The Asheville City Council in North Carolina unanimously approved reparations for Black residents while apologizing for the city’s role in slavery on Tuesday night.
Asheville City Council’s vote was unanimous, 7-0, for the resolution.
“Hundreds of years of black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today,” Councilman Keith Young, one of two African American members of the body and the measure’s chief proponent, told the Citizen Times. “It is simply not enough to remove statutes. Black people in this country are dealing with issues that are systemic in nature.”
The resolution does not mandate direct payments, the Citizen Times reported, but instead it will make investments in areas where Black residents face disparities. The resolution will provide broad parameters for what the city can invest in.
“The resulting budgetary and programmatic priorities may include but not be limited to increasing minority homeownership and access to other affordable housing, increasing minority business ownership and career opportunities, strategies to grow equity and generational wealth, closing the gaps in health care, education, employment and pay, neighborhood safety and fairness within criminal justice,” the resolution reads.
Asheville is a city with about 92,000 people in western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
