Reparations legislation is Congress’s unfinished constitutional mandate

Evidence

Congressional legislation to provide reparations could remove the “true curse of slavery.” Congress granted itself both the power to end chattel slavery and the power to ensure that black Americans enjoyed equal benefits of the laws as white Americans. The first was accomplished, but the latter can be achieved only through reparations. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 593

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘True curse of slavery’ and the distinction between ending slavery and ensuring equal benefits frames reparations as completing an unfinished constitutional grant.