Today is Juneteenth, the day that slaves in Texas found out, 154 years ago, that they were free.   But the debate has rekindled recently over whether America owes reparations to people whose ancestors were slaves. CBS News writes, “A House Judiciary subcommittee is debating H.R. 40, a bill that would study how the U.S. would implement reparations to black Americans, amid a national conversation about what the federal government owes descendants of slaves. (Cory) Booker, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and actor Danny Glover were among the witnesses who testified before the panel.”

This hearing comes just a day after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said: “I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 yrs ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea.” McConnell suggested one way “we’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war” and electing “an African American president.” Coates took issue with those comments today. The writer is the one who reignited the debate over reparations five years ago in the Atlantic with his story, “The Case for Reparations.” Here is some of what he said today on Capitol Hill (watch his testimony above):

“Yesterday, when asked about reparations, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a familiar reply: America should not be held liable for something that happened 150 years ago, since none of us currently alive are responsible. This rebuttal proffers a strange theory of governance, that American accounts are somehow bound by the lifetime of its generations.” 

“What they know, what this committee must know, is that while emancipation deadbolted the door against the bandits of America, Jim Crow wedged the windows wide open. And that is the thing about Senator McConnell’s “something”: It was 150 years ago. And it was right now.”

Here is some of the other testimony.