STATE EFFORTS ON REPARATIONS STALL ACROSS U.S.

Momentum from racial reckoning hasn’t led to results

During last summer’s reckoning over racial injustice, decadeslong debates about whether to offer reparations to the descendants of slaves in the U.S. finally seemed to be gaining momentum.

State lawmakers in California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Oregon — where Democrats control the legislatures — introduced or hoped to revive proposals to study the possibility. It turns out the wait for reparations will continue.

The state efforts have mostly stalled, raising questions about whether they can win enough support to succeed on a wide scale. California is the only state to approve a commission to study reparations statewide and how they might work.

“We need a federal reparations bill, but I don’t know when we’ll get there,” said Maryland state Delegate Wanika Fisher, a Democrat who introduced legislation there to create a reparations task force. “Hopefully we will, but I think states should be accountable.”

Her bill received a committee hearing but never made it any further during this year’s legislative session, which ended earlier this month. It’s similar in the other states. Bills that would study the possibility of statewide reparations in New Jersey, New York and Oregon have been parked in legislative committees.

That mirrors the outlook in Congress. A committee in the U.S. House, which is controlled by Democrats, advanced a decades-old bill that would establish a reparations commission, but its prospects appear dim in the evenly divided Senate where it’s unlikely to generate enough support to overcome a filibuster.

“A lot of our legislation and the things we work on are all Band-Aids on the issue of institutional racism, class inequality and the host of other issues that stem from that,” said Fisher, who plans to reintroduce her bill next year. “But we’ve never fully tackled what’s at the heart, what’s the cancer, what’s the disease?”

The lack of progress reflects the nation’s conflicting views on whether reparations to atone for slavery are necessary. A 2019 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that the vast majority of Black Americans — 74 percent — favored reparations, but less than a fifth of White Americans did.

Maryland resident Lynda Davis believes a lack of education on the subject keeps many White Americans from supporting the effort. Davis, who is White, belongs to Coming to the Table, a national organization made up of descendants of those who were enslaved and slaveholders.

“I think getting people to make that leap is sometimes a challenge,” said Davis, who submitted written testimony in support of the state reparations effort. “It’s trying to help people see the ongoing harms, like this summer. I think more White people are getting it now, which is hard because it seems like people should have gotten it before now.”

Davis points to local efforts as an example of what grassroots activism around the issue can achieve.

In March, Evanston, Ill., became one of the first U.S. cities to offer Black residents reparations. The city council in Asheville, N.C., voted unanimously last July in favor of reparations for Black residents that would take the form of helping businesses and providing housing and health care. Other local governments, including in Amherst, Mass., Providence, R.I., and Iowa City, Iowa, are considering whether or how to grant some form of reparations.

Black lawmakers and other supporters say federal action is needed because so few of the state and local discussions about reparations are happening in the South, where the majority of descendants of slavery live.