The city of St. Paul apologized for its role in institutional racism on Wednesday and agreed to form a new commission to study reparations for Black residents whose ancestors were enslaved.
The City Council voted 7-0 to form the “St. Paul Recovery Act Community Reparations Commission” as a way to promote racial healing. The resolution creating the commission also apologizes for slavery at Fort Snelling and the destruction of St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood in the 1950s.
Council Member Jane Prince, the resolution’s lead sponsor on the council, partnered with Trahern Crews, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States who heads up its national reparations working group.
Crews, addressing the Council before the vote, said slavery followed by more than a century of systemic racism has deprived Black Americans of the ability to acquire generational wealth.
“Whites still have 90% of the wealth and Blacks only have 2.6% of the wealth in America,” said Crews, who also co-chairs a community reparations steering committee.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately affected people of color, and the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer only further illustrates the need for reparations, Crews said.
Independent journalist Georgia Fort, who co-chairs the community reparations steering committee, said Wednesday’s council action in an important first step.
“Right now the world is watching our community,” Fort told the Council. “This is a great time for all of us to be on the right side of history.”
St. Paul joins a small group of cities across the country including Asheville, N.C., and Evanston, Ill., that have launched reparations commissions. In an earlier interview, Crews said the commission would interpret reparations broadly, considering everything from cash payments to individuals and small business and mortgage assistance to establishing health clinics and community centers in Black neighborhoods.
St. Paul, which has a population of 308,000, is about 16% Black, according to U.S. Census data for 2019, the most recent year for which data are available.
Council Member Dai Thao said he was honored to support the new reparations commission. Thao, who immigrated to the United State as a child refugee, said he was told America was “paradise,” but quickly saw the racial disparities that left African Americans, Native Americans and others living in poverty.
He said forming the reparations commission is”the right thing to do.”
“When it’s the right thing to do, it’s the easy thing to do,” Thao said.
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Another rewrite of American history by greedy Divisive Socialists/Communists disguised as American DEMOCRAT politicians who promote blacks to hate white Americans with the goal of defunding any and all who oppose their oppression. The unexpurgated history of the USA shows the Northwest ordinance of 1787, created and written by WHITE men, gave first national recognition to the Bill of Rights, and PROHIBITED SLAVERY. Newly CREATED states of Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin who ceded territory that later became Minnesota were ceded primarily by the slave holding state of Virginia.
ANY Minnesota citizen who has their personal property socially redistributed to anyone based upon color needs an apology, and a redirection of the funds back to the original owners, with interest. Statues should be erected honoring all who signed that ordinance, but reality never fits the narrative of minority oppressors who gain power only by dividing THE PEOPLE into segmented social populations less than or equal to them in numbers to allow conquest and CONTROL. The righteous reparations needed are the repair of their scurrilous narratives, by those who “breath out the same murderous threats against white Americans today, as Saul did against the Lord’s disciples, like the persecuting secular Socialist St. Saul hateful Democrat people of ill intent today, in need of a trip to Damascus to be reborn into the truths and wisdom of a REAL St. Paul.
Fort told the Council. “This is a great time for all of us to be on the right side of history.”,,,,,THEIR version of history, socially redistributed and rewritten right after the book burnings.
IMO EVERYONE living there, that’s white, NEEDS TO JUST GET THE HELL OUT now.. Before it’s too late.
liberal idiots with white guilt ruining every big city with racial issues and stealing money to give to
people who DO NOT DESRVE IT!
i am affriad we as a nation are done the liberals and the lack of backbone to stop it is to blame.
What’s the bet, NOT ONE OF THOSE White liberals, serving, WILL EVER GIVE any of their OWN MONEY or property up, for this ‘Redistribution”
Stupid is as stupid does
I have a very simple question. Let’s say they pay out reparations. Let’s say, $100K per black person. In a year, or less, when this money has all been spent, and the situation of the recipients had not changed because the reparations did absolutely nothing to improve their education, their family situation, their moral values, etc, what happens then?
Like always with ANY LEFTIST program.. Throw more and more money at it…
There were no slaves in Minnesota. All of you people in St. Paul, who voted Democrat, will get your “social justice”, by paying higher taxes for “reparations”. How will all of you sheep communists in St. Paul, like that?
How did this fool come up with this ratio? well what he fails to tell you is that the 88% out of the the quoted 90% wealth of white people is probably held by the top 2% so that leaves the rest of the whites with 2% of the wealth out of that 90%.
The article states, “Whites still have 90% of the wealth and Blacks only have 2.6% of the wealth in America,” as if this were an injustice that government must rectify.
Wealth is created by people who are conscientious and industrious; and wealth flees the irresponsible–regardless of race. You could redistribute all the wealth in the U.S. so that everyone has the same amount of money, and within a decade, it would be back in the hands of mostly the same people. The percentages in this quote are a reflection of demographics and industriousness, not of injustice. The only injustice would be taking wealth from one person and giving it to another.
Decade?? How about less than a week of snorting coke, and gambling, BRO??
I wonder. DID That study, include the THOUSANDS OF BLACK super rich as hell, athletes/singers/actors around???
reparations for Black residents whose ancestors were enslaved.
And what of the Trillions of dollars that have been given to blacks over the decades ? Where does this theft end ?!?
