Reparations Are a Financial Quandary. For Democrats, They’re a Political One, Too.

VAiz4hustlaz

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BGOL Investor

Reparations Are a Financial Quandary. For Democrats, They’re a Political One, Too.​

Republicans have criticized recent estimates of what Black Americans are owed in reparations. But for Democrats, they pose deeper problems for a party eager to retain the allegiance of Black voters.


Attendees holding up signs that have the California Black Power Network logo. One has his fist raised in the air.

Black community groups organized a rally in Sacramento to push the California Legislature to pass bills on social justice and to enact recommendations by a state task force that has examined reparations.Credit...Andri Tambunan for The New York Times


Trip Gabriel Maya King Kurtis Lee Shawn Hubler
By Trip Gabriel, Maya King, Kurtis Lee and Shawn Hubler

May 27, 2023

What should Americans pay for the legacy of slavery and a century of Jim Crow segregation?

For decades, the question was mostly academic. Then it was seized on by Democrats and activists during a time of racial re-examination after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, and a number of cities and states set up commissions to study reparations to Black Americans.

Now, as those commissions announce their recommendations, the political climate is far different from just three years ago. A widespread “anti-woke” movement on the right has targeted programs aimed at social and racial justice, and the hard-cash figures being proposed as reparations are causing sticker shock. A California task force recently recommended more than $500 billion in reparations to Black residents. San Francisco is considering compensation of $100 billion. And Representative Cori Bush of Missouri said $14 trillion was the true national cost.

Republicans have seized on the figures to argue that the left’s pursuit of social justice has run amok. But for Democrats, the re-emergence of the long-dormant issue poses a deeper set of problems on the horizon.

A sign displaying Africa and the United States that reads, “It’s our time reparations now! 21st century.”

Signs at the nine-member Reparations Task Force meeting at Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, Calif., earlier this month.Credit...Jason Henry for The New York Times


Democratic officials had for years nodded approvingly at the idea of reparations as a far-off ideal to close the racial wealth gap, a position that appealed to many Black voters, who are the party’s most loyal constituency. But the headline-grabbing recommendations by lawmakers and local and state task forces are forcing Democratic leaders to wrestle with financial and political implications sooner than many would have liked.

Few Democrats in positions of power take seriously the possibility of spending billions of dollars to redistribute wealth to the descendants of slaves. But that reality is putting party leaders eager to retain the allegiance of Black voters in the uncomfortable position of finding ways to say no, or not yet, or to change the subject entirely pending some dramatic improvement in the economy.

California’s task force priced the reparations owed to older Black residents at up to $1.2 million each, compensation for the state’s long history of housing discrimination, mass incarceration, unequal health care and other harms outlined in its report. But Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who signed the law setting up the task force, dodged the issue of costs, declaring that reparations are “about much more than cash payments.

The board of supervisors in San Francisco expressed support for setting aside $5 million in compensation for some residents, but Mayor London Breed, a Democrat who is Black, has not committed to payments.

Both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as candidates in 2020, endorsed a federal study of reparations, but they have expended little political capital to advance the project in the White House. Mr. Biden has spoken on the legacy of systemic racism in America, but he has not issued an executive order to create a study commission on reparations, as some have urged.

“As long as people are talking about this, it’s a positive for Democrats,” said David Townsend, a Sacramento-based consultant to many of the moderate Democrats in the California Legislature. “The problems don’t start until you have to start writing the checks.

Marc Morial talking to off-camera press members and standing next to Al Sharpton.

“Talk of reparations for Black Americans is not going away,” Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, said. “This remains unfinished business.”Credit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times


The issue presents a dilemma that quietly divides the Democratic voter base. In polling, Black voters broadly support reparations, but other groups that Democrats cannot afford to push away in the run-up to the 2024 presidential race largely oppose them, including white, Asian and Hispanic voters.

