North Carolina City Approves Reparations to Boost Black Community

(Bloomberg) -- One North Carolina city will use reparations for the Black community to make amends for the city’s role in slavery and racial inequality, a move spurred by the modern civil rights movement that followed the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May.

Asheville will start a reparations plan to provide funding for Black homeownership, businesses and career programs. The Asheville City Council approved the resolution unanimously on Tuesday.

The program does not designate individual payments to Black residents, who make up 12 percent of the city’s population. Instead it aims to “close the gaps” in health care, employment, education and criminal justice. The council also apologized for the city’s historical involvement in slavery, segregation and programs that exacerbated racial inequities. 

Council member Keith Young, one of the resolution’s main proponents, said the current civil rights movement is a chance to make permanent change.

“Anything that we do in my mind has to outlive the emotions of this present moment,” said Young, one of the two Black members of the council. “The future success of my own children and our current and future society depends on the sustained success of the systemic changes that we see.”

Other American cities and states are considering reparations as well. The Providence Journal reported that the Providence, R.I., mayor signed an order Wednesday to pursue reparations for Black and indigenous people. California’s State Assembly passed a bill in June to create a reparations task force.

Asheville’s initiative was criticized for doing too little and too much.

William A. Darity Jr., a Duke University public policy professor, was quoted in The New York Times as saying he was skeptical of labeling the initiative as reparations because it cannot close the wealth disparities seen by Black Americans.

Council member Sheneika Smith said she received pushback from residents who felt they should not have to “pay for what happened during slavery.” In response, she said reparations accounts for more than just the injustices of slavery, which “is the root of all injustice and inequity that is at work in American life today.”

During Tuesday’s meeting, council member Young said it isn’t enough to just remove racist statues.

“The blood capital that we have banked to spend today, to fight for significant change, came predominantly not from our allies but from Black men, women and children who died to get to this very moment,” he said.

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