{"id":317181,"date":"2026-08-09T13:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T13:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/317181\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T13:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T13:50:10","slug":"lefties-pushing-for-reparations-dont-get-american-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/317181\/","title":{"rendered":"Lefties pushing for reparations don’t get American history"},"content":{"rendered":"

The push is back on for\u00a0slavery reparations.<\/a><\/p>\n

In July, the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a report urging the immediate adoption of reparations. As Lanessa Owens-Chaplin \u2014 one of the report\u2019s authors and Director of the Racial Justice Center at NYCLU \u2014 puts it: <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cReparations are a debt that is owed.<\/a> Enslaved Black people built the foundation of New York\u2019s economy\u2026 Reparations must be extended to all Black New Yorkers descended from those enslaved by New York State.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NYCLU report<\/a> is predicated on an undeniable reality: the persistent wealth gap between black and white households. But all this fails to grapple with the central problem of reparation payments: Not all white New Yorkers benefited from slavery, but all New Yorkers would have to shell out to support the payments.<\/p>\n

The 23-acre Jay Estate, the childhood home of American Founding Father John Jay, is pictured in Rye, NY, on Thursday, November 13, 2014. The historic property features the 1838 Greek Revival Peter Augustus Jay House and is a National Historic Landmark. Jay Heritage Center<\/p>\n

I uncovered the complications of the issue when,\u00a0as part of a local America 250 project, I researched the history of slavery\u00a0in\u00a0my own\u00a0Westchester County\u00a0suburb. The town of Rye was once\u00a0an\u00a0agricultural\u00a0village\u00a0on\u00a0the shores of the Long Island Sound. Small family farms stood side-by-side larger estates on which the enslaved labored, raising beef cattle and produce bound for the Manhattan market. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the complication: Slave ownership among white people was far from universal. Of 130 slaves present in the town in 1790, 68 were owned by only six families \u2014 including the family of John Jay, the country\u2019s first chief justice and a leading abolitionist. Moreover, households that did not own slaves at all (163) were far greater in number than those that did (42). <\/p>\n

Most white\u00a0townspeople, in fact, were poor. Seventy-seven households were listed as owning only \u201chouse and lot.\u201d Their tiny properties were worth less than $500, or around $10,000 adjusted for inflation. Some were worth as little as $60 \u2014 about $1,000 today.<\/p>\n

There were also wealthy landowners who did not engage in slavery at all \u2014 including, notably, a family of Quakers. That family\u2019s members all worked the land on their own and competed with the unpaid labor force of the slaveowners.<\/p>\n

A portrait of John Jay by Gilbert Stuart, painted in 1794, is housed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Corbis via Getty Images<\/p>\n

In 1799, Gov. John Jay signed the Gradual Abolition of Slavery Act, which freed the children of slaves born after July 4, 1799. Then, in 1817 another law required that all slaves born before 1799 also be freed over the next 10 years. Rye\u2019s slaveowners freed most of their slaves well ahead of this deadline \u2014 by 1820, only 14 slaves remained in the town compared to 126 freed black people. <\/p>\n

Notably, by 1850 the town\u2019s population began to swell with the arrival of white Irish and German servants and laborers who arrived long after slavery had disappeared. <\/p>\n

Nor was my town an outlier. Census records show that in 1800 417 of 4,320 residents of lower Manhattan were enslaved. That\u2019s a significant number. But 76% of households had no slaves. It becomes difficult to make the case that their descendants should be made to pay reparations for something they had no part in and may actively have fought against. But that\u2019s the logic of a state budget item for reparations.<\/p>\n

The Tenement-House Committee maps, drawn by Frederick E. Pierce, are shown in an image from 1895. NYPL<\/p>\n

States considering reparations have had to reckon with these complications. Such questions have stalled efforts in California. The Golden State has even gone so far as to establish a \u201cReparations Task Force\u201d to sort out these issues. California lawmakers passed a slate of reparations bills in 2025, including one that would have given college-admission priority to descendants of the enslaved. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed many of these but signed another intended to create a structure to administer payments. <\/p>\n

Maryland\u00a0Gov. Wes Moore, an\u00a0African-American\u00a0Democrat,\u00a0took\u00a0the courageous step of vetoing legislation for the state to study reparations \u2014 appropriately emphasizing the need for government to\u00a0seek\u00a0to advance the economic prospects of all citizens. The state General Assembly then overrode his veto. <\/p>\n

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore came under heavy criticism from his left flank when he vetoed more studies for reparations efforts. Getty Images<\/p>\n

The history I discovered in my own town suggests Moore was right. <\/p>\n

Reparations advocates also miss another dangerous fact: Government intervention can have unanticipated effects. Consider, for instance, another historical injustice they highlight, slum clearance. The NYCLU is correct that the razing of black neighborhoods can be connected to the current disparity in assets between white and black households, which lost property and businesses during such processes. <\/p>\n

The Williamsburg Bridge and Lewis Greenberg Plumbing Supplies are seen on Cherry Street and East Street in Manhattan in 1934. NYPL<\/p>\n

But slum clearance to \u201crenew\u201d cities was promoted not by racists but by progressives, including Harry Truman. He believed that demolishing poor black neighborhoods and replacing them with public housing would benefit black Americans. <\/p>\n

The benefits of reparations may prove elusive, as well.\u00a0A one-time cash payment will not likely do much to close the wealth gap \u2014 and will inevitably prove politically divisive. It certainly\u00a0won\u2019t\u00a0help as much as an effective public-education system and public safety would. Better to invest in those practices than ask those who weren\u2019t involved in the sin of slavery to pay for it.<\/p>\n

Howard Husock is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of \u201cThe Projects: A New History of Public Housing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The push is back on for\u00a0slavery reparations. In July, the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a report…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[881,9,24,55,54,56,299,11831,15797,47163],"class_list":["post-317181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-history","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-opinion","tag-postscript","tag-reparations","tag-slavery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}