Senate to push apology as race issue looms

Congress is poised to approve a federal apology for slavery just weeks before voters consider electing the nation’s first black president.

When the Senate takes up the issue in September, it could address a centuries-old wound at a time when the presidential contest is already focused on race.

{mosads}At the same time, it could also play a major role in Senate politics, with a handful of white, Southern Republicans facing tough reelection challenges in a year when record turnout is expected among black voters.

Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) have long been negotiating the upper chamber’s version of the 740-word House resolution, and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to take it to the floor before the chamber adjourns on Sept. 26.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley said he thinks the chamber could get a unanimous consent agreement to move quickly on the measure.

The House passed its version of the resolution on July 29 by voice vote. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a white lawmaker representing a majority-black district who faces a tough primary this week against a black challenger, is the lead sponsor of the resolution.

Critics have long cited the impracticality of legal or financial amends as the chief argument against apologizing, since an apology could increase demands for such reparations.

Mindful of those concerns, Harkin and Brownback’s Senate draft includes a key disclaimer that differs from the House resolution. The disclaimer: “Nothing in this resolution authorizes or supports any claim against the United States.”

Keith Wright, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, said reparations aren’t necessarily tied to the idea of an apology. Wright says an apology would be “helpful to the healing process” for African-Americans.

“You can’t count up the cost of the system of slavery, so you couldn’t really pay for it,” he said. “Our argument is that an apology should stand on its own.”

But even without that provision, an apology has the potential to further polarize voters deciding between a black Democratic presidential candidate and a white Republican standard-bearer.

{mospagebreak}Cook Political Report Publisher Charles Cook said he would be surprised if a Senate apology vote actually occurs and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) stays on the topic long.

“I can’t imagine why [Obama] would get anywhere near this issue,” Cook said. “If Steve Cohen hadn’t pushed it, it wouldn’t have been voted on in the House. This is an issue I am sure [Obama] wishes would go away and is glad that it is getting little attention. Any other position would be a killer with white voters who are ambivalent about voting for him anyway.”

Just last week, Obama made headlines when he announced his support for the apology, but not reparations paid to descendants of slaves.

{mosads}“The best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed,” Obama told an Illinois audience last week in remarks reported by The Associated Press.

The campaign of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) forwarded questions about his stance to his Senate office. An aide in that office directed a reporter to an Oct. 2007 McCain interview in The Washington Examiner, in which the Arizona senator endorsed a Senate apology and called slavery and segregation “dark chapters in our history.”

McCain has taken pains to court black voters this year, telling an audience in Memphis in April that he regretted his past opposition to a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

A still-undetermined number of Republicans are preparing to co-sponsor the Harkin-Brownback resolution, including Deep South senators such as Thad Cochran of Mississippi. Cochran’s colleague, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who is facing a stiff challenge from former Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, is “still reviewing” the resolution, according to his office.

Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, whose own reelection could also be roiled by heavy turnout of black voters supporting Obama, is also on the fence. However, his office notes that he was among the 89 co-sponsors of the Senate’s 2005 resolution that condemned lynchings of predominantly black victims.

The House resolution was co-sponsored by 118 Democrats and two Republicans.

Cohen says the resolution was “the right thing to do,” but that reparations are probably impractical.

“This resolution is not about reparations,” he said. “I don’t think anybody is really contemplating ‘40 acres and a mule.’ ”

Harkin last week noted that the Senate has already apologized for the U.S. government’s mistreatment of Native Americans, Japanese-Americans and Hawaiians.

“But the biggest blot on America was slavery,” Harkin said. “It was condoned by the Constitution, condoned by our early governments, condoned by business. We fought a very bloody civil war over it, and there were Jim Crow laws after that. We can’t do anything about that, and reparations are out of the question. But what we can do is say, ‘Look, in this day and age today, we recognize how wrong that was.’ ”

President Bush’s position on the resolution is uncertain, but the House and Senate versions both quote a speech Bush gave during a July 2003 trip to a former slave port in Senegal. The speech referred to slavery as “one of the greatest crimes of history.”

“The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation,” Bush said in the speech. “And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times.”

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the administration is still reviewing the language, but notes Bush’s “very powerful” Senegal speech.

“I expect we’ll address it if the Senate considers legislation,” Fratto said.