EVANSTON, Ill. — The reparations movement achieved some significant gains over the past year.
New York state and the District of Columbia have established panels to study offering recompense to Black Americans for slavery and racial discrimination. And officials in Palm Springs, California, recently agreed to pay out $6 million in reparations for its part in the destruction of a mostly Black and Latino neighborhood during the 1960s.
But reparations advocates say those gains could be imperiled and future plans stymied by President-elect Donald Trump’s second term.
Trump has been skeptical of reparations, as well as other initiatives aimed at racial equity. “I think it’s a very unusual thing,” Trump said of reparations in a 2019 interview with the Hill. “It’s been a very interesting debate. I don’t see it happening, no.”