With his easy manner and bright bow ties, State Sen. James Sanders seems like a throwback to another time, a genial (if largely mythic) era when elected officials were largely civil and knew how to fold a pocket square.
Now, however, the Queens legislator appears poised to enter one of the most unsettled corners of national discourse: debate over the payment of reparations for slavery.
Sanders has been a leading force behind legislation creating a reparations commission for New York. His bill, which cleared both chambers of the Legislature in June, puts New York on the same path as California, where a state reparations task force submitted its final report to the legislature last week.
But it is an uncertain path, to say the least, with most Americans opposed to reparations. Three in 10 U.S. adults say descendants of enslaved people in the U.S. should be repaid in some way, such as given land or money, according to a 2021 Pew survey. About seven-in-10 say these descendants should not be repaid.
Sanders, whose district covers Rockaway Beach, Howard Beach, Jamaica and St. Albans, has closely followed the proceedings in California and is full of praise for that state’s leadership on the highly contentious issue.
But the lawmaker insists New York has no need to mimic California’s controversial effort, whose most eye-popping feature has been cash payments to the descendants of slaves topping seven figures. New York, Sanders says, has its own reckoning to make.
While California never legalized enslavement, New York did, only outlawing the practice in 1827. In the 18th century, New York City had the highest rate of slave ownership of any city other than Charleston, and much of the city was built by enslaved men and women. Historian say the slave trade played a major role in New York City’s economic growth.
As the New York bill notes, violence and anti-Black racism played out for generations in New York, long after the Civil War ended enslavement.
“The consequences of…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply