White House says Biden supports study of slavery reparations

US has never made headway in discussions on how to compensate Black people for more than 200 years of slavery.

US President Joe Biden supports a study on whether descendants of enslaved people in the United States should receive reparations, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Wednesday, as the issue was being debated on Capitol Hill. Psaki told reporters that Biden “continues to demonstrate his commitment to take comprehensive action to address the systemic racism that persists today”. Reparations have been used in other circumstances to offset large moral and economic debts – and were paid to Japanese Americans interned during World War II, families of Holocaust survivors and Black people in post-apartheid South Africa.