The Issue: Gov. Hochul agrees to a commission to look at reparations for descendants of New York slaves.
So New York wants to jump on the reparations bandwagon and bankrupt an already-ailing state (“Reparations team,” Dec. 20).
California, running a $68 billion budget deficit, has estimated it would spend $800 billion in reparations.
The issue of slavery reparations dates to the Civil War and has always been fraught with controversy. I predict that this will stir up plenty of fury and hard feelings, but ultimately go nowhere — as usual. It is completely lacking in logic.
Would my neighbor, a naturalized citizen of 45 years from the former Czechoslovakia, be required to pay reparations? Would my black coworker, whose parents arrived in America from South Sudan 22 years ago, receive reparations?
A 2019 AP-NORC poll indicated 74% of black Americans now favor reparations payments, while 83% of white Americans oppose them.
That split is staggering. How would reparations fulfill the Democrats’ pledge to bring about unity in America?
Frank Stephens
Lynn Haven, Fla.
Gov. Hochul has signed a bill creating a commission to study reparations to former slaves. At a time when New York is being ravaged by uncontrolled migration and reeling from violent antisemitism and other crimes, our esteemed governor has seen fit to pander to the reparations crowd.
Proving slave ancestry is problematic, since records from the antebellum South are spotty. This potentially opens the door to fraud.
Moreover, reparations have already been paid.
For nearly 60 years, federal, state and local governments have spent trillions of dollars on programs that largely benefit people of color, such as Medicaid, Social Security and vocational training. Additional spending would bust an already-strained budget.
Stuart Ellison
Brooklyn
Al Sharpton and Andrea Stewart-Cousins, two wealthy New Yorkers, are unlikely to provide much insight into the plight of working-class and unemployed blacks.
Sharpton, who was reportedly paid over $1 million from his “charity” in 2019 (and who may owe that much or more in unpaid taxes), never met a scam he didn’t like.
Stewart-Cousins lives in Yonkers, where the average home price is over $600,000.
Pretensions and hypocrisy aside, the payment of reparations to people who were never slaves by people who never owned slaves is a political stunt at best.
Robert Mangi
Westbury
Elected officials say our migrant crisis is out of control and straining our budget. The police and fire departments face financial duress, garbage overflows the city and the mayor wants parents to volunteer as security guards in schools.
Yet our governor has signed into law a plan to pay a commission to study giving reparations to descendants of slavery in New York. This is yet another scheme that will further destroy the state and city.
S. Kane
Brooklyn
Hochul and the other Democratic panderers decided paying reparations to the descendants of slaves is a great idea.
I guess she didn’t learn anything from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who found that reparations would be expensive and studying the issue would only create more division.
Michael Felicetta
Lavallette, NJ
Inevitably, the reparations will be paid by descendants of those who came to our shores well after slavery ended.
Following the progressive assertions of the 1619 Project, racism has been a constant factor since colonial times. Why not identify institutions that benefited from slavery? Columbia University, for example, was established in 1754 and has been linked to slavery. The university has a $13.6 billion endowment. Why not tax it first?
Jay Taikeff
Brooklyn
With Hochul, the hits just keep on coming.
Well over 300,000 Union soldiers, most of them white, died to abolish slavery. As a result of their sacrifice, I believe all debts and reparations have been paid.
Kenneth Fitzgerald
Hicksville
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