New York state officials, bowing to political headwinds, have agreed to push back a long-awaited report on reparations for slavery to 2029, officials said.
Assemblymember Michaelle A. Solages, chair of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, told Gothamist the two-year delay, which was embedded in the latest state budget, came at the request of the state’s Reparations Commission, charged with studying the harm tied to enslavement.
Solages, a Nassau County Democrat, said the “erosion of Black power in the South” as well as the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives necessitated a slower, more considered approach to the commission’s work.
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Aides to Gov. Kathy Hochul referred questions to the commission, formally known as the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies. Seanelle Hawkins, chair of the commission, did not address the extension in a statement, but said the state panel had collected 200 hours of testimony to date and would continue to host public hearings across the state, including a May 23 hearing in Hempstead and a May 30 hearing in Harlem.
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The commission was initially required to submit a report last summer, but that deadline was pushed back to 2027, and now to 2029, nearly four years after its initial deadline. The inquiry gained momentum amid the racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis in 2020.
Hochul signed a bill establishing the commission in 2023. It was designated “to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against people of African descent, and the impact of these forces on living people of African descent and to make determinations regarding compensation.”
The law recounted the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in New York in 1627 through the development of Jim Crow laws and discriminatory 20th century practices like redlining.
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Activists and elected officials have pushed for reparations payments for decades but public polling indicates that reparations are deeply unpopular, with nearly 7 out of 10 Americans expressing opposition, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey.
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The post NY Officials, Citing Shifting Politics, Put Off Reparations Study Another 2 Years appeared first on American Renaissance.
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