[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Con. Res. 14 Introduced in Senate (IS)]
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119th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. CON. RES. 14
Urging the establishment of a United States Commission on Truth, Racial
Healing, and Transformation.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
June 12, 2025
Mr. Booker (for himself, Ms. Warren, Mr. Coons, Ms. Duckworth, Mr.
Markey, Mr. Durbin, Mr. Padilla, and Mr. Schiff) 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 (29 U.S.C. 201 et seq.), 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,
119th Congress, as introduced on January 3, 2025, and S. 40, 119th
Congress, as introduced on January 9, 2025;
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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