U.S. city to become first to pay reparations to Black residents
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, is about to become the first U.S. city to make reparation money available to Black residents. Part of a growing movement that has picked up speed in the wake of police killings of Black Americans including George Floyd last year, the decision by Evanston officials could also lay the groundwork for other municipalities and states considering reparations.
"It doesn't mean every city will do it exactly like Evanston has done, but there's a blueprint there," Ron Daniels, who oversees the National African American Reparations Commission, or NAARC, told CBS MoneyWatch.
The Evanston City Council voted 8-1 Monday night to start with an expenditure of $400,000 to give 16 eligible Black households $25,000 each to be spent on home repairs or down payments on property. Funded by a new tax on legalized marijuana, the council previously committed $10 million over 10 years to repairing the ongoing harm that systemic racism has caused Evanston's Black residents, with the housing initiative its first step. About 16% of Evanston residents are Black.
National advocacy groups that advised Evanston on its action expressed optimism that other cities and states would follow suit, leading to further pressure for national legislation.
"We're very excited to see the first national direct benefit from some of the harms we've had to experience from the past," Kamm Howard, co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, or N'COBRA, told CBS MoneyWatch "The more local initiatives occur, the more impetus there is on the federal government to act."
The effort in Evanston was led by Robin Rue Simmons, an alderwoman who will join the commission when her term ends.
Ongoing mortgage discrimination in Evanston and other parts of the country justify tackling years of abusive housing practices in any reparations program, according to Howard. "We brought in experts to look at current conditions to justify a housing initiative as a first initiative," he said of his group's work in the suburb just north of Chicago.
One 2019 analysis by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley found that Black and Latino mortgage applicants were charged higher interest — an average of nearly 0.08% — and heavier refinance fees when compared with white borrowers.
"Paternalistic" approach?
Evanston's plan came up short in the eyes of some local residents and one council member. Alderwoman Cicely Fleming voted against the resolution, arguing that it is a housing program masquerading as reparations. She cast the only negative vote.
"True reparations should respect Black people's autonomy and allow them to determine how repair will be managed, including cash payments as an option. They are being denied that in this proposal, which gives money directly to the banks or contractors on their behalf," the alderwoman stated in a news release. "If we're doing reparations, let's do reparations right."
In a phone interview with CBS MoneyWatch, Fleming also said many in Evanston's Black community objected to this "paternalistic model of we know what's best for you." She said she hoped city officials would give Black residents more say on how reparations are handled moving forward, while also giving fund recipients more autonomy on how they use the money.
Sebastian Nalls, who organized a group called "Evanston Rejects Racist Reparations," expressed similar sentiments to CBS Chicago , saying, "What this plan is, is not reparations."
The group supports reparations, but says there are too many limits on outlays. "Residents are unable to use their funds for anything other than housing," Nalls said.
But local realtor said Vanessa Johnson-McCoy told the station, "Housing is the just the first step, and there will be other parts of this initiative."
"I say it's definitely a start, and I say yes, we have to begin somewhere," Johnson-McCoy said.
A federal measure that would establish a commission to study and develop reparations has about 170 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, and advocates are hopeful the White House would take executive action if the Senate fails to pass the bill.
Around the U.S., cities including Asheville, North Carolina; Amherst, Massachusetts; Burlington, Vermont; Chicago; and Providence, Rhode Island, have started reparation efforts, although none yet allocate funding to Black residents.
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Progressives are moving quickly now. They control all the key levers of power and they are transforming America.
Is this what those who voted for Biden really wanted?
Trump and his supporters are off topic
I am off topic.
i thought you liked local government making the decisions.
Constitutional decisions. We did away with racism, remember?
That is the left that worships the all power government; unless othey are not in charge that is. Then we get the last 5 years of constant investigations, impeachment attempts, riots, looting, arson, assault, and murder.
Reparations with those paying for them having nothing to do with the problem. Typical Democrat BS- throw money at a problem and hope it goes away. Or better still throw money at the problem and hope that it becomes dependent on the constant hand outs.
Or simply buys them more votes from a dependent constituency.
when was that? There are black people alive today who were robbed of generational wealth by discriminatory actions in the 20th century.
Like what?
Another false statement
You can't do away with racism, since it's personal. Bigots will be bigots.
Generational wealth - ????? What the hell is that?
are you serious?
Who are these bigots, Perrie?
It's what all whites get by virtue of being white. White people all get at least $500,000 tax free when their parents die. No exceptions.
Yes'm - I have no idea of the context John is asking. To me, passing on your "stuff" to the next generation would be generational wealth. How does that apply to being racist? EVERYBODY passes stuff down to their kin, so, does that make EVERYBODY racist????