According to a poll of American adults conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2021, fewer than one in three Americans agree that descendants of slaves should be repaid in some way, such as with land or money. Seventy-seven percent of Black adults favored reparations, but only 18 percent of white adults did so. Among Hispanics, support was 39 percent, and among Asians, 33 percent. About half of Democrats said the descendants of enslaved people should be compensated, while only 8 percent of Republicans agreed.

A small group of Black activists has led the push for reparations for years, working largely in academia, think tanks and nonprofit groups. But in the months after Mr. Floyd’s murder, a broader cross section of Americans, including politicians and faith leaders, became more vocal in their calls for direct compensation.

The Rev. Al Sharpton was among those who helped put the issue of reparations on the Democratic political agenda during the party’s 2020 primary.

In an interview, Mr. Sharpton said that even if there were never a payout in hard cash, putting a price tag on injustice was a worthy exercise that forced an examination of history as Republicans broadly deny that past racism has left an unequal playing field today. If provocative dollar amounts caused Americans to consider the scope of the country’s moral obligation to Black people, he suggested, that might lead to a more productive conversation about other ways to meet that debt.

“I think once we get the mainstream America to say — whether they said reluctantly, belatedly or whatever — ‘Yes, we owe,’ then you can have a better discussion on how we pay,” Mr. Sharpton said. “I don’t think that we have successfully had mainstream America have to come to the question of ‘Do we owe?’”

Critics of reparations argue that America already compensated for historic injustice by passing landmark civil rights and voting rights laws in the 1960s and by establishing a social safety net, including welfare programs and affirmative action in college admissions and in hiring, to lift people out of poverty. They say it is morally wrong to force Americans whose ancestors had no role in slavery or Jim Crow to atone for the past, and have raised the possibility of filing legal challenges. The Supreme Court is expected to ban race-conscious college admissions in a decision this spring.

The legal argument from conservative critics of reparations is that government payments based on race violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution. In California, the task force decided eligibility should be tied not just to race but to direct lineage, determining that any descendant of enslaved African Americans or of a “free Black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century” should receive reparations. Some legal scholars have said that using direct lineage has a better chance of withstanding court challenges.

Senator Tim Scott, who is the lone Black Republican in the Senate and who announced a presidential run on Monday, has dismissed the idea of reparations and has been framing a message in the early G.O.P. nominating states that America is a postracial society.

“I am living proof that America is the land of opportunity and not a land of oppression,” Mr. Scott said as he announced his campaign in his hometown of North Charleston, S.C.

The proposals of California’s Reparations Task Force will be forwarded to lawmakers in Sacramento, where they face high political and economic hurdles to become law, even in a state dominated by Democrats. For one thing, the state — whose tax structure leaves it open to wide swings in revenue from one year to another — faces a projected budget deficit of more than $31 billion. Any hearings on proposed laws would not take place until next year.

Although the task force weighed various methods for distributing reparations, such as tuition or housing grants, it settled on direct payments to make up for economic inequality. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the typical Black family in America is worth $23,000, compared to $184,000 for white families.

“Deficits come and go,” said the Rev. Amos C. Brown, a task force member, who was born in Mississippi during the Jim Crow era. “As a state, we need to have a moral compass that this brutal system of slavery was wrong, and its legacy was embraced here in California.”

Gavin Newsom wearing a dark suit with a white button up.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who signed the law setting up the California task force, dodged the issue of costs, declaring that reparations are “about much more than cash payments.”Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

The politics of compensation is complex even in liberal California. More than 40 percent of the state population is Latino, a group that also has faced historic discrimination. Asians are 15 percent, including the descendants of oppressed Chinese immigrant railroad workers. The state has more than 100 federally recognized Native American tribes, many of whom were nearly wiped out in centuries past by white settlers. Only about 6.5 percent of the state’s population is Black.

