[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Con. Res. 19 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

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118th CONGRESS
  1st Session
S. CON. RES. 19

Urging the establishment of a United States Commission on Truth, Racial 
                      Healing, and Transformation.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                             July 27, 2023

    Mr. Booker (for himself, Mr. Coons, Mr. Markey, Mr. Durbin, Mr. 
    Padilla, Mr. Cardin, Ms. Warren, Mr. Merkley, Mr. Menendez, Mr. 
   Whitehouse, and Ms. Duckworth) submitted the following concurrent 
    resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                         CONCURRENT RESOLUTION


 
Urging the establishment of a United States Commission on Truth, Racial 
                      Healing, and Transformation.

Whereas the first ship carrying enslaved Africans to what is now known as the 
        United States of America arrived in 1619;
Whereas that event more than 400 years ago was significant not only because it 
        ushered in the institution of chattel slavery of African Americans, but 
        also because it facilitated the systematic oppression of all people of 
        color that has been a devastating and insufficiently understood and 
        acknowledged aspect of our Nation's history over those past 400-plus 
        years, and that has left a legacy of that oppression that haunts our 
        Nation to this day;
Whereas the institution of chattel slavery in the United States subjugated 
        African Americans for nearly 250 years, fractured our Nation, and made a 
        mockery of its founding principle that ``all men are created equal'';
Whereas the signing of the Constitution of the United States failed to end 
        slavery and oppression against African Americans and other people of 
        color, thus embedding in society the belief in the myth of a hierarchy 
        of human value based on superficial physical characteristics such as 
        skin color and facial features, and resulting in purposeful and 
        persistent racial inequities in education, health care, employment, 
        Social Security and veteran benefits, land ownership, financial 
        assistance, food security, wages, voting rights, and the justice system;
Whereas that oppression denied opportunity and mobility to African Americans and 
        other people of color within the United States, resulting in stolen 
        labor worth billions of dollars while ultimately forestalling landmark 
        contributions that African Americans and other people of color would 
        make in science, arts, commerce, and public service;
Whereas Reconstruction represented a significant but constrained moment of 
        advances for Black rights as epitomized by the Freedman's Bureau, which 
        negotiated labor contracts for ex-enslaved people but failed to secure 
        for them land of their own;
Whereas the brutal overthrow of Reconstruction failed all individuals in the 
        United States by failing to ensure the safety and security of African 
        Americans and by emboldening States and municipalities in both the North 
        and South to enact numerous laws and policies to stymie the 
        socioeconomic mobility and political voice of freed Blacks, thus 
        maintaining their subservience to Whites;
Whereas Reconstruction, the civil rights movement, and other efforts to redress 
        the grievances of marginalized people were sabotaged, both intentionally 
        and unintentionally, by those in power, thus rendering the 
        accomplishments of those efforts transitory and unsustainable, and 
        further embedding the racial hierarchy in society;
Whereas examples of government actions directed against populations of color 
        (referred to in this resolution as ``discriminatory government 
        actions'') include--

    (1) the creation of the Federal Housing Administration, which adopted 
specific policies designed to incentivize residential segregation;

    (2) the enactment of legislation creating the Social Security program, 
for which most African Americans were purposely rendered ineligible during 
its first 2 decades;

    (3) the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (commonly known as the 
``GI Bill of Rights''; 58 Stat. 284, chapter 268), which left 
administration of its programs to the States, thus enabling blatant 
discrimination against African-American veterans;

    (4) the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which allowed labor unions to 
discriminate based on race;

    (5) subprime lending aimed purposefully at families of color;

    (6) disenfranchisement of Native Americans, who, until 1924, were 
denied citizenship on land Native Americans had occupied for millennia;

    (7) Federal Indian Boarding School Policy during the 19th and 20th 
centuries, the purpose of which was to ``civilize'' Native children through 
methods intended to eradicate Native cultures, traditions, and languages;

    (8) land policies toward Indian Tribes, such as the allotment policy, 
which caused the loss of over 90,000,000 acres of Tribal lands, even though 
\2/3\ of that acreage was guaranteed to Indian Tribes by treaties and other 
Federal laws, and similar unjustified land grabs from Indian Tribes that 
occurred regionally throughout the late 1800s and into the termination era 
in the 1950s and 1960s;

    (9) the involuntary removal of Mexicans and United States citizens of 
Mexican descent through large-scale discriminatory deportation programs in 
the 1930s and 1950s;

