Amhest, MA reparations program is currently hashing out the "who should be eligible?" issue

[8WON6]

Who should be eligible for reparations? That's the big question in Amherst

Reparations panel members are considering three main criteria in a first-of-its-kind program in Massachusetts.

www.wgbh.org

How does a city even begin to repair the harms caused by slavery and other forms of racism? The answer entails deeply complex conversations about discrimination, what constitutes appropriate redress, who will be included in any reparations program — and who may be left out.

It's a question Debora Bridges of Amherst is grappling with.

Bridges sits on Amherst’s African Heritage Reparations Assembly panel, a band of seven citizens charged with making recommendations for the city’s forthcoming reparations program, which will be the first of its kind in Massachusetts.

In 2021, the Amherst Town Council approved the creation of a reparations fund. A year later, the council voted to finance the fund through deposits from the city’s certified tax cannabis revenue for the previous year. Now, as the panel prepares to submit its recommendations, its members are struggling to decide exactly who will be eligible for yet-to-be-determined benefits.

The proposal — a system that evaluates eligibility based on lineage, racial identity and residency — comes as the AHRA approaches its June 30 deadline for suggesting how the city should implement a reparations program.

But eligibility has emerged as a point of tension in the panel’s public comment periods, where speakers are frequently heard insisting that reparations should be limited to only Black Americans with ancestry tracing back to Africans enslaved within the United States. Those who take a broader view argue Black immigrants, despite lacking an ancestral connection to slavery in this nation, still struggle against the institution’s residual impacts.

Bridges, who can trace her connection to Amherst back to some of the nation’s first Black soldiers, said she is still deciding whether she agrees with the proposed criteria.

“If you’re a descendant of slaves that lived in Amherst, that should be one of the criteria,” she told GBH News. “If you’re doing local reparations here, I think it just would make sense for that to be the main criteria.”

Bridges conceded knowing few Black Americans with clear ancestry records like her family’s. Requiring documented lineage could prove burdensome for those without the same breadth of ancestral knowledge, or those whose relatives aren't identified in available resources.

 

[8WON6]

Amilcar Shabazz, University of Massachusetts Amherst professor within the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, is another member of the city’s reparations panel and the architect of the eligibility framework the group is considering.

“It’s a sticky discourse,” said Shabazz, who described his approach to reparative justice as an “expansive,” concentric circle-like framework that would prioritize the descendants of those enslaved in the U.S.

“Around that … we wish to expand the fight for justice for other communities,” he said, noting the potential presence of Black Nigerians, Cape Verdeans, Jamaicans and others.

Six percent of Amherst residents are Black, according to the latest U.S. Census data. The Census does not disaggregate demographic data according to nation of origin, or migrant status.

Shabazz’s framework borrows from that of Duke University economist William “Sandy” Darity, who proposed a framework for federal reparations based on documented lineage to people enslaved in the United States and documented self-identification as “Black” for at least 12 years.

Yet Shabazz’s proposal differs somewhat. It would remove the time stipulations for how long as person has identified as Black. It also uses a broader lineage standard, stipulating that those without enslaved ancestry could be eligible.

Robin Rue Simmons, the architect of the nation’s first citywide reparations program for Black residents, said tension over eligibility criteria was absent in Evanston, Illinois, where she led the passage of the local reparations measure as an alderwoman in 2019.

“Personally, I’m pan-African. I believe in repair for everybody Black,” she told GBH News on a recent visit to Amherst.

 

[8WON6]

Rue Simmons has advised other groups, including the one in Amherst, on best practices for building reparations programs, but she generally avoids giving advice about eligibility standards.

“It is not for any one of us to determine what city does what. It’s the business of that city and, more specifically, it’s the business of the Black community in that city,” she said.

Evanston's reparations program began in the form of housing assistance. Every Black resident who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969, and their direct descendants, qualified.

“The ADOS Advocacy Foundation and ADOS Boston hold the position that if we are discussing reparations for slavery and its subsequent horrors, it naturally follows that our government must center those directly impacted by the institution of chattel slavery and the unique, multigenerational accrued disadvantage visited upon their descendants,” said Reggie Stewart, a spokesperson for ADOS Boston.

