Proponents of reparations policy had a tailwind last year.
Cities across the U.S. formed teams to develop plans to compensate black people for the legacy of slavery, modeled on a successful pilot in Evanston, Illinois.
The landscape in 2024 is very different.
Cadre member Cori Bush, the Missouri Democrat who pushed for payouts, is under investigation for campaign spending violations.
Their bid for a $14 trillion federal relief package fails.
The reparations task force in Detroit – a center of African-American culture – has descended into a “shambles” of defections and infighting.
And California's black lawmakers this week backpedaled on plans to give each resident $1.2 million.
Cori Bush and her $14 trillion federal reparations package are both in trouble
While many Black voters are happy to receive checks in the mail, only a fraction believe they will see such a day in their lives.
Opinion poll
Do you support a federal reparations policy aimed at the descendants of slaves?
- Yes, 145 votes
- No 4394 votes
Mike Gonzalez, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said support for reparations peaked during protests over the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.
Now it is fading, he added.
“Like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), critical race theory, anti-racism training and other features of collective hysteria, the call for reparations is beginning to fail under the fierce resistance of the American people,” he told .
Reparations advocates say it's time for America to pay back its black residents for the injustices of the historic transatlantic slave trade, Jim Crow segregation and the inequalities that persist today.
From there it gets difficult.
There is no agreed framework for what a system would look like. The ideas range from cash payments to scholarships, land gifts, business start-up loans, housing grants or statues and street names.
Former Democratic congressional candidate Morris Griffin holds up a sign during a reparations session
Critics say payouts to select blacks will inevitably fuel the divide between winners and losers and raise questions about why Native Americans and others aren't getting their own handouts.
The reparations effort is “failing,” says Mike Gonzalez
Reparations advocates suffered a major blow this week with the revelation that the US Justice Department was investigating Bush.
The Squad member and progressive has spent more than $750,000 on security since her election in 2020, including payments to her husband.
She denies any wrongdoing but is threatening to be expelled from Congress if found guilty.
The allegations violated their most important law – a $14 trillion federal package for black Americans to redress slavery and the centuries of racist policies that followed.
The bill faltered even before she was investigated for questionable payments.
Detroiters had high hopes for their city's reparations commission, with 80 percent supporting its creation in a vote
Observers of the Detroit task force have been relentless in their criticism ever since
Similar resolutions have been introduced at every session of Congress since 1989 and have never garnered enough support for a floor vote.
The outlook isn't much better in Detroit, where the city's reparations task force is mired in resignations and infighting.
The body was lost last year with the death of member Dr. JoAnn Watson shakes.
Then came the departures of Lauren Hood, Maurice Weeks, Allen Venable, CaMille Collins and Anita Belle.
In farewell emails, members described the panel as “time-consuming” and explained why they did not show up for meetings.
Critics say there has been little progress.
One observer called it a “heap of rubble”; another complained of a “national embarrassment.”
The Detroit Grassroots Coalition, a residents' group, says members “don't seem to be taking the work seriously” and are calling for more transparency.
Morris Griffin of Los Angeles speaks during the public comment portion of the Reparations Task Force meeting in Sacramento, California
From left, State Senator Steven Bradford, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, task force member Lisa Holder and Representative Reggie Jones-Sawyer hold a final report from last year's California Reparations Task Force
There were high hopes for the task force – 80 percent of voters approved its creation in a 2021 vote.
Even when task forces roll up their sleeves and get to work, it can be difficult to see progress.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he does not support issuing reparations checks
California's first-in-the-nation reparations task force held emotionally charged meetings for two years before greenlighting more than 100 proposals to undo past sins last May.
It was reported at the time that the state's descendants of slavery could face payments of up to $1.2 million.
On Wednesday, the state's black lawmakers introduced a package of 14 bills that would reverse those plans.
There was no mention of monetary compensation in their proposals.
Instead, they called on the state to apologize for its role in slavery, ban involuntary servitude in prisons, and return property that officials had wrongly taken from black families.
Critics pounced on the about-face.
“This package does NOT include cash payments to essential Black Americans,” internet personality Tariq Nasheed wrote on X/Twitter.
“It’s a 111-page nothing burger dipped in nothing sauce.”
Los Angeles resident Walter Foster, 80, holds a sign at a task force meeting on reparations at the California Science Center in Los Angeles in September
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley added that voters may well view it as a “bait and barter” given rising expectations of huge cash rewards.
The reality of reparations has dawned, says Alex Nowrasteh
California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has signaled he doesn't support paying cash reparations, especially as the Golden State struggles with a $38 billion budget deficit.
While this is popular among black Americans, the other groups who would pay the tax bill are less interested.
A poll of 6,000 registered California voters last year found that only 23 percent supported cash compensation while 59 percent opposed it.
Since then, public attitudes have only hardened.
Conservatives oppose all kinds of DEI efforts and affirmative action measures.
Giving one group a head start inevitably means another will lose out, critics say.
And while black Californians would like to receive a payout, very few of them believe they ever will.
A Washington Post-Ipsos poll last year found that three-quarters of blacks thought the descendants of slaves should receive government compensation.
Six in 10 respondents opposed payouts to the descendants of slaves, while four in 10 said the federal government “should absolutely not pursue” such a policy.
But only 14 percent expected to see any in their lifetime.
Chris Lodgson of the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California says getting black Californians interested in cash compensation is a “big challenge.”
Prof. Justin Hansford wants the United Nations to make America pay for the sins of slavery
They “just don’t believe it’s going to happen,” Lodgson says.
Recognizing the signs of the times, some reparations activists have scaled back their efforts to pressure U.S. lawmakers to act.
Justin Hansford, a professor at Howard University School of Law, wants the United Nations to take the lead instead.
He and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University want the UN Permanent Forum for People of African Descent to establish a global reparations court.
A UN court ruling could pressure the US to pay its black citizens $5 million, he says.
The multimillion-dollar sum is “at the low end of what is appropriate” for their “terrible” oppression, he told .
His far-reaching effort underscores how unpopular reparations payments are among non-black U.S. taxpayers and have little chance of becoming federal law, leaving advocates scrambling for a solution.
Alex Nowrasteh, an analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said activists finally understood that there was a lack of public support for a comprehensive compensation package.
“Any reparations proposal was completely impractical,” Nowrasteh told .
“It’s nice to see that knowledge finally matches reality.”
For Gonzalez, co-author of the forthcoming book “NextGen Marxism,” the logic underlying monetary compensation is flawed.
“Reparations fail the tests of justice, morality, logic, ethics or effectiveness,” he said.
“They would inevitably lead to absurdities, such as a rich black neurosurgeon receiving compensation from tax money paid by a poor white sharecropper.”