- New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signs controversial legislation to create slavery reparations commission
On Tuesday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed historic racial justice legislation, establishing a committee to investigate slavery reparations.
The new law authorises the formation of a community commission to investigate the history of slavery in New York state and possible compensation.
“You can see the unanticipated consequences of slavery in things like Black poverty and Black maternal mortality,” said Nicole Carty, executive director of the Get Free organisation.
Activists like Carty said the new law had been in the works for a long time. Following the racially motivated Buffalo mass shooting, she helped fight for the law, which was sponsored by Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages.
“We saw that monster come into the community and kill 12 Black New Yorkers,” Solages told the crowd.
The signing took held on the Upper West Side at the New York Historical Society, right down the hall from the Frederick Douglass exhibit.
Slavery was abolished in New York in 1827 and across the United States in 1863, but it was followed by racial segregation tactics like as Jim Crow and redlining, which denied loans to people based on race and neighbourhood, affecting decades.
“I’m originally from Long Island.” “There was the first suburb of Levittown, one of the greatest housing programmes that this country could have, and Black New Yorkers were excluded from it,” Solages explained.
“Look at today, where we still see Blacks making 70 cents on the dollar for every dollar whites make,” Rev. Al Sharpton remarked.
According to leaders such as Sharpton, the committee comes at a difficult time in America.
According to a 2021 Pew Research poll, 77% of Black Americans support reparations, whereas only 18% of white Americans do.
Prior to the Revolutionary War, advocates claim, New York metropolis had more enslaved Africans than any other metropolis, with the exception of Charleston, South Carolina. Enslaved Africans constituted 20% of the population of New York.
“Let’s be clear about what we mean by reparations. It does not imply going back in time and undoing what has already occurred. That is not something we can accomplish. Nobody can. But it entails more than simply apologising 150 years later. This bill allows us to have a rational discussion about what we want the future to look like. “There is nothing more democratic than that,” Hochul stated.
“We do have a governor who is honest enough to say out loud that this is hard, who is honest enough to say she knows there will be pushback,” state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said.
The group will consist of nine members recruited over the following six months. They will have a year to complete the report before it is made public.
“Our generation desires leaders who are willing to confront our true history,” said J.J. Brisco, a student advocate.
The next generation is hoping that this historic occasion will throw some light on a sad past.
After California, New York is the second state in the country to investigate reparations.