Democrats in Congress have been introducing a bill since 1989 to create a commission to study reparations, H.R. 40, which is named for the failed Civil War-era promise to freed slaves of “40 acres and a mule.” In 2021, the bill passed the House Judiciary Committee for the first time, but it did not receive a floor vote.
Momentum on the issue shifted in recent years to the state and municipal level. Evanston, Ill., agreed to pay $25,000 to longtime Black residents who suffered under housing discrimination prior to 1970. Asheville, N.C., allocated $2.1 million for reparations that a commission is studying how to spend.

“Talk of reparations for Black Americans is not going away,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, noting that the federal government paid some forms of reparations to Japanese Americans after their internment in World War II. “This remains unfinished business. The fact that California has done something is a demonstration of the currency of this issue.”

In a parallel to Democrats’ efforts on reparations, Republican-led state governments have pushed to outlaw the influence of critical race theory in schools, public agencies and private companies. Critical race theory is the concept that racism is baked into American institutions and underpins the argument for reparations.
In such a political and economic climate, Black adults are highly skeptical that compensation for slavery and segregation will happen. About six in 10 Black adults who support reparations in the Pew Research Center poll said repayment was not at all likely in their lifetime.

That may explain why Black voters have not yet shown the same frustration with a lack of progress on reparations as they have on other issues, such as voting rights, student-debt forgiveness and police reforms.

“Reparations is not a top-tier issue of concern for African Americans broadly across the country and particularly across any of the battleground states,” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster and strategist.

Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York, a hard-left Democrat who supports the $14 trillion in reparations proposed by Ms. Bush, the Missouri congresswoman, said the reason Black voters do not rank the issue more highly is simple.

“People have lost hope,” Mr. Bowman said.

He argued that the trillions paid would be an investment that lifts the country’s economy across all demographics. “We haven’t done enough to engage or explain how it would work,” he said. “This is a collective issue of justice for all people.”


@Supersav @Soul On Ice @FLoss @xfactor @gene cisco @Amajorfucup @Megatron X @gtg305h @KingTaharqa
 

RoomService

Dinner is now being served.
BGOL Investor
Please explain the process of what needs to happen in order to have the president sign off on reparations? Patiently waiting.
 

lazarus

waking people up
BGOL Investor
because they really dont want to help but pimp dumb negros for votes. these slave mentality dumbocrats will say he cant do nothing and then say he needs another 4 years to do nothing again

repeat, repeat, repeat

if you tell them that both parties are not for black people and we need to stand on our own. they call you a coon for not wanting to suck white dick with them and be cowards
 

totto

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
They gonna tell nikkas to go to school, they not giving you money.

Especially with all this integration and multi-culture dating, slim chance.... it opens up too much beef.

So when it's time for a check you black but you a "American" at work, or you a "educated" person or whatever, you know white people will make it hell if this passes.
 

RoomService

Dinner is now being served.
BGOL Investor
Let me make this easy.
Now under The 44th President, they could’ve passed this bill, but after 2010 that hasn’t been possible. So let’s cut the bullshit.

 

VAiz4hustlaz

Proud ADOS and not afraid to step to da mic!
BGOL Investor
That does not explain the process of what it takes to have the President sign off. Can you explain the process or post a video explaining the process of what is needed to have Sleepy Joe sign off on a reparations bill.

 

VAiz4hustlaz

Proud ADOS and not afraid to step to da mic!
BGOL Investor
Let me make this easy.
Now under The 44th President, they could’ve passed this bill, but after 2010 that hasn’t been possible. So let’s cut the bullshit.


Who was the 44th President?

:hmm::hmm::hmm:
 

Politic Negro

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
The problems with this article from the NYT is that they barely even asked anyone from congress. Nobody from the entire Cali congressional delegation and only asked the one black person who ignores it as if it's defining voice for the opposition. @VAiz4hustlaz thanks for posting it but it's trash.
 

VAiz4hustlaz

Proud ADOS and not afraid to step to da mic!
BGOL Investor
The problems with this article from the NYT is that they barely even asked anyone from congress. Nobody from the entire Cali congressional delegation and only asked the one black person who ignores it as if it's defining voice for the opposition. @VAiz4hustlaz thanks for posting it but it's trash.

