A new reparations committee in New York State has sparked anger from Republicans who argue that the panel will only divide the state.
New York will create a commission tasked with studying potential reparations for state residents who are descendants of enslaved people under a bill signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday. The commission, which will present its findings in 2025, will be tasked with examining the state's legacy of slavery and making non-binding recommendations on how to address racial and structural inequalities in New York that could include monetary compensation.
Anything proposed by the panel would need to be passed by the state legislature and governor.
New York is the second state after California to create such a commission. It comes at a time when many states and cities across the country are figuring out how to address systemic racism in the U.S. The panel in California finished its work earlier this year, recommending as much as $1.2 million per eligible resident over time.
Although the creation of the New York committee was praised by Black leaders who attended Tuesday's signing and other state officials, it was also met with backlash from Republicans like New York state Senator Rob Ortt and New York GOP Chairman Ed Cox.
Ortt blasted the legislation on Tuesday, calling the commission "divisive" and "unworkable." Arguing that the reparations of slavery had already been paid "with the blood and lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who fought to end slavery during the Civil War," Ortt said he was confident that any recommendations from the panel would hurt residents rather than help.
"As we've seen in California, I am confident this commission's recommendations will be unrealistic, will come at an astronomical cost to all New Yorkers, and will only further divide our state," he said in a statement.
Reparations are a divisive issue in the United States. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from June found that while nearly 6 in 10 Democrats support reparations, only 18 percent of Republicans do. Black Americans also overwhelmingly favor reparations, with 74 percent supporting the idea, while only 26 percent of white Americans do.
Cox slammed Hochul's signing as "misguided" and criticized her for not focusing on other challenges facing the state, like the recent influx of migrants from the U.S.-Mexico border.
"Governor Hochul's decision to endorse this divisive and unproductive reparations study is misguided," Cox said in a statement. "Instead of focusing on the issues that truly matter to New Yorkers, like our ongoing immigration crisis, crime, and the exodus of residents from our state, she's chosen to reopen old wounds and stoke racial tensions for political gain."
Newsweek reached out to Hochul's office via email for comment.
Slavery was legal in New York until 1827. Hochul acknowledged that the state profited heavily from the slave industry and the slave trade.
"In New York, we like to think we're on the right side of this—slavery was a product of the South, the Confederacy," the governor said at the signing of the bill in Manhattan. "What is hard to embrace is that our state also flourished from that slavery. It's not a beautiful story, but it's the truth."
The move was celebrated by those who joined Hochul at Tuesday's event, like Reverend Al Sharpton, who applauded the governor, telling the crowd, "It took a courageous young white woman from Western New York to say I'm going to do what all the urban men before me wouldn't."
"Some of the media will act like [Hochul] met us here, and she gave Rev. Al and all of us a check for a billion dollars," Sharpton said. "But that's not what this does. This is the beginning of healing the scars."
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, whose office researched racial wealth disparities and released a new report that supported the reparations commission earlier this month, also commended state Senator James Sanders Jr. and Assembly Leader Michaelle Solanges, both Democrats, for spearheading the effort.
The New York State Young Republicans said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that Democrats "thrive when New Yorkers are divided" and accused the new legislation of pitting New Yorkers against each other.
GOP strategist Reverend Damien Jones also called the committee a "lie" that was being promoted by "dishonest Dem governors" and insisted to his followers that "reparations will not be paid in your lifetime."
"Don't fall for the deception in an election year," Jones posted on X.
Hochul admitted on Tuesday she had "some concerns about" the commission because joining the reparations conversation could sow racial division and strife, but pointed to last year's mass shooting in Buffalo when a gunman who reportedly described himself as a white supremacist killed 10 people, all of whom were Black.
"Anybody that thinks that racism and hatred for Blacks no longer exists, tell that to the families of the 10 victims at the grocery store in the massacre in Buffalo, who once again will be staring at empty chairs at their Christmas dinner," Hochul said.
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Katherine Fung is a Newsweek reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and world politics. ... Read more
