Reparations for slavery is the idea that some form of compensatory payment needs to be made to the descendants of Africans who had been enslaved as part of the Atlantic Slave Trade.
The "Hr - Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act," which Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) has proposed to the U.S. Congress every year since 1989, has yet to be passed. This bill, as its name suggests, recommends the creation of a commission to study the "impact of slavery on the social, political and economic life of our nation". In January 2017, the bill was updated as, H.R.40 - Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.
In 2016, prominent American journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates published an article titled "The Case for Reparations", which discussed the continued effects of slavery and Jim Crow laws and made renewed demands for reparations.
In September 2016, the United Nations' Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent published a report that concluded the United States needed to take urgent action in terms of slavery reparations.
The report noted that there still exists a legacy of racial inequality in the United States, explaining that, "Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another, continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of African Americans today." The report goes on to explain that a "...dangerous ideology of white supremacy inhibits social cohesion among the US population".
