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The
state will not be required to follow the recommendations of the
commission. New York lawmakers and civil rights activists who
attended Hochul's signing ceremony at the New York Historical
Society in Manhattan hailed it as a key step toward confronting
the state's legacy of slavery and resulting racial gaps in
wealth, housing, employment and criminal justice.
"It doesn't mean fixing the past, undoing what happened," Hochul
said at the signing ceremony, "but it does mean more than giving
people a simple apology 150 years later."
She cited recent anti-Black hate crimes in New York that she
said showed "white supremacy is alive and well."
There has been a nationwide surge in efforts to reckon with
slavery's impact and institutional racism. Public opinion is
sharply split across racial and political lines on the subject
of reparations.
Reverend Al Sharpton, speaking at Tuesday's signing ceremony,
said he knew some would wrongly interpret the commission as
Hochul giving Black activists "a check for billions of dollars,"
but said it should be seen as the start of a healing process.
Slavery officially ended in New York in 1827. Later, policing
and judicial practices, housing discrimination, and school
segregation perpetuated the state's racial wealth gap, leaving
it greater than that of the U.S. as a whole, according to a Dec.
6 report by the state's comptroller.
The median net worth of white households in New York is
$276,900, nearly 15 times greater than Black households in the
state, which have a median net worth of $18,870. The ratio
between median white and Black household net worth across the
U.S. is 9 to 3.
The first U.S. state task force to research and develop
reparation proposals for African Americans was launched in
California in 2020.
In June, that group released recommendations for policy reforms
and proposed formulas the California state legislature could use
to calculate financial compensation for descendants of Black
people whose ancestors were in the United States in the 19th
century. The formulas are based on historic discrimination in
housing, wages, and other areas.
(Reporting by Julia Harte; editing by Donna Bryson and David
Gregorio)
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