KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – The Mayor’s Commission on Reparations hosted Howard Law Professor Justin Hansford during his listening tour across 40 cities in the United States for the Black Audit Report.
Kansas City African Americans provided their perspective on what the state of the community is ahead of Hansford’s presentation to the United Nations Permanent Forum on people of African descent.
“We look at a few particular indicators, in terms of access to clean water, access to housing, quality housing, access to jobs, access to health care, we have 17 different metrics that we look at,” Hansford said. Those metrics actually come from the United Nations itself, which is seeking to promote something they call the UN Sustainable Development Goals.”
The report will be given in late April to the UN and the Mayor’s Commission on Reparations wants to use those findings here at the local level. Hansford is traveling to more than 40 cities across the country to gain this perspective.
“The concept of reparations, the key part of that term is repair, so you’re trying to repair the city,” Hansford said. “True reparations involve investing in institutions that can bridge those gaps. Most people think about it in terms of handing an individual person a check, I don’t think that’s the whole story, I think it’s a lot to do with fixing institutions that are broken.”
The Mayor’s Commission on Reparations has five core initiatives they aim to address here in Kansas City; health, education, economics, criminal justice and housing.
Commission Chair Terri Barnes is also the Interim Executive Director for Lead to Read KC – an initiative to boost the reading levels of children inside the inner city.
“Take a look at the education system; why is it that 85 percent of black third grade students are unable to read in 2024, why can’t our children read, and so to begin to take those layers and find out why is it happening in the public school system… we’re going to uncover that work,” Barnes said. “We say that systematically, we have a real deep problem that disproportionately affects African American people here in Kansas City.”
The commission meets the 4th Tuesday of each month on the 10th floor of City Hall.
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