State legislators in New York are poised to pass a bill this week that would create a commission to study the history of slavery and racism with the possibility of a reparations payout to black residents affected by decades of discrimination.
“New York has an accounting it must do,” said Sen. James Sanders (D-NY), the Senate sponsor of the bill. “If we are ever to be the America for everybody, then we have to come to grips with America’s original sin, slavery.”
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If passed, New York would become the second state to study whether to issue reparations. Three years ago, California created a task force to study those same topics, but officials there have disagreed over the amount of money descendants of enslaved people would be given.
In New York, slavery remained legal until 1827, but it had a lasting effect, Sanders said.
“There’s a real question of whether slavery would have been economically feasible without New York,” he added. “New York provided the insurance for the slave industry; New York paid for many of the votes; New York bought much of the cotton.”
If the legislation is passed, the commission would also study “the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery and discrimination on living people of African descent.”
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, the first black speaker of the New York State Assembly, called the legislation “historic.”
“Throughout history, here in New York and across the country, African Americans have been subjected to racial, economic, and institutional injustices that have plagued communities for decades,” Heastie said in a statement to Politico.
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Reparations have been taking place at the local level, too.
Evanston, Illinois made history when it became the first city in the country to guarantee funding for reparations to its black residents. Evanston’s program focuses on housing discrimination and not slavery after residents in the small city on the outskirts of Chicago said housing policies of the Jim Crow era and redlining overwhelmingly hurt them and created a cycle of poverty that still persists.
