ASHEVILLE, N.C. – In an extraordinary move, the Asheville City Council has apologized for the North Carolina city’s historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants.
The 7-0 vote came the night of July 14.
“Hundreds of years of Black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today,” said Councilman Keith Young, one of two African American members of the body and the measure’s chief proponent.
“It is simply not enough to remove statutes. Black people in this country are dealing with issues that are systemic in nature.
The unanimously passed resolution does not mandate direct payments. Instead, it will make investments in areas where Black residents face disparities.
“The resulting budgetary and programmatic priorities may include but not be limited to increasing minority home ownership and access to other affordable housing, increasing minority business ownership and career opportunities, strategies to grow equity and generational wealth, closing the gaps in health care, education, employment and pay, neighborhood safety and fairness within criminal justice,” the resolution reads.
Increasing generational wealth should be the focus, supporter says
The resolution calls on the city to create the Community Reparations Commission, inviting community groups and other local governments to join. It will be the commission’s job to make concrete recommendations for programs and resources to be used.
Councilwoman Sheneika Smith, who is Black, said the council had gotten emails from those “asking, ‘Why should we pay for what happened during slavery?'”
“(Slavery) is this institution that serves as the starting point for the building of the strong economic floor for white America, while attempting to keep Blacks subordinate forever to its progress,” Smith said.
Councilman Vijay Kapoor, who has often split with Young and Smith on police and budget issues, said he supported the measure for moral reasons. But he said skeptics could look to the “practical reason”: data showing showing large disparities between African Americans and other Asheville residents.
“We don’t want to be held back by these gaps,” Kapoor said. “We want everyone to be successful.”
The council allowed an hour of public comment on the measure. Many who were not able to speak before the vote waited for another hourlong comment period afterward, pushing the meeting late into the night. Most were in support.
Rob Thomas, community liaison for the Racial Justice Coalition, which led the push for reparations, thanked the council.
“This is a really, really good gesture as far as the foundation of what we can build,” Thomas said. “The potential of what can come out of this document is amazing.”
Increasing generational wealth — something African Americans were deprived of through economic and regulatory discrimination — should be the focus, he said.
It was also important that the county’s government join, Thomas said, to ensure issues weren’t lost between the county and city.
The Buncombe County’s Board of Commissioners is not clearly behind the reparations measure, though it has a 4-3 Democratic majority.
NAKED CRIMINALITY…
I may look white but I identify as black send me my check!
This ought to be one for the, “Are you fu**ing kidding me!?” folder.
I was not there, nor were anybody who is alive today, there, back then.
So, how in blue blazes does the philosophies of long dead and decomposed bodies make the bodies of today, at all responsible, especially financially?!?!
I have a black friend who is fully and completely not in favor of the BLM, George Kirby, let’s go wreckin’ and demandin’ crowd. He sees it for what it is. A tactic of control by unfriendlies.
The Bill of Rights, superior ratified law which is the common law for the united States of the Americas, allows no corruption of blood. So unless these 155 year old corpses can get up out of the ground and file against other individual corpses that have also gotten up out of the ground, in a common law court under common law jurisdiction, this is a complete fraud and has no law behind it.
I generally don’t quote religion, but this one is fitting. I think the ones who originated and composed the Bill of Rights would have most certainly agreed with it.
Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him. But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God.
In other words, we may not be around to see it , but they will get what’s coming to them, eventually.
I lived near Asheville and frequently traveled there weekly, it was a unique, beautiful city surrounded by mountains. The California hippies came to Asheville in the 60 s to
rebuild the city. It is extremely liberal place that bows down to all minorities . So, now the city has black tarped a 65 ft high granite monument to a Confederate Governor Vance .
It is digusting how far these askissn garbage will go. The residents want it gone, let the city raise their taxes to pay for is removal. How is removing hundred year old Historical monuments making a difference, now these “people” want reparations for slavery, when a small percentage 7.4 % white people actually owned slaves! really! I give them money right after I take gates dna altering drug, I mean vaccine.