The panel charged with drafting New York’s slavery reparations plans is under fire after it emerged that within days of Oct. 7, members attacked Black Senator Tim Scott, blamed whites for climate change and called Israel criticized.
Governor Kathy Hochul urged New Yorkers to “not excuse” the state’s role in slavery when she created the task force late last year.
But she is facing calls to fire panelist Ron Daniels after he branded Scott “Uncle Tim” and labeled him a frontman of white supremacy.
“Uncle Tim” Scott, who picked cotton on the plantation, is “still on the plantation,” Daniels described the Black Republican in a 2021 tweet.
“Chosen to be the ‘black face’ to oppress/Black Power/Black Freedom on behalf of white supremacy/White Power and that is ‘The Cotton Picking Truth’ #BewareofUncleTim.”
Panelist Ron Daniels, the founder and president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, has expressed anger over his comments on Israel, climate change and black Republicans
Fellow panelist Lurie Daniel Favors is a strong supporter of efforts to dismantle the police
New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a bill in December that makes the state only the third in the nation to create an official recovery commission
Daniels, the founder and president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, was one of three panelists nominated by state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.
“White people screwed up again = black people are saving the planet,” Daniels tweeted three years ago.
“With silence comes complacency. No homeland. No peace. No justice, no peace in Israel,” he tweeted last October above a photo of a large Palestinian flag.
“There will never be peace in Israel until the Palestinians have a home. Military force will quench the Palestinian people’s thirst for justice. No homeland, no peace!’
Lurie Daniel Favors, another Heastie appointment, has been virulent in her calls to defund the police, tweeting in 2019: “Police across the country are literally proving *daily* why #DefundThePolice is necessary.
“I’m old enough to remember when you all said activists were going too far,” added the executive director of the Center for Law and Social Justice at City University New York.
“The reparations commission was ridiculous from the start. This proves it,” Conservative Party chairman Gerard Kassar told the newspaper New York Post.
“These sound like people who have preconceived ideas about what they see as white privilege. Incredible. There is no way these appointees should serve on the committee given their comments.”
New York became only the third state to establish a panel to consider paying reparations to the descendants of African Americans held in slavery when the appointments were made in December.
Daniels tweeted his support for Palestine within days of the October 7 attack on Israel
A 2021 tweet blamed “white people” for global warming
A 2021 tweet about Sen. Tim Scott accused the South Carolina Republican of being “Uncle Tim,” a white supremacy frontman
Attorney Lurie Daniel Favors hosts her own radio show and directs the Center for Law and Social Justice at the City University of New York
Daniels and Daniel Favors were both appointed to the nine-member panel by New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie
The thorny question came to the fore in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a white police officer in 2020, but has suffered a series of setbacks in recent months.
Black lawmakers in Washington are demanding at least $14 trillion for a federal plan to eliminate “the racial wealth gap” between black and white Americans.
But Black lawmakers in California last month unveiled a package of bills on reparations for Black residents that made no mention of the $1.2 million in payouts they had previously been promised.
A survey last year of 6,000 registered voters in California found that only 23 percent were in favor of cash reparations, while 59 percent were opposed.
And while black Californians would like to receive payouts, few of them believe they ever will.
A Washington Post/Ipsos poll last year found that three-quarters of black people thought the descendants of slaves should receive compensation from the government.
But only 14 percent expected to see one in their lifetime.
Campaigners in Chicago are now focusing their efforts on “black-only” exceptions to the $6,000 a year property tax typical for the Illinois city.
Billboards calling for property tax waivers for poor black households have gone up over Chicago
Six in 10 respondents opposed payouts to the descendants of slaves, while four in 10 said the federal government “absolutely should not pursue” such a policy.
“We have a problem: our black citizens in Chicago are being evicted or forced out of Chicago, and they’re going to the Southern states to live comfortably,” said Howard Ray Jr. from the city’s Reconstruction Era Reparations Act Now group.
The cost of setting up the panel in New York is expected to be between $5 million and $10 million before any amount for reparations is proposed.
“Slavery reparations were paid with the blood and lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who fought to end slavery during the Civil War,” said Senate Republican Minority Leader Robert Ortt.
“This commission will fuel further divisions in New York and waste millions of taxpayer dollars that could be spent educating the public about our history and improving communities.”