What I'd like to know is who gets the Reparations if we were to pay them, Great Grandma & Grandpa, Grandma & Grandpa, Dad & Mom, or Son & Daughter ? Do they all get it and the next generation born will be expecting some as well? I personally think reparations are a stupid idea since nobody who is actually owed is still alive and even if we did do it it would never be enough to satisfy so it would solve nothing and we can't give it to three or four generations alive now and not have the next generation born asking for the same thing on down the line forever. Slavery was a terrible thing but the people who were enslaved are all dead now and hopefully they got their reparations in Heaven.
If reparations are to be made, I have several questions that someone might be able to answer.
1.- Do all blacks qualify, or is it limited to those who had provable links to slaves? For example, does it apply to those that just illegally entered the country from Haiti or Nigeria?
2.- Who is going to pay for the reparations? Is it a special tax to be imposed on non-blacks only or would that be considered racist and blacks would also need to pay into the fund that will pay them?
3.- Would the children of multi-racial families qualify? If one parent is white and the other black, would that individual only qualify for 50% of the permitted reparations? How about a situation where there was one black in the family from three or four generations ago and no others since, how much or the allotted reparations would that individual qualify for? 5%, 10% or is it a situation if there was any black in the bloodline you'll qualify for 100%?
4.- How is one going to prove that he or she is a black? As many want people to be accepted for what they identify as, who exactly is going to deny that the red headed Irish individual that identifies as black is not black?
So dumb. Just, so dumb.
While reparation is a noble goal, I don't think having weed heads pay for it is appropriate. The money would be better used for better training of police officers and for purging the force of racists.
Agreed.
Big question is where is the line drawn of who owes what to who? Bad precedent all the way around. Why should me or mine be held accountable and have to pay for something my ancestors may may not have done more than a century ago?
If I could just buy legalized weed, I don't care where my money goes
Reparations won't solve anything. As the seeded article highlights, even reparations are racist.
The whole idea is dumb. The only people truly excited about it are activists who think it’s still 1962 and they’re marching with Dr. King, or white people who don’t have enough guilt in their lives.
You can never repair or pay for the damage done by slavery. It’s naive and foolish to try. It’s also arrogant to imagine that anyone alive today is suffering even 1/1000000000th as much as someone who actually was a slave. The people freed in 1865 could have used some compensation, but their descendants 160 years later? It’s silly.
The best and most real thing we can do is to go forward as a fair and just nation, trying our best to live up to the ideals we say we believe in.
Malcolm X. Not Dr. King.
I disagree. Damage caused by denying education, isolation from society, and paternalistic treatment can be repaired. But those who suffered that damage must be willing to become part of society and accept the responsibilities that entails.
Exploiting attempts to repair past damages with education and integration isn't civil rights. That exploitation is turning civil rights into a separate but equal division based upon separate treatment and racial privileges within society that will be difficult to overcome.
Allegations of racism has thwarted the efforts to repair damages through civil rights. Anti-racism has proven as damaging as racism.
Yeah, one was significantly angrier than the other. Dr. King was eloquent and wanted peaceful resolutions.
My point is people - imo for the self esteem - imagine they are fighting injustice that was fixed a long time ago. There are inequities to be repaired today, for sure, but it’s not at all like it used to be. So to be just as big a hero as the brave activists of the civil right era, they need to exaggerate today’s problems and demand reparations that will never come and could never satisfy even if they did come.
I would say those things have largely been repaired in this country. But if they hadn’t, the cure would be fixing the problem, not writing a check,
Yep, that pretty much sums it up as I see it, too.
IMO anti-racism has become a bigger problem than racism for the reasons you outlined. Anti-racism has become a self-serving exploitation of civil rights that certainly isn't allowing the problems of the past to fade over time. In reality anti-racism is renewing and revitalizing racism.
The left has given in to ethnic nationalism. For a long time, America's vision has been one of civic nationalism. Our civic nationalism taught us that the American people are not defined by race, but our civic ideals, representative democracy, equal opportunity, individual rights etc.. Lincoln gave a great address about how all those who forefathers weren't in the country when it was founded were just as American, and should be just as proud of the country as those whose ancestors found it because of the ideals set forth in the declaration of independence.
For the last 40 years, starting in the schools, , the left has been pushing against that narrative and dividing people on the basis of race. They don't want people to see themselves as individuals, but as members of a race and that race is the defining characteristic of one's existence. It's an incredibly dangerous ideology. It's even got it's own religion of wokeness and a theology of "structural racism" that can be used as a default to explain everything that inconveniences them. Every bad result, every inequality can be blamed on "structural racism" and absolves the invoker of racism of any responsibility.
This is going to tear America apart.
Here's Lincoln in 1858 talking about new Americans:
If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of Patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.
Instead of uniting us in the ideals of the Declaration, the purpose is now to divide us by biology. Your blood determines what benefits you are entitled to, or what you have to pay for the crimes of those you bear no relation to.
OK - let's go with the Irish, Italians, Polish, Czech's, German, French, etc. - many of those groups were slaves - many of those folks were denied jobs, housing, food, education, religion, etc. - got any reparations for them?