Detroit has become the latest city to look into reparations for black people.
The city’s “reparations task force” met for an introductory session Thursday night, beginning its effort to “establish, process, develop and implement community reparations for mass-historic unjust treatment of Detroit’s majority African American population,” according to a document on the task force’s website.
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“Today is a historical day as we begin the process of rewriting the wrong (and) repair the harm that was caused by racist practices and our political process that wasn’t favorable to black folks,” Executive Co-Chairman Keith Williams, who chairs the Michigan Democratic Party’s Black Caucus, said.
The task force, which was created in response to a successful 2021 ballot measure, has promised reparations will be “so much more than a check,” according to Executive Co-Chairwoman Lauren Hood. “We’re not talking about a one-time payout but a paradigm shift in the kinds of policies and practices that govern black communities in Detroit.”
Some Detroit residents are expecting a check, however, as UpTogether Senior Policy Director Kofi Kenyatta said, calling into the public comment period of the task force meeting: “Reparations can mean a lot of things but it must include, no strings attached, direct cash to Black people and systemic change throughout all levels.”
According to the City Council, the task force has been given a $325,000 budget to embark on an 18-month process, at the end of which it will submit a written report with findings and recommendations.
Detroit is not the first city to explore the idea of giving black residents reparations.
Last month, San Francisco advanced a plan to give each black resident $5 million in reparation money, which was even criticized by the local NAACP chapter.
The movement toward reparations has increased as critical race theorists like Nikole Hannah-Jones have popularized the issue. The Detroit City Council quoted “with approval” from Hannah-Jones’s 2020 op-ed “What Is Owed,” saying, “If true justice and equality are ever to be achieved in the United States, the country must finally take seriously what it owes black Americans.”
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“If we are to be redeemed, if we are to live up to the magnificent ideals upon which we were founded, we must do what is just,” the article continues. “It is time for this country to pay its debt. It is time for reparations.”
According to the Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez, the reparations “would be one of the largest wealth transfers in U.S. history,” estimated at about $13 trillion.