Stewart noted that other historical redress efforts had specific eligibility criteria crafted, including programs for Indigenous tribes, victims of the Jewish Holocaust and their descendants, and victims of Japanese internment.

Descendants of those enslaved in the U.S., he said, “are no less deserving of specific focus and redress for any local, state or federal reparations initiatives.

Reed, who identifies as half Black and half white, said while there’s not enough money in Amherst to finance total repair, it makes sense for the municipality to include Black people of every ethnic origin.

“Only because Amherst isn’t only consisting of folks who have enslaved ancestry in the United States,” she said, arguing that anyone with a Black identity would be a likely “victim of the racism that happens” within the city.

Bridges acknowledged that idea and said she would not be upset if Amherst ends up taking the more expansive view proposed by Shabazz.

 

[OfTheCross]

Who should be eligible for reparations? That's the big question in Amherst

Reparations panel members are considering three main criteria in a first-of-its-kind program in Massachusetts.

www.wgbh.org

This isn't gonna go anywhere

 

[RaspberryFitted]

Black Americans who are able to trace their lineage back to the Jim Crow Era (even before then) should be the only ones eligible.

these foreign countries should demand reparations for their country. This is a debt America needs to pay to those they’ve directly done wrong.

 

[GrindtooFilthy]

How is this a problem, use govt records which details which negro families have been here since the 1800s. Any one that shows they families came here to this Country AFTER let’s say 1875 and is also not black/negro probably isn’t eligible.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

the fact that NOT ONE republican district is doing reparations defeats the purpose

Theres current republican districts that ACTUALLY owe

 

[Prodyson]

People need to start explaining exactly what the reparations are for and not just using the term so broadly. Its a lot easier to determine who’s eligible when you specify exactly what its for.A city giving reparations for their role in the disenfranchisement and oppression of slaves is not and should not be inclusive of immigrants.

Now if you want to give reparations relating to oppression and denied resources during reconstruction and the civil rights era, then immigrants might have an argument, but it still wouldn’t be all immigrants. If you showed up here in the 80’s and 90’s, you shouldn’t get any reparations of any form, imo.

 

[The Fade]

Man if you’re gonna entertain giving to immigrants the very least you can do is dish it out to people who actually had land, and wealth stolen here first after getting it out the mud from slavery

 

[cheek100]

Man if you’re gonna entertain giving to immigrants the very least you can do is dish it out to people who actually had land, and wealth stolen here first after getting it out the mud from slavery

They do that to muddy up the waters

 

[UncleTomFord15]

Things like this is just something they put out to "create issues" that dont actually exist, stall and buy time. It's common sense that only people who can trace their lineage back to slavery in America would get reparations from America. If you really think the US government would give out billions/trillions of dollars to just any and every black person in the US idk what to tell you.

 

[tuckgod]

Black Americans who are able to trace their lineage back to the Jim Crow Era (even before then) should be the only ones eligible.

these foreign countries should demand reparations for their country. This is a debt America needs to pay to those they’ve directly done wrong.

fukk Jim Crow

If your relatives ain’t on the 1870 census you don't get nothing.

 

[NoMoreWhiteWoman2020]

Amilcar Shabazz first name is really Eric. And there are few actual descendants in that area, it’s more Cape Verdeans but that area is all panafrican. That being said if checks are being cashed I’m heading right back up there. And Shabazz is a good dude, part of the reason we have Malcolm X Blvd in Harlem

 

[King]

Easy to come to this conclusion when majority of those in the room come from black immigrant families

They should ask themselves why they’re so overrepresented

 

[Pirius Black]

Amilcar Shabazz first name is really Eric. And there are few actual descendants in that area, it’s more Cape Verdeans but that area is all panafrican. That being said if checks are being cashed I’m heading right back up there. And Shabazz is a good dude, part of the reason we have Malcolm X Blvd in Harlem

Dr. Shabazz is good people. He's a Pan Africanist but he is receptive to the lineage argument. Reparations in Amherst are tricky because there are not many ADOS in Amherst, the Black community there is a mish mash of ADOS, continental Africans, as well as Caribbeans.