New York takes steps toward slavery reparations with new commission

New York State will create a commission tasked with considering reparations to address the persistent, harmful effects of slavery in the state, under a bill signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul.

It comes on Tuesday, a time when many states and towns throughout the United States attempt to figure out how to best reckon with the country's dark past, and follows in the footsteps of similar task forces established in California and Illinois.

"In New York, we like to think we're on the right side of this. Slavery was a product of the South, the Confederacy," Hochul, a Democrat, said at the bill signing ceremony in New York City.

"What is hard to embrace is the fact that our state also flourished from that slavery. It's not a beautiful story, but indeed it is the truth."

Although slavery was abolished in New York state in 1827, before US federal abolition in 1865, it "was an integral part of the development of the State of New York, and the consequences... can still be observed today," Hochul’s statement added.

The nine-member commission will be required to deliver a report a year after its first meeting.

Its recommendations could potentially include monetary compensation but would be non-binding.

The panel’s findings are intended to spur policy changes, programs and projects that attempt to remedy slavery’s harmful effects.

The idea of using public money to compensate the descendants of enslaved people is almost certain to draw a backlash from some, including some white people who don’t believe they should have to pay for the sins of long-ago ancestors, and other ethnic groups that weren’t involved in the slave trade.

The governor and the legislative leaders of the state Assembly and Senate will each appoint three qualified members to the commission.

They have 90 days to make their picks.

Backlash

State Senate Republican Leader Rob Ortt said in a statement that he believes New York's recommendations will come at an "astronomical cost" to all New Yorkers.

"The reparations of slavery were paid with the blood and lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who fought to end slavery during the Civil War," he said.

He added that it's unrealistic for states to meet the potentially expensive price tag that could come with cash reparations.

California in 2020 became the first state to create a reparations task force.

The group handed its two-year report to state lawmakers in June, who then introduced a bill that would create an agency to carry out some of the panel’s more-than 100 recommendations, including helping families with genealogical research.

But turning those proposals into policies could be difficult, given the state is facing a heavy budget deficit.

Other states, including Massachusetts and New Jersey, have considered studying reparations, but none have yet passed legislation.

A Chicago suburb in Evanston, Illinois, became the first city to make reparations available to Black residents through a $10 million housing project in 2021.

Cornell William Brooks, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School who teaches civil rights and researches the economics of reparations, said state-led initiatives similar to New York’s are crucial for reaching national reconciliation and repair.

"States and municipalities cannot solve a national problem by themselves, but they can be a means by which we reach a national solution," he said.

The US Congress apologised to African Americans for slavery in 2009, but a federal proposal to create a commission studying reparations has long stalled.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday expressed support for the measure, noting that some venerable institutions in New York, as elsewhere, are tied to wealth that derived from exploiting the labour of enslaved people.

"We have to reckon with that," Adams, a Democrat and former state senator, said during a City Hall news conference.