Should New York State use taxpayer dollars to pay African Americans in the Empire State as part of "reparations" for the sins of slavery?
It's a controversial issue that legislators are considering right now.
Earlier this year Governor Kathy Hochul established the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies.
New York is the only state that created a reparations group other than California. This Committee is about to have its first meeting and the law states they must develop a slate of recommendations within one year.
The Commission will track what the Governor calls New York's “legacy of enslavement” and racial discrimination and they will craft a blueprint to address ongoing harms. They are to “address ongoing injustices in wealth, housing, education, employment, and mass incarceration.”
The committee is “tasked with examining the legacy of slavery and its lingering negative effects on people currently living in the State of New York”, to issue a set of recommendations for appropriate action to address these “longstanding inequities”.
Slavery ended in New York very early starting with the Gradual Emancipation Law passed in 1799 that did not free existing slaves, but emancipated children of enslaved mothers going forward. In 1817 another law passed emancipating enslaved people from before the 1799 law.
“This commission acknowledges the horrific injustice of slavery and will be tasked with examining the legacy of slavery, subsequent discrimination against people of African descent, and the impact these forces continue to have in the present day,” Hochul said when she signed the bill.
The many opponents of reparations point to the fact that no one alive in the United States is a slave or owned a slave and there hasn’t been for very long time. They make the argument that there is an inherent unfairness for people now to be held accountable for wrongs that happened over 150 years ago.
The price tag for reparations is also something that is likely out of reach even if it was accepted as something that needs to be done. California’s Reparations Committee called for an apology from the state and recommendations for $5 million payments to qualifying people to “eliminate the racial wealth gap”. California is in the same cash-strapped state as New York and it is unlikely either state will have funds of this magnitude to make reparations. It is estimated that the California plan would cost $800 billion and California was never a slave slate.
New York is in terrible financial shape and can't fund the things it already has on the table, let alone add billions in reparations to the budget.
New York City Mayor Adams said, “We never really dealt with or reckoned with slavery, and there are some institutions that wealth is directly connected to slavery. It’s not like it’s a mystery,” he said. “There are institutions that are in place right now that their foundation came from free slave labor, and so we have to reckon with that.”
The Commission members are:
- Jennifer Jones Austin is the CEO and Executive Director of FPWA, an anti-poverty policy and advocacy nonprofit.
- Timothy R. Hogues serves as the Commissioner for the Department of Civil Service and President of the Civil Service Commission.
- Linda Brown-Robinson is the Immediate Past President of the Syracuse Onondaga NAACP.
- Darrick Hamilton, Ph.D. is the Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy and the founding director of the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School.
- Linda Tarrant-Reid is an author, historian, freelance journalist, photographer, and community activist.
- Dr. Seanelle Hawkins serves as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Urban League of Rochester, an affiliate of the National Urban League.
- Dr. Ron Daniels is the Founder and President of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW), a progressive, African-centered, action-oriented Resource Center dedicated to empowering people of African descent.
- Lurie Daniel Favors, Esq. is the Executive Director at the Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College.
- Rev. Dr. Deborah D. Jenkins is Founding Pastor of Faith @Work Christian Church, Coop City