Reparations speech furor
Appointees blame whites, cops
Two representatives appointed to a committee considering paying reparations claimed whites were responsible for climate change, slammed Israel and pushed to defund the police.
Ron Daniels and Lurie Daniel Favors — both appointed to New York’s Commission on Reparations and Racial Justice by state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie — made several fiery statements, including Daniels slamming black US Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) as “Uncle Tim,” according to a review of their public statements.
“White Folks Messed Up the Weather = Black Folks Save the Planet,” Daniels, a longtime activist who ran for president on the minor Peace and Freedom Party in 1992, said in an Oct. 25, 2021, posting on X.
“‘Uncle Tim’, Scott that is, Who Picked Cotton On the Plantation, Is ‘Still On the Plantation’ = Picked to Be the ‘Black Face’ To Suppress/Black Power/Black Freedom On Behalf of White Supremacy/White Power and That’s ‘The Cotton Picking Truth’ #BewareofUncleTim,” he wrote on May 3, 2021.
Daniels is founder and president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and served as the administrator for the National African American Reparations Commission, a leading organization in the US and global reparations movements.
“With silence, comes complacency. No Homeland. No Peace. No Justice, No Peace in Israel,” he wrote on Oct. 25, 2023.
Favors, executive director at the Center for Law and and Social Justice at CUNY’s Medgar Evers College, wrote on July 7, 2019, “F--K YOU & YOUR RACE APOLOGETICS. WE WILL NOT BE SILENT. WE WILL NOT MAKE YOU COMFORTABLE.”
Favors also said, “Police all across the country are literally proving *daily* why #DefundThePolice is necessary. I’m old enough to remember summa yall claiming activists were going too far.”
Nine appointees were recently selected to the panel studying reparations by Gov. Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) and Heastie (D-Bronx). They appointed three members each.
State Conservative Party chairman Gerard Kassar blasted the comments from the two panel members.
“The commission on reparations was ridiculous from the start. This proves it,” Kassar said. “These sound like people who have preconceived notions of what they view as white privilege. Unbelievable. There’s no way these appointees should serve on the commission given their comments.”
The study of reparations has already set off a fierce debate in the black community over who should get compensation to make up for slavery and racism.