The concept of paying black Americans for a bunch of years of hard and loose work by their ancestors to create wealth for white Americans has been around for a long time.
In each and every legislative consultation from 1989 until his retirement in 2017, Michigan Congressman John Conyers filed a failed bill to consider, among other issues, how much reimbursement would entail. In 1993, Harper’s Magazine valued it at $97 billion. Pope Francis apologized for slavery. So did the Southern Baptist Convention. At least nine states have joined, led by Alabama in 2007.
More recently, studies on the wealth gap among Americans of other races and understanding the importance of generational wealth in this national misfortune have reinforced the concept that while no living Americans were involved in the enslavement of Africans, the “institution” and decades of Jim Crow segregation that followed has repercussions today.
In the latest attempt to close the gap, local lawmakers in Shelby County, Tennessee, will introduce a proposal to use $5 million in the federal Covid-19 budget to help reduce disparities between white and black citizens in wealth, physical care outcomes and homeownership. the amount is a fraction of the $182 million the county earned in investment for the American Rescue Plan Act.
“This will not be a procedure for billing checks for other black people in Shelby County,” County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. told Forbes. and infrastructure. “
Shelby County, which is Memphis, is the largest county in Tennessee with a population of about 924,000, according to the most recent census data. Approximately 55% of its population is black.
Ford, a Democrat, said the committee’s vote on the measure is scheduled for Feb. 22 and that a full committee vote could also take position that day. The board has nine Democrats and four Republicans, and Ford said he has so far won a majority of seven other Democrats. He said he didn’t expect Republicans on the board, none of whom responded to Forbes’ requests for comment.
The proposal makes Shelthrough County the latest municipality to consider, examine or implement repair programs, joining towns such as Evanston, Illinois, Asheville, North Carolina and St. In 2021, Evanston became one of the first towns in the country to implement a reparations program, and its plan targets $25,000 in housing subsidies for descendants of black citizens affected by racist housing policies in the city between 1919 and 1969.
This summer, California state legislators are scheduled to consider the recommendations of the state’s repair task force. These deserve to include financial and non-financial systems designed to make amends in five areas: housing discrimination, mass incarceration, wrongful asset seizures. , the devaluation of black businesses and health care. For example, the task force said the effect of housing discrimination in the state could justify paying $223,000 per year, or about $569 billion.
“I think what unites all those efforts is a growing understanding of the long-standing effect and legacy of Jim Crow slavery and segregation,” said Rachel Swarns, a journalism professor at New York University who studies the links between slavery and new institutions. he told Forbes. ” But there are many, many other approaches that are being taken right now. People actually struggle with that in other ways.
Black American families had an average of $316,000 in accumulated wealth last year, according to figures cited by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. American families had about 4 times as many, or $1. 3 million.
By 2020 through researchers William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen estimated that the federal government would have to compensate black families with about $800,000 each, totaling $10 trillion to $12 trillion, to close the wealth hole between blacks and whites well.
Ford said its purpose is to identify restorative systems based on five pillars: housing, intellectual health, criminal justice, business ownership and financial literacy. The feasibility study will help what those systems would look like, Ford said, but part of his vision is to have a centralized online page for other people to access resources similar to the areas.
When asked about the use of Covid-19 funds, Ford pointed to federal rules that list eligible uses such as “helping families and communities” and helping to address “disparities in fitness and education. “Cash probably cannot exclude any ethnicity, it may be directed to census tracts or predominantly black zip codes.
“I need other people to know that this is a unique investment to lay the groundwork for study,” he said, “and to identify, as we move forward, a committed source of investment. “
Swarns said governments are not alone in thinking or launching reparation programs. The Virginia Theological Seminary in 2021, for example, began writing checks for $2,100 a year to descendants of black Americans who painted the era of slavery and Jim Crow there. Georgetown University has unveiled a plan to raise $400,000 a year for projects benefiting the descendants of slaves whose paintings supported the university. Swarns wrote an e-book on the subject.
The word “reparations” can be polarizing, he said, so some are on calling, if not in action.
The Georgetown fund uses the word “reconciliation,” Swarns said. “People are very aware of history without alienating voters. “