{"id":360616,"date":"2026-09-30T09:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T09:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360616\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T09:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T09:10:09","slug":"reparations-activists-call-out-democrat-states-using-slavery-to-fund-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360616\/","title":{"rendered":"Reparations activists call out Democrat states using slavery to fund agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reparations activists <\/a>from a grassroots organization called the US Freedmen Project told Fox News Digital that recent immigrants and non-foundational Black Americans should not be included in government reparations programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also think it\u2019s not morally correct, you know? You don\u2019t give out remedies to people who haven\u2019t experienced the harm,\u201d Annette Wilcox, a spokesperson for the group, told Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of these policies \u2014 the Commission on Racial Equity in the city, the Mayor\u2019s Office on Equity and Justice \u2014 they talk constantly about slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, convict leasing. All of those things that happened to a specific group of people,\u201d Wilcox added. \u201cThen, when it comes time to give out resources and remedies, it\u2019s going to everybody: underserved communities, POC [people of color], immigrants, marginalized groups. You\u2019re using one group of people\u2019s history to then give remedies to a wider group.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US Freedmen Project, composed of self-identified \u201cFoundational Black Americans,\u201d aims to educate the public on the legal and historical distinctions between African Americans who are direct descendants of enslaved people in the US and those who immigrated to the country voluntarily in recent decades.<\/p>\n

Wilcox reacted sharply to efforts by New Jersey Democrats pushing the state<\/a> to consider direct reparations proposals that could include residents who are not direct descendants of enslaved people.<\/p>\n

The proposed legislation \u2014 the Truth, Reconciliation, and Repair Act, spearheaded by Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson and state Sen. Angela McKnight \u2014 aims to address wealth disparities stemming from historical slavery and systemic discrimination.<\/p>\n

Reparations leaders called out Democratic state leaders for using reparations to fund their other agendas. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Informed by research from the New Jersey Reparations Council, the bill seeks to establish a framework for state-level reparative policies.<\/p>\n

US Freedmen Project president Devine Prince told Fox News Digital that lawmakers and certain advocates are \u201cconflating reparations with racial justice and social justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fox News Digital previously spoke with New York residents <\/a>who voiced similar concerns during a public hearing for the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies at Hempstead High School on Long Island.<\/p>\n

Residents warned state officials that broadening the scope of reparations to include recent immigrants and other marginalized groups risks co-opting and diluting the movement.<\/p>\n

One supporter, Aubrey Muhammad, delivered tense testimony accusing politicians of misallocating resources away from historic Black communities amidst demographic shifts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Democrats, in a sick way, imported 25 million immigrants. And 70% of them came into poor Black neighborhoods,\u201d Muhammad argued in a follow-up interview with Fox News Digital. \u201cHempstead, since the \u201990s, has been flooded with immigrants. That\u2019s taking the resources, putting them towards others.\u201d<\/p>\n

US Freedmen Project president Devine Prince told Fox News Digital that lawmakers and certain advocates are \u201cconflating reparations with racial justice and social justice.\u201d Getty Images<\/p>\n

Demographic data from the US Census Bureau reflect significant changes in the Village of Hempstead <\/a>over the last three decades.<\/p>\n

Today, the community of roughly 59,000 is nearly evenly split between Black residents (43.2%) and Hispanic or Latino residents (45.3%). In 1990, the Hispanic population made up roughly 14% of the village.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why, frankly, I think we\u2019re in the situation today, where descendants of slavery in the United States are at the bottom of just about every socioeconomic parameter,\u201d Wilcox said.<\/p>\n

Prince expounded on the issue, arguing that broader social challenges deserve their own dedicated solutions rather than being packaged under the umbrella of reparations.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re finding out coming from the left wing of the political spectrum is that they are conflating reparations with racial justice and social justice. All three are similar, but they are far from the same,\u201d Prince said. \u201cSo what happens is when people believe a rising tide lifts all boats \u2026 you\u2019re conflating repair for the badges and incidents of slavery with discrimination like not being able to catch a cab, or with the social justice of fair immigration policies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US Freedmen Project, composed of self-identified \u201cFoundational Black Americans,\u201d aims to educate the public on the legal and historical distinctions between African Americans. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Members of the US Freedmen Project have become vocal fixtures at public hearings across the country.<\/p>\n

They maintain that true reparations must be lineage-based<\/a> \u2014 strictly reserved for direct descendants of enslaved human beings in the United States.<\/p>\n

Prince argued that for any reparations policy to survive inevitable legal challenges, it must be tied strictly to lineage rather than race.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the Democratic Party loves to do is push them all together to create \u2018people of color\u2019 coalitions. These policies are largely being pushed in blue states, which is also where these issues are happening,\u201d Prince said. \u201cThere is a responsibility for any political entity to address its constituents directly and, more importantly, specifically \u2014 because that\u2019s how true coalitions are built, not by cobbling people together and pretending they all have the same plight and political priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Jersey and New York<\/a> are part of a broader wave of state and municipal governments exploring reparative frameworks. In Illinois, the Chicago suburb of Evanston made headlines as the first city to distribute government-funded reparations to Black residents to remedy historic housing discrimination.<\/p>\n

They maintain that true reparations must be lineage-based \u2014 strictly reserved for direct descendants of enslaved human beings in the United States. Los Angeles Times via Getty Images<\/p>\n

However, Evanston\u2019s program faces a high-profile class-action lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch and the Trump administration, alleging the program\u2019s race-based eligibility criteria violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt either becomes something that is unconstitutional and will be challenged and shut down \u2014 like Evanston is on its way to being done \u2014 or you convert it into a universal program,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is not reparations,\u201d Prince warned.<\/p>\n

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While Prince called broader social and racial justice initiatives \u201cadmirable,\u201d he reiterated that they should not hijack the legal definition of reparations.<\/p>\n

\u201cReparations, in the context we\u2019re talking about, are only for those that were enslaved, emancipated, and then subject to the badges and incidents thereof,\u201d Prince said. \u201cThat is the American freedmen. Positioning it that way circumvents any legal challenge based on race.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New Jersey lawmakers did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital\u2019s request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reparations activists from a grassroots organization called the US Freedmen Project told Fox News Digital that recent immigrants…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2132,1066,9,11,10,49,51,50,87,15797,47163,58],"class_list":["post-360616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-democrats","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-politics","tag-reparations","tag-slavery","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360616","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=360616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}