Rep. Justin J. Pearson, D-Memphis, got nowhere with his proposed Reparations for Descendants of Enslaved People Act.

-- Photo By George Walker Iv | Ap

Legislation, like people, can die a variety of deaths: fast or slow, public or private, merciful or cruel. But perhaps the most humiliating form – sometimes intentionally so – might be thought of as death by silence.

It happens when a bill is moved for passage, then awkwardly suffocates because no one seconds the motion. For a bill’s sponsor, it’s the equivalent of showing up at your high school prom, all decked out in your party best, and discovering nobody but your cousin is willing to dance with you. Or even talk to you.

State Rep. Justin Pearson of Memphis faced that last week with his proposed Reparations for Descendants of Enslaved People Act.

Reparation for wrongs is not a new concept; two prominent examples resulted from World War II. The United States eventually paid $1.6 billion to Japanese Americans shamefully interned during the conflict, though it took until the 1980s for that (and a formal government apology) to take place. Germany has paid many billions of dollars over the years to survivors of the Holocaust.

The author and activist Ta-Nehisi Coates is credited with popularizing the debate over reparations based on slavery in a 2014 opinion article in The Atlantic. He suggested several options in addition to monetary awards, including job training and public works projects.

In Tennessee, Shelby County set aside $5 million last year to form a committee to look into possible avenues for redress of various forms of discrimination throughout history. Other cities across the country, including Boston and Asheville, North Carolina, have taken similar steps.

But it’s fair to call the concept controversial. Polarizing, even.

Pearson is not one to shy from controversy. He’s nationally famous as one of the two Justins (Rep. Justin Jones of Nashville the other) booted from the House for protesting Republican resistance to sensible gun laws. He once even got under the skin of some colleagues with his sartorial choice of a traditional West African dashiki instead of the majority-favored shirt-and-tie.

The reparations bill he was ready to present to the House Public Service Subcommittee would have set up a state task force “to study the effects of slavery, discrimination, racism, and institutionalized oppression from the state government on African Americans in this state and develop reparation proposals for African Americans, with a special consideration for African Americans who are descendants of persons enslaved in the United States.”

Except he didn’t get a chance. Rep. Vincent Dixie, the lone Democrat on the subcommittee, moved for passage, but none of the Republican members offered a second. Chairwoman Iris Rudder of Winchester gaveled the bill dead. “Failed,” in legislative parlance. (If you couldn’t guess, Pearson and Dixie are black; all the Republicans involved are white.)

Bear in mind that all manner of ill-advised, foolish and even farcical legislation routinely gets seconded in the General Assembly. Some of it passes. Too much of it.

There’s no mystery as to why Pearson’s bill didn’t get an airing. Let’s go back to 2021, when the Republican supermajorities in the legislature took aim at the straw boogeyman “critical race theory” in public education.

Legislators outlawed the teaching of a number of concepts, including that “An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.”

There’s zero appetite among Republican Tennessee legislators to entertain the notion that slavery and other inhumanities of the past merit atonement in the present.

A personal note here: I see reparations as a complicated, significantly problematic response to undeniable racial inequities exemplified by centuries of slavery but which have continued through legal and extralegal means long past emancipation.

But to refuse to allow a discussion of prickly issues simply because they’re prickly is not an effective way to move forward.

I don’t know that I could be persuaded by Pearson’s arguments for his bill. Unlike the mute Republicans on the subcommittee and many others throughout the General Assembly, however, I think they’re worth hearing.

Sometimes, good things happen when people listen to other people they disagree with. But it requires open minds.

Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville.