REPARATIONS RUCKUS
Fight is looming in NY
A state commission that will recommend whether to give reparations for slavery and discrimination to black residents hasn’t met for the first time, but it’s already sparked a rift among black New Yorkers over who should be eligible.
A similar panel in California said monetary reparations should be limited only to descendants of chattel enslaved persons in the US — $360,000 per person — but not for other black Americans who suffered from discrimination.
Even with that restriction, the cost has been estimated at $800 billion.
A huge segment of New York’s black residents are not descendants of slaves.
In New York City alone, well over 500,000 people — more than 25% of the black population — are Afro-Caribbean or African immigrants, census figures show.
Some New York black activists said California’s reparations proposal doesn’t go far enough.
Bertha Lewis, head of the Brooklyn-based Black Institute, told The Post that reparations must be considered for all black residents, because they have suffered from decades of systemic racism resulting from slavery.
“That’s a false narrative,” Lewis said. “You can’t just say, ‘Only descendants of slaves from the South.’ Black people faced the effects of slavery — discrimination — simply because they’re black.”
She said that in many cases it will be extremely hard to document ties to slavery given the scant records at the time.
‘Our choice’
But others say blacks who moved to the US for better opportunities have no right to reparations for slavery in this country.
“It was our choice to come here,” said Mona Davids, a black South African who moved to New York as a child. “Descendants of slaves didn’t have a choice.”
Davids, who publishes Little Africa News, which serves that US African community, said reparations advocates should also go after African countries where rulers sold people to slave traders.
Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, a sponsor of the law that established the commission, said public hearings will be held to get input from New Yorkers as well as experts.
New York state records counted 21,193 enslaved people in the 1790 population. Slavery wasn’t outlawed in New York until 1817.