the “practical reason”: data 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 hours of public comment on the measure. Many voiced their opinions and according to USA Today, most were in support.
Author Ta-Nehesi Coates so eloquently wrote in his piece, The Case for Reparations, that, “The lives of black Americans are better than they were half a century ago. The humiliation of whites-only signs are gone. Rates of black poverty have decreased. Black teen-pregnancy rates are at record lows—and the gap between black and white teen-pregnancy rates has shrunk significantly. But such progress rests on a shaky foundation, and fault lines are everywhere. The income gap between black and white households is roughly the same today as it was in 1970. Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New York University, studied children born from 1955 through 1970 and found that 4 percent of whites and 62 percent of blacks across America had been raised in poor neighborhoods. A generation later, the same study showed, virtually nothing had changed. And whereas whites born into affluent neighborhoods tended to remain in affluent neighborhoods, blacks tended to fall out of them.”
Other state governments considering reparations include Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. There has been no conversation of reparations from the current federal government. But, some of the biggest current news for reparations is California’s state House passed legislation in June with the Senate now set to take up the bill.