The New York City Council voted to begin looking into the ways that slavery still impacts the city and research possible solutions, including reparations.
Before the vote, Queens City Council member Nantasha Williams told supporters “we think ‘Oh, we were in the North, this is a more liberal place,’ but in fact, we know that New York City played a tremendous role in many aspects of the slave trade.”
And according to people like New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, not all of those aspects have gone away.
“New York City is still one of the most segregated cities in the entire nation. No one is responsible for the systems that we have here – Black, white, brown or otherwise, but I believe everyone is responsible for correcting justice and inequity,” he says.
That responsibility will now start to be tackled by the City’s Commission on Racial Equity, which will look into who is still impacted, how much and what possible fixes could be.
“Theoretically, it would, I think equalize the disadvantages that we see now,” such as rates of home ownership, explained Bryan Warde, a professor of social work at Lehman College.
Warde says solutions could come in a series of ways, which “could be monetary, it could be through policy change.”
The idea of reparations is not new in the United States. After World War II, reparations were paid to Japanese Americans who were put into camps, and more recently, other states and cities around the country have also started looking into reparations for slavery.
New York state already passed a similar act in December, and the City Council says both commissions will work together.
The question of where the money would come from has not been answered yet.