AS long as the dems are allowed to stay in power, NEVER.
Is this just reported wealth?
Also, Bill Gates is pretty rich. So are the Apple guys. Why didn’t someone say, “You, minority, invent a computer platform that will make you a billionaire”, and why didn’t they. Zuckerburg came up with facebook, so why didn’t a minority? Is race the reason people don’t create and succeed? I don’t think so.
Thank goodness I don’t live there. Nor will I ever visit there. I work every single day to better myself and save money for when I retire in 3 years. No one helped me. I have struggled during certain times of my life but I pulled myself up and kept going. All it takes is determination and work to make it even if it’s just to be comfortable.
So no one gave me a leg up, do I want reparations? No, I don’t. All of you numbskulls on city council have just put all the people you say you’re trying to help back 100 years. Idiots.
You had a helper, you just didn;t know it.
https://footprintssandpoem.com/mary-stevenson-version-of-footprints-in-the-sand/
What about the rest of us??? Ever since our ape ancestors formed clans, we’ve been annihilating and enslaving each other, taking lands. Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Vikings, Hapsburg British & Russian Empire, North, South, & Central American indigenous, and yes- African enslaving African, up thru the Nazis and into present day China, we still murder, enslave, and steal lands. Unless you’ve descended from royalty (which also didn’t give you necessarily relief) you more than likely have slaves in your ancestry. We need to stop this “I’m the victim” and reparations trash. Hundreds of thousands of “whites” have been enslaved over the centuries than Blacks.
BUT our slave ancestors, don’t EVER COUNT.
In 1964, the last barrier to equality was removed so for more than 50 years any and all poverty is the fault of whoever was too lazy / unmotivated to improve their own life. Government is NOT your mommy so stop pretending that it is. Hike up your adult undies and act your age.
Why can’t you just say, You don’t like the lifestyle you are in then change it. The Past is the past and that was the way it was then.
America was always what you can make of it, you work hard, you learn to read, you are in charge of your self. WE can work together if your are willing to listen and learn and change. We all are slaves of the system now.
BECAUSE that would require
A) The left STOP pandering to blacks
B) BLACKS stop playing the victim card, and TAKE responsibility for themselves
and C) THE politicians, STOP ENABLING THE fatherless households.
I’d be willing to bet that in less than 4 years, most of us will be slaves.
You could give the Blacks all the money on Earth and they’d still cry and moan.
EVEN if all whites were eliminated, they’d still find SOMEONE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT oppressing them.
Maybe if more of them went to work instead of sitting and collecting our tax money in the form of welfare they would have a bigger share of the wealth! I ain’t RE-DISTRIBUTING a damn thing!
The reason whites have is because we work. I’ve have had a full time job since I was 15 1/2 years old. Both my parents work. Most of the wealthy are Workaholics . Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire because she is a hard worker.
Now for reparations, again I will say how much are African nations and Muslims slave traders going to pay ???
NOT a single DIME…
If wealth today is the measure used, then considering that blacks in America taken as a group have one of the world’s largest economies when compared with the world’s nations, it could be argued that their situation was improved by being in America. That would seem to argue against reparations. Of course, the whole notion of reparations is asking for division and even civil war.
We left the state on MN 38 years ago for greener pastures in FL and, now, damn glad we did. We have some very fond memories of our youth and growing up in the land of “Minnesota nice”…but those days are gone. The Liberals were always a force to be reckoned with, even in those days, but today, along with the Socialists, Somalians and other salacious, scandalous and subhuman people in positions of authority in what was my “home state”, I have nothing but disdain for the Land of 10,000 Lakes. There certainly are some great people left there to defend themselves against all odds but I would implore them to do as we did…see it for what it really is and bail while you still can.
All of those people in St. Paul who owned slaves, need to write a check to all those former slaves they had. OH Wait! Slavery ended in 1865. All of those people are dead, at least they would be over 180 years old if they were still alive.
I wonder if the people of St. Paul will be able to claim they have already paid reparations, in the form of Welfare, EBT, Free schooling, housing assistance, jobs given to someone who was not qualified, etc. etc. etc. Every time some Black woman needs more money, she sleeps with some guy down the street and has another illegitimate baby, and the guy just disappears. Very few of the men stick around because the “White folks” will pay for the babies.
We;ve been paying reparations for DECADES> NO MORE!
Watch, NONE of these committee members will give up a dime of their own money. They will steal from hard-working whites to pay phony reparations to blacks. This institutional racism that they talk about is pure projection. The true racists are the liberal elites. They’re the ones who really believe that they are better than blacks, not your average middle class American. Why, because most of us middle class Americans were descended from immigrants too and dealt with “No Irish, Italians, (fill in the blanks) need apply”. We dealt with not just blacks, but Jews and other ethnicities being banned from clubs, golf courses, etc., not by other middle class Americans, but by the elites who didn’t want to associate in public with their nannies, maids and gardeners. But we all worked hard, got an education, started businesses and built up our communities. ALL OF US did that-black, brown, red yellow, white. Before I let any liberal come and take anything I own to give it to someone else, I’d destroy it. 600,000 good God-fearing people mostly white gave their lives and limbs to erase slavery from this land. That’s reparations enough.