When it comes to discussions about reparations for past enslavement and injustices against Black Americans, there is a veritable alphabet soup of organizations here in New York, and they often differ about the remedies.
Let’s first list a few of them, beginning with the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies, a body created by Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2023 to study the legacy of the issue. A year earlier, the New York City Commission on Racial Equity weighed in via ballot with its public process for the matter. Unlike the state’s initiative, the city’s study is due next July, before the state’s conclusions.
There are other such organizations: Get Free, New Yorkers for Reparations, the Freedmen Project, and the longstanding National American Reparations Commission (NAARC), which is spearheaded by the New York-based Institute of the Black World 21st Century.
In fact, largely through the efforts of the IBW, reparations have evolved into a global demand, particularly with African and Caribbean nations joining the push for restitution and/or some form of compensation for the economic ramifications of the transatlantic slave trade and the subsequent years of racism and discrimination. Keeping the international implications for a later discussion, the issue here at home is complicated enough, but there appears to be a minuscule amount of agreement between the governor and the mayor.
Each, to some degree, is awaiting the outcome of the studies but seemingly in agreement on the state and city’s complicit role in the historic devastation of slavery. While nine states have apologized for their past involvement in slavery, only the municipality of Evanston, Ill., has funded a tangible program that provides up to $25,000 in housing and property grants to eligible Black descendants affected by local housing discrimination.
That’s a significant step in the push for some form of compensation, although the question of who are the rightful descendants has surfaced among the organizations and created an element of discord. As a result, we are still possibly decades from a settlement about who pays, and who are the recipients.
La luta continua (the struggle continues).
