Kathy Hochul just signed a bill that will establish a commission in the Empire State to weigh reparations to the descendants of slavery.
Here’s the news:
New York will set up a commission to consider reparations for slavery https://t.co/nyqmV5Ftyp
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 19, 2023
New York state will create a commission tasked with considering reparations to address the persistent, harmful effects of slavery in the state, under a bill signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday.
It comes at a time when many states and towns throughout the United States attempt to figure out how to best reckon with the country’s dark past, and follows in the footsteps of similar task forces established in California and Illinois.
“In New York, we like to think we’re on the right side of this. Slavery was a product of the South, the Confederacy,” Hochul, a Democrat, said at the bill signing ceremony in New York City. “What is hard to embrace is the fact that our state also flourished from that slavery. It’s not a beautiful story, but indeed it is the truth.”
The law, which was passed by state lawmakers in June, says the commission will examine the institution of slavery, which was fully abolished in New York by 1827, and its ongoing impact on Black New Yorkers today.
The nine-member commission will be required to deliver a report a year after its first meeting. Its recommendations could potentially include monetary compensation but would be non-binding. The panel’s findings are intended to spur policy changes, programs and projects that attempt to remedy slavery’s harmful effects.
The idea of using public money to compensate the descendants of enslaved people is almost certain to draw a backlash from some, including some white people who don’t believe they should have to pay for the sins of long-ago ancestors, and other ethnic groups that weren’t involved in the slave trade.
Here we go again. Another liberal state wants to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves even though we’re over 150 years from the abolition of slavery in 1865. Talk about a waste of taxpayer money.
And don’t you love how the AP says “some white people” will object to this nonsense? They really mean to say ‘white supremacists’ when they say ‘some white people’. Even so, how racist it is for them to assume that black people won’t object to the idea of ‘reparations’! What they should be saying is that some New York State taxpayers will object.