WASHINGTON (Reuters) - US lawmakers held a hearing on Wednesday to discuss the possibility of granting compensation to African-Americans of slave descendants, a sensitive issue in the United States, which is experiencing an upsurge in ethnic tensions.

The bill calls for the formation of a parliamentary committee to study the slavery and discrimination suffered by slave children under the Jim Crow laws that forced black and white segregation in the US south in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This bill has been submitted on several occasions since 1989 without being put to the vote.

But this year marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first batch of African slaves to American territory. The Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives held a hearing on "Genting Day" or the day that the last group of slaves in Texas was liberated in 1865.

Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who introduced the bill, said it was "the long-awaited response of the United States."

Jackson said the African-American community - which accounts for 13.4 percent of the population - has the right to some of the wealth that their forefathers helped achieve.

"The committee will make recommendations on appropriate ways to educate American public opinion on its findings and appropriate treatment in the light of these findings," said Steve Cohen, a Democrat who sponsors the bill.

African-American writer Coleman Hughes said blacks do not need "another apology."

"We need safer neighborhoods and better schools, we need a criminal justice system with less sanctions, we need affordable health care, and none of these things can be achieved through compensation for slavery," he said.

According to the Web site Federal Safety Net, which monitors poverty and welfare programs, 21.2 percent of African Americans suffered from poverty in 2017, compared to 8.7 percent of the white population.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who decides on projects presented to the council, ruled out the idea of ​​paying compensation for slavery.

"I do not think giving compensation for something that happened 150 years ago - which no one is now responsible for - is a good idea," said McConnell, a Republican senator from Kentucky, a former slave state.

Sen. Corrie Boker, an African American who is running for the Democratic nomination for the presidential election in 2020, said McConnell's remarks showed "a great deal of ignorance."