’s position on reparations.
Reparations are deeply unpopular with the general public, as 70% of Americans opposed the federal government making payments to people who had enslaved ancestors, according to a 2023 Washington Post/Ipsos poll. In the same poll, however, 75% of African Americans expressed support for reparations.
Other polls, like those conducted by the Pew Research Center and the Associated Press, also show Americans in general opposing reparations, while black individuals strongly support such measures.
“Not all Democrats have come out in favor of reparations, and you can find lots of different quotes from people saying they’re against them,” Marquette University political science professor Julia Azari told The Washington Post. “Why stoke an intra party fight when you could just keep highlighting things your opponents have done that are unpopular, like book bans and changing the way people teach history?”
Quentin James, president of the Collective PAC, a committee that supports black Democrats, also cautioned Harris against taking a stance on the issue, according to the Post.
“I don’t think we need to start that conversation before the election,” he said.
Some on Harris’ left-flank, however, argue that a commitment to reparations would help shore up support among the black community.
“There are people who support this and would be more politically engaged if this were a part of our political discourse,” Democratic New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman told the Post as he was lobbying Democrats in January to take up reparations as a national issue. “But it isn’t, so they’re staying home or some are even moving to the Republican Party because it feels like Democrats are taking Black voters for granted.”
A CNN exit poll shows that President Joe Biden won 92% of the black vote in Pennsylvania in 2020, going on to win the state overall by just 1.2 points. In Georgia, Biden defeated former President Donald Trump by a margin of less than 12,000 votes, but won 88% of the black vote, according to the NYT.
Pennsylvania and Georgia will very likely be among the states that determine the outcome of November’s election.
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