Excellent point!
 

gene cisco

Not A BGOL Eunuch
BGOL Investor
This has become a politcal carrot on a stick to dangle in front of black America. :smh:

It ain't happening. Now, if black America was still in 2nd place and not behind hispanics and Asians, might have had a chance. But in current America? Not happening.

Folks acting like black America got the pull of the 1960s. In Chicago, they basically put non-white illegals in front of black people and folks think reparations have a chance in THIS America?

Same America where the summer of 2020 happened and 3 years later not one meaningful peace of legislation addressing pigs. Not even a hardcore state of the Union? We couldn't even get mean words after votes were counted. Told the world pigs need more money to act with common sense.

This won't stop white democrats from using reparations for votes. But they will tightrope the fuck out of this issue for the most part. They can also come up with fantastic bills like the one COVID bill in 2020 they had when they knew it wouldn't pass. Once they got votes, they never mentioned it again. :smh: That's the game they will play. They can milk this for a decade or more while blaming GOP.

Sad situation.
 

julian

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
I explained this to my family recently. Reparations is a great topic to discuss and get riled up about. It is owed and should be paid however the reality is it will never be paid as long as this American political system exists in its current state. ANY bill brought up for a vote by the Congress will have to get more yes votes than no which could happen easy. Then the problems start it goes to the Senate where it has to get 60 votes to avoid a filibuster,no chance in hell one party will have 60 votes let alone the 65-70 needed to overcome the outliers who will vote against it and if hell froze over and it passes the Senate then President would have to sign and then it would be law And we would start to get checks. Now the real life posible way this could actually happen is to have a Republican President just like Trump who is completely self centered and would want to do something historic. He could force his power and get the Congress to pass it and then the Senate and he would sign it. No Democrat has the balls,courage nor desire to ever do it but a dictator like Republican who wants the Black vote for the GOP could be the one otherwise it will never happen on a federal level and the states that need to do which were the slave states of the Confederacy will never do anything.
 

DC_Dude

Rising Star
BGOL Investor

How reparations pioneer Evanston, Ill., is rolling out payments to Black citizens​

The city started disbursing reparations payments to locals in 2022, in the form of vouchers for housing, and has since expanded them to include cash.​

Chanelle ChandlerThu, July 13, 2023 at 1:33 PM EDT
An older man in a baseball cap walks a small white dog past a street sign reading: Welcome City of Evanston,



The predominantly Black Fifth Ward in Evanston, Ill. The Chicago suburb is preparing to pay reparations in the form of housing grants to Black residents who experienced housing discrimination. (AP Photo/Shafkat Anowar)


As talk of reparations ripples through the federal and local governments nationwide, Evanston, Ill., has become the first city in the United States to put money in the hands of Black residents affected by years of discrimination.

“I’m excited to see that over 100 municipalities have followed in their inspiration and what's happened in Evanston. We all look forward to seeing more legislation put into law and then into practice, and then disbursed,” Robin Rue Simmons, the founder and executive director of First Repair and chairperson of the city’s reparations committee, told Yahoo News.

Simmons, a former alderwoman in Evanston, which has a 16% Black population and is located about 12 miles north of Chicago, has been a pioneer in bringing reparations to one of the Black communities affected by the aftermath of slavery in the United States.

“Most federal policy is implemented with a spark in a local community, a grassroots leader. Every other area of government we look at hyperlocally. And then it trickles up to our congressional leaders,” she said.

But Simmons recalled just having her own city in mind when she started out on the journey of repairing harm to the dwindling number of Black residents in the community.

Robin Rue Simmons poses in her living room.



Robin Rue Simmons, then an alderwoman of Evanston's Fifth Ward, in 2021 with a photograph of her mother, aunt and grandmother. (AP Photo/Shafkat Anowar)


“I'm a part of a village, the Fifth Ward of Evanston, a historically Black community, and we were losing our residents, who happened to be my neighbors, my friends and family,” Simmons said. “So the spark was the exodus of Black families, the declining homeownership rates and the widening racial gaps.”

