Today on CityCast DC, after slavery, DC paid financial restitution to former enslavers
that is, the 1862 Act that freed enslaved people in the city also compensated their former
owners up to $300.
Now, DC Council is considering moving toward paying reparations to the descendants of enslaved
people.
The Washington Post's Michael Bryce Sadler explains how the plan would work and how likely
it is to pass.
Today's Tuesday, September 19th, I am Richard Todd and here's what DC is talking about.
So Michael, DC Council is about to be back in session after its summer recess and one
of the most highly anticipated bills are going to be talking about is reparations for
Washingtonians who are descendants of former slaves.
Obviously, I don't need to tell you this is like a very complex topic and proposal.
But what does this bill actually say?
Yeah, so the first distinction is that this bill is not to decide whether DC residents
will get reparations or not.
This bill is basically creating a task force to explore what reparations might look
like in the district.
Even by virtue of this bill, which was led by Councilmember Kenyumik Duffy having a
hearing, this is the furthest locally this discussion has gone.
He tried to introduce this bill before back in 2020 and kind of ran out of time before
it could advance through the council.
So this time around, the goal is really to get a meaningful conversation started about
what reparations look like in DC and this task force.
Nine members, I believe five are appointed by the mayor and they're looking for experts,
academics, people who have worked in this space that could actually lay out what it might
look like who's eligible.
What would payments look like?
There's so many questions that many cities who are implementing similar task forces have
grappled with about what reparations should look like.
What are the different moving pieces of how this is being discussed in the DC area?
Yeah, so the biggest moving pieces really are about A, who would be eligible for reparations
and then B, what would the form of payment be?
The eligibility question is really interesting because different cities have struggled to
figure out, well, should it be people who are direct descendants of slaves, should it
be people who have evidenced that they were impacted by discriminatory policies that
were the result of slavery.
There's these questions about lineage and should it be all black people?
There's a lot of fiery opinions about what eligibility should look like and then the form
of payment also, where would the funds come from?
There's so many moving parts that that's why the first step is let's create a commission
to create a plan that we can all get behind and then maybe we'll see what payment or
restitution actually looks like.
In terms of figuring out who has been impacted by slavery, I know that they're talking
about a slavery era database.
What can you tell me about that?
Yeah, so that's part of what this bill would require the city to do is create a database
of records.
Essentially, you'd want to see who is living in the city, who is using clues from the
past to figure out who is here living in the district that maybe is a direct descendant
or has been directly impacted by discriminatory policies.
Different cities have looked to similar resources as well.
What are the historic records we can lean on to help figure out who might be eligible
for this?
Something I was surprised to see is that the DMV, not the acronym for the DC Maryland
Virginia area, like the actual Department of Motor Vehicles, is being brought into
this conversation.
This is not really a transportation issue, so why is the DMV being brought into this?
Yeah, well, the main point of interest with the DMV is that's one of the potential mechanisms
for revenue for this fund that McDuffie proposed initially.
So, the bill, the last aspect of it in addition to the database and this task force is to create
a reparations fund that would get 0.5 of the city's annual sales tax revenue and then
also 0.5% of all tickets and fees collected by the DMV, which is very interesting because
we all know that's a pretty great revenue source for the city in terms of traffic tickets,
but as some advocates pointed out at the hearing and during discussions about this, there's
a lot of data that shows that black people in the city are the most disproportionately
impacted by traffic tickets and fees.
So, it's like, are you really going to ask black people in essence to pay for their own
reparations?
Was the argument that was presented to what McDuffie said, look, this is just the first draft
of this, basically, like this is what we want the task force to work through and figure
out.
Otherwise, we can fund this that you're not having that dynamic play out where people
are kind of paying themselves.
Yeah, we just did a whole episode about the racial inequities when it comes to tickets
in the city.
So, that's definitely a thing.
I know there was a very long hearing about reparations in the spring session.
What was that like?
It was interesting.
I mean, you saw across the board a pretty broad support for reparations in the city,
what was most interesting and what you don't always see in DC council hearings is advocates
from elsewhere who literally flew in to testify in person from California, from Illinois,
Evanston, Illinois specifically, these places where reparations studies have either recently
been completed or underway to weigh in on what worked in their cities and their jurisdictions,
what type of opposition they faced, what were the things they wish they would have done
differently as DC starts to build its own effort.
So that was pretty fascinating to see and, like I said, across the board, most of the people
who spoke were firmly in favor of reparations in the city with a few people saying, you
know, I don't think this is necessarily the case or necessarily needed in this day and
age because there are so many programs to support people who are disadvantaged.
Why do we need tougher payments as well?
Was that the main point that people who spoke out against reparations made that there
are already programs to support marginalized people, so why add reparations into the mix?