    (10) the United States annexation of Puerto Rico, which made Puerto 
Ricans citizens of the United States without affording them voting rights;

    (11) racial discrimination against Latino Americans, which has forced 
Latino Americans to fight continuously for equal access to employment, 
housing, health care, financial services, and education;

    (12) the Act entitled ``An Act to execute certain treaty stipulations 
relating to Chinese'', approved May 6, 1882 (commonly known as the 
``Chinese Exclusion Act''; 22 Stat. 58, chapter 126), which effectively 
halted immigration from China and barred Chinese immigrants from becoming 
citizens of the United States, and which was the first instance of 
xenophobic legislation signed into law specifically targeting a specific 
group of people based on ethnicity;

    (13) the treatment of Japanese Americans, despite no evidence of 
disloyalty, as suspect and traitorous in the very country they helped to 
build, leading most notably to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans 
beginning in 1942;

    (14) the conspiracy to overthrow the Kingdom of Hawaii and annex the 
land of the Kingdom of Hawaii, without the consent of or compensation to 
the Native Hawaiian people of Hawaii; and

    (15) the United States history of colonialism in the Pacific, which has 
resulted in economic, health, and educational disparities among other 
inequities, for people in United States territories, as well as independent 
nations with which the United States has treaty obligations;

Whereas those discriminatory government actions, among other government policies 
        that have had racially disparate impacts, have disproportionately barred 
        African Americans and other people of color from building wealth, thus 
        limiting capital and exacerbating the racial wealth gap;
Whereas research has shown that the persistent racial wealth gap has had a 
        significant negative impact on other racial disparities, such as the 
        achievement gap, disparities in school dropout rates, income gaps, 
        disparities in home ownership rates, health outcome disparities, and 
        disparities in incarceration rates;
Whereas United States civic leaders and foundations have spearheaded critical 
        efforts to advance racial healing, understanding, and transformation 
        within the United States, recognizing that it is in our collective 
        national interest to urgently address the unhealed, entrenched divisions 
        that will severely undermine our democracy if they are allowed to 
        continue to exist;
Whereas many of the most far-reaching victories for racial healing in the United 
        States have been greatly enhanced by the involvement, support, and 
        dedication of individuals from any and all racial groups;
Whereas, at the same time, much of the progress toward racial healing and racial 
        equity in the United States has been limited or reversed by our failure 
        to address the root cause of racism, which is the belief in the myth of 
        a hierarchy of human value based on superficial physical characteristics 
        such as skin color and facial features;
Whereas the United States institution of slavery, as well as other examples 
        enumerated in this resolution, represents intentional and blatant 
        violations of the most basic right of every individual in the United 
        States to a free and decent life;
Whereas the consequences of oppression against people of color have cascaded for 
        centuries, across generations, beyond the era of active enslavement, 
        imperiling for descendants of slaves and other targets of oppression 
        what should have otherwise been the right of every individual in the 
        United States to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
Whereas more than 40 countries have reckoned with historical injustice and its 
        aftermath through forming truth and reconciliation commissions to move 
        toward restorative justice and to return dignity to their citizens;
Whereas for 3 decades there has been a growing movement inside and outside 
        Congress to have the Federal Government develop material remedies for 
        the institution of slavery, including through a Commission to Study and 
        Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans described in H.R. 40, 
        118th Congress, as introduced on January 9, 2023, and S. 40, 118th 
        Congress, as introduced on January 24, 2023;
Whereas the formation of a United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, 
        and Transformation does not supplant the formation of a Commission to 
        Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, but rather 
        complements that effort; and
Whereas contemporary social science, medical science, and the rapidly expanding 
        use of artificial intelligence and social media reveal the costs and 
        potential threats to our democracy if we continue to allow unhealed, 
        entrenched divisions to be ignored and exploited: Now, therefore, be it
    Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), 
That Congress--
            (1) affirms, more than 400 years after the arrival of the 
        first slave ship to the United States, that the Nation owes a 
        long-overdue debt of remembrance to not only those who lived 
        through the egregious injustices enumerated in this resolution, 
        but also to their descendants; and
            (2) urges the establishment of a United States Commission 
        on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation to properly 
        acknowledge, memorialize, and be a catalyst for progress 
        toward--
                    (A) jettisoning the belief in a hierarchy of human 
                value;
                    (B) embracing our common humanity; and
                    (C) permanently eliminating persistent racial 
                inequities.
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