A new report released by the United Nations concludes the United States owes reparations to African-Americans for slavery and recent police-involved shooting deaths.
The report was produced by the United Nations’ Working Group of Experts on African Descent and strongly condemned America’s “racist” history.
“In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,” the report read, according to The Washington Post.
The group also made the stunning accusation that recent police-involved shootings are similar to the brutal lynchings of the Ku Klux Klan and amount to a “human rights crisis.” “Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching,” the report stated.
In January, the U.N. group had applauded the U.S. for its progress since the Jim Crow era, but argued America was still ruled by white supremacy. “[I]deology 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 group said at the time. “The dangerous ideology of white supremacy inhibits social cohesion amongst the US population.”
The expert panel didn’t specify what form reparations would take, yet it did offer a few suggestions for how America could owe restitution to blacks. These suggestions included, according to The Washington Post, “a formal apology, health initiatives, educational opportunities… psychological rehabilitation, technology transfer and financial support, and debt cancellation.”
The chairman of the group, Ricardo Sunga of the Philippines, also condemned the rising “xenophobia and Afrophobia” of America’s presidential campaign in an interview with reporters Monday, without mentioning Donald Trump by name.
While this UN group may want reparations to become law, the measure is strongly opposed by Americans. The latest poll on the matter revealed that 68 percent of Americans are opposed to reparations for slavery.
