New bill would provide reparations to descendants of enslaved people

COLLEEN GRABLICK WAMU/DCist

At-large D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie is re-upping a years-old effort to establish a reparations fund for Black D.C. residents.

The former Ward 5 councilmember reintroduced a bill on Feb. 27 that would create a task force for researching and building a reparations framework that would benefit Black Americans “directly wronged and traumatized by the ills of slavery, Jim Crow, and structural and institutional racism,” according to the bill’s text. Black D.C. residents who are descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. would be prioritized in the distribution of the funds.

McDuffie first introduced the legislation in the fall of 2020, after a summer of protests against racial injustice and police brutality, but the bill died at the end of the year before making it to a vote.

“[Part of this bill] is an acknowledgement of where are today and how we got here,” McDuffie told DCist/WAMU on Feb. 27. “The reality that slavery, de jure, de facto segregation, Black codes, and other government-sanctioned actions, redlining in real estate…really helped to deny wealth and opportunities to Black Americans. There’s a racial wealth gap here in the nation’s capital, [there’s] an educational achievement gap, the stark disparities in health and employment — all as a result of intentional laws.”

The average white household in D.C. has a networth 81 times larger than an average Black household, according to a 2016 Urban Institute report. Black unemployment is higher in D.C. than in the rest of the U.S., and disparities in homeownership between Black and white residents is vast. A new Urban Institute report released just this month found that Black homeownership is decreasing in Wards 7 and 8 — longstanding majority Black communities — while mortgages taken out by non-Black residents in those same areas are increasing, particularly in gentrifying areas near the Anacostia River.

The task force would consist of nine members, five of which would be appointed by Mayor Muriel Bowser. (She would also select the task force chair). The remaining four seats, including the co-chair, would be selected by the D.C. Council. Of the five mayoral appointees, one will be an academic in the field of civil rights, and two will be from “major civil society and reparations” organizations that have worked in reparatory justice previously, according to the text of the bill.

To aid in the group’s research and proposals, the bill would also require the city’s Commissioner of Insurance, Securities, and Banking to establish a database of records relating to slaveholding in the District, dating back to the 1600s.

The money in the fund would come from D.C.’s annual sales tax, as well as revenue from the Department of Motor Vehicles’ tickets and fines. (An analysis by the Washington Post found that between 2016-2020, 62% of traffic fines issued in the city were in neighborhoods where Black residents make up at least 70% of the population, and where the average median household is below $50,000.) Gifts, grants, and donations would also supplement the fund, which will be overseen by D.C.’s Chief Financial Officer, Glen Lee. As a part of the task force’s work, they will decide if the funds should be used — whether that’s direct cash payments to residents, grant programs, or homeownership funds, for example.

The bill is co-signed by the majority of McDuffie’s council colleagues, except At-large member Christina Henderson and

Ward 3’s Matthew Frumin. (Spokespeople for both offices did not immediately return DCist/WAMU’s request for comment.)

McDuffie’s goal is for the task force to meet no later than June 1, 2024, with a public report of findings and recommendations issued no later than a year after the initial meeting. He said he hopes to have a hearing on the bill by June of this year, before the Council recess.

If passed, D.C. would join a number of other cities and counties with groups, task forces, commissions, and studies aimed at offering reparations to Black residents. In the absence of a federal plan (every year since 1989, a bill that would establish a framework for reparations has been introduced and failed to advance) the effort to establish at least the foundations of reparations work has largely occurred at local levels. In Shelby County, Tenn., lawmakers passed a bill last week that will study the creation of a reparations fund. At the end of 2022, Boston’s city council voted in favor of a reparations committee, and similar groups have been established in cities like St. Paul, and Asheville. Locally, residents of Greenbelt, Md. voted in 2021 to create a commission to study options for paying reparations to Black and Native American residents of the small, New-Deal-era city that banned Black residents until the late 1960s.

Sometimes the programs established by governments and billed as reparations fall short for advocates and those calling for true reparations. For example, when Evanston, Ill. established a reparations program — one of the first in the U.S. — that would award eligible residents money for a down payment on a home or for home repairs, critics said the program did not go far enough, but was simply a government housing program “dressed up as reparations.”

McDuffie said he is looking forward to public engagement when the bill gets a council hearing, and using residents’ input on the task force’s proposals once they’re finalized to establish a program guided by the people.

“I think it is high time for us to have this conversation, this public debate,” he said Feb. 27. “We’re really looking forward to continued interest in the topic and the testimonies of individuals, organizations and advocates.”

There’s also currently a bill in the D.C. Council, introduced by chairman Phil Mendelson that would create a reparations fund for “victims of the war on cannabis.” As a part of a bill regulating the sale of cannabis, one provision would create a fund, using revenue from legal marijuana sales, that would provide direct cash payments of between $5,000 and $80,000 to people and families harmed by marijuana-related arrests. This story was originally published by WAMU/DCist