'This isn’t over': Demand for national reparations intensifies after dismissal of Tulsa lawsuit

In months of research to bring reparations to her city, Simmons soon found out there was no other local reparations initiative on which to model an approach to the problem. Evanston started from ground zero in 2019, she said, to consider best practices for repairing harm done to its Black community.

Here’s how the city is now putting cash into the hands of its Black citizens.

What are the reparations?

Simmons said Evanston used the widening race, education and wealth gaps, as well as the mass exodus of Black residents, as markers to address the economic and educational harm they had suffered. By consensus, she said, the Black community decided that housing should be an area of priority for redress.

"Our harm report also showed that housing is an area in which we were harmed and stripped away of wealth and opportunity,” Simmons explained. “So we've started with housing.”

The Restorative Housing Program was initially funded from $10 million that came from a city sales tax on recreational cannabis.

In 2022, the city’s reparations committee started giving $25,000 to about 620 applicants, in the form of vouchers toward the purchase of a home, mortgage assistance or home renovations. The benefits are also transferable to descendants. An additional $10 million was added to the reparations pot from real estate transfer taxes. This year, the committee has expanded from vouchers to include cash, overcoming some dissent from the community and taxation hurdles.

A  sign at the First Congregational Church of Evanston reads: Black Lives Matter, To God and To Us.



The First Congregational Church of Evanston, UCC. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)


“The biggest challenge has been staffing IT and logistics in terms of taxation. How will certain types of benefits, namely cash, impact residents that are receiving other government-funded benefits and not strip away those very important benefits like housing and food access and health care and so on?” Simmons said. “So that took years for us to get to a place with confidence.”

Who is eligible?

Residents who are receiving reparations are described as "ancestors," defined as African American or Black individuals who were at least 18 years old and living in Evanston between 1919 and 1969, or as descendants of Evanston residents living during that time. During this period, Black residents were victims of housing discrimination as a result of early city zoning laws.

Simmons says that addressing the economic disadvantage associated with factors like redlining and overcrowding is an acknowledgment that these ordinances were harmful to the Black community and were responsible for racial segregation, as well as other disparities.

Price tag on reparations for Black descendants of slaves sparks debate, as Democrat proposes $14 trillion

“To separate the harms to Evanston allowed us to have a very specific injury, with a very specific way to measure the harm, and therefore a very specific way to determine eligibility, which is everybody Black in Evanston that was here during that period and their descendants,” Simmons said.

Jo-Ann Cromer seated on her couch, with photos of her family on the walls in the background.



Jo-Ann Cromer, a lifelong Evanston resident who applied for reparations, in her home on in 2021. (AP Photo/Shafkat Anowar)


How are the funds being disbursed?

Residents can pick up their checks at the city’s Civic Center. Simmons has also requested that checks be hand-delivered to Evanston residents, with a thank-you note offering an opportunity for further engagement.

She said that along with the check, the reparations committee would hold a ceremonial dinner with elected and community leaders and a plaque would be given to each of the recipients as a reminder to hold their leaders accountable.

The application process is closed now, as the committee prepares to develop a new program or extend the reparations program. Simmons said the next phase will focus on addressing the education gap.

“My hope is that although this is a 10-year commitment, that future city councils will prioritize reparations and continue the work even into perpetuity, or as long as it takes for us to address our racial gaps,” she said.

Simmons emphasized the need for more research and public education around understanding the public benefit of reparations and broadening the conversation to differentiate public policy and equity from reparations.

“Reparations is simply justice, justice that is overdue justice that all other communities are receiving and we are not,” she said.

“Repairing the harm in the Black community, yes, uplifts and liberates and empowers Black families, but it also repairs an entire community and creates healthy families, healthy communities, more wealth, increased tax revenue. There's a long list.”
 
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