Basically, and I think some of those questions are always like, it's not fair for me to
pay for, you know, the sins of my ancestors.
That comes out as well and you see this time and time again when these cities are debating
these issues nationally reparations and also even when you look at national polling as
it pertains to reparations, probably speaking black people are very in favor of reparations
understandably so.
Other races are a little more lukewarm on it or against with the argument being it's
not fair for us to have to pay for something we personally never did.
Did any proposed details come out of that session about how this would actually work?
I think there were some good ideas that were presented or at least counter arguments
to the way the bills currently crafted that might ultimately change by the time the council
votes on it.
So for example, McDuffie's initial idea about using some ticket and fee revenue to fund
the reparations fund.
I could see that being adjusted to something where maybe high income earners that was one
thing that was suggested like we should use and impose a tax on more wealthy people to
help fund this.
So I don't know ultimately what that will look like it might stay the same but that will
be a key thing to look at as this move forward is what does this fund look like.
Obviously the fund also leaves room for the city to receive gifts, donations, things
like that to support the fund but that funding and element worth the annual money coming
from will be pretty crucial.
So you kind of spoke to this a little bit but McDuffie has said that you know the bill's
final form might look very different than when it started do you have any sense of based
on how that hearing went, how these different proposals might change.
It's hard to say I mean I think we haven't really had a chance to see what lawmakers think
about some of these proposals besides McDuffie who I think was the only one who was maybe
up that full nine hour hearing or whatever it was over this others popped in and out.
So I think more ideas will emerge as this becomes a topic for the entire 13 member council.
But one thing we can say is that the council is largely on board with this.
There were 10 co-sponsors to McDuffie's bill.
So the idea of creating a task force to do this there's brought support for it.
I think that's still a different question of should the city implement reparations is
a slightly different question and we haven't quite gotten there yet.
But what could the impact be on racial equity in DC if this goes through?
It's tough to say exactly without knowing what payments or restitution look like.
So for example, in Evanston, Illinois, they incorporated their reparations program to
be focused on housing and housing restoration helping people who were disadvantaged from
buying a home or faced barriers giving them money to purchase property or to have renovations
on their home.
So it could very well look differently than say a direct payment or something like that.
But I think in any event, it will undoubtedly advance racial equity in the city.
McDuffie frequently says that if you look at basically every measure of wealth, if you
look at every measure of success in the city, whether that's economic, whether that's public
health, whether that's who's being targeted about the least, more what have you.
Black people are 9 times out of 10 on the wrong end of the spectrum.
So I think any meaningful movement or trying to get more money in people's hands to provide
more opportunities if it looks like a home ownership support or something will help because
there's so much room for improvement.
Must it be real though, even if DC Council does end up passing this, it would have to go
to Congress for review and I mean, do you think they're going for it?
Well, that was my first question that I had for McDuffie when he had a press conference
ahead of this hearing, really celebratory.
The only thing I could think about is the fact that Congress has really showed its force
in terms of opposing some of the city's proposed policy specifically in the realm of criminal
justice over the past few months.
And at the federal level, efforts toward reparations and Congress even bills to support
a task force or just to say, this is a resolution that we support the idea of a task force.
I guess not gone anywhere.
So considering the opposition to DC and the fact that this has not moved at the federal
level, it's a legitimate question of, you know, would this encounter some type of opposition
since so many, especially right-wing federal lawmakers who might oppose something like
this, like to use DC as an example, especially around election time and we're coming up on
an election year.
Michael, thank you so much for being here as always.
Of course, of course.
Thanks for having me, Bridget.
Before you go, here's some quick news.
The North East boundary tunnel is completed after six years of construction.
The tunnel adds 90 million gallons of storage to reduce water and sewer backups and ultimately
prevent dangerous flooding on Rhode Island Avenue, Northeast.
Meanwhile, the Federal Inflation Reduction Act is funding the planting of thousands of
trees in black and brown neighborhoods that don't currently have tree canopy.
The federal money will pay for community outreach, planting of 10,000 new trees and maintenance
of 30,000 young trees.
And finally, Virginia's governor has asked the Virginia Military Institute to house a
Confederate statue that the army is removing from the Arlington National Cemetery.
Critics say the statue whitewash is slavery and perpetuates harmful stereotypes.
The Defense Department would have to approve the statues moved to the M.I. and it's still
unclear who would pay for the transfer.
There's also an ongoing legal effort to keep the statue in Arlington Cemetery.
That's all for today here on CityCastyC.
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We'll be back tomorrow morning with even more news from around the city.
Talk to you then.
I'm so sorry.
Can you give me one minute?
I can't just knocked over a snow globe and now they're drinking in the water, which
I think is like, just one second.
I'm so sorry.
It's OK.