WH will not comment on reparations, says initiatives really should be left to Congress

All through the White House briefing on Tuesday, Yahoo News Senior White Residence Correspondent Alex Nazaryan asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about area initiatives to pay reparations to African Us citizens for slavery and segregation. Jean-Pierre touted the Biden administration’s target on racial equity throughout the federal government, but wouldn’t remark especially about reparations laws.

Video Transcript

ALEX NAZARYAN: [? Three, ?] San Francisco just held a hearing on reparations for decades of institutional racism, and other towns and states are taking into consideration empanelling comparable commissions. D.C. is one particular of them. Where by does this administration stand on reparations for slavery and segregation and comparable historic wrongs, especially pertaining to Black People?

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: So seem, we fully grasp that there is certainly a laws on the Hill now on the review of repara– reparations, pardon me, and we feel Congress is the correct venue for consideration on this sort of motion. And so we are going to leave it there for Congress, to decide to allow them go by way of their process that they’re using at this instant. But I would lay out and converse to what the President has accomplished in excess of the final two a long time.

When he arrived into office environment, he talked about the distinctive crises that this state is dealing with, and just one of them was racial fairness and racial equality and preventing for that for communities like the Black community. And a single of the factors that he did appropriate absent, straight absent in the beginning of his administration, is he signed an govt order that produced certain that across the govt that we experienced an approach that dealt with inequality, that we experienced– that manufactured sure that political appointees in these businesses put that equality lens as they were being relocating forward with working with plan.

And so that’s vital in definitely getting to the root of that concern. Clearly, that is on the federal degree, and just final thirty day period he issued a second purchase reaffirming the administration’s commitment to provide on that fairness. So the President has revealed his motivation. He’s spoken to this issue that, in individual, this Black local community– the Black community has to offer with for generations on generations. So he is going to proceed to lift that up, but as it relates to the legislation, we want to depart that in the arms of Congress.