North Carolina city spends $300,000 on reparations expert DESPITE her posts about locals ‘romanticizing segregation’ and ‘White accommodation’

A North Carolina city has approved $300,000 for a reparations consultant with a record of online posts about “white accommodation” and how her neighbors “celebrate and romanticize segregation.”

The High Point City Council on Tuesday gave the green light to $292,460 for Lea Henry and her team at the National Institute of Minority Economic Development to lead the reparations effort.

At least two council members have questioned the large sum, but there is little evidence that members are aware of the hardline views Henry, a Harvard University graduate, is posting on social media.

On Facebook, Henry has criticized her North Carolina neighbors for “celebrating segregation” and spoken out against “White accommodation,” a term used by critical race theory (CRT) to describe a form of black oppression .

Whether taxes should fund cash payouts and other arrangements for the descendants of slaves is a hot topic in America’s culture wars. To critics, reparations counselors are a drain on much-needed resources.

Henry’s posts raise questions about whether she is the right woman for the job.

In one, she references an online group for former and current residents of her own North Carolina town, Rocky Mount, to share nostalgic photos of yesteryear.

“People say how amazing those times and places were and everyone in the photos is white,” she posted in September.

“Don’t they see that they are celebrating and romanticizing segregation?”

Those who responded positively to the photos gave a “gut feeling” to blacks who were “legally excluded” at the time, she said.

The comments were a “reminder of Jim Crow, and the reminder that people who lived there and enjoyed it are alive and well and still using social media,” Henry, 52, added.

In another post, she complains about the previews shown in a movie theater before the main film, Color Purple, a musical about racism in Georgia at the turn of the 20th century.

She described “movies with black casts that resemble the worst of self-loathing, self-parody and white accommodation.”

“I was bullied before the movie even started,” she posted in December.

Henry, an expert on affordable housing and getting black people onto the property ladder, has already worked for the city of 115,000 in drafting the One High Point Commission report.

The 245-page document was released last year and called for policy changes to address the city’s deep-seated racism and legacy of slavery.

The goal is to help African Americans by improving schools and transportation in black neighborhoods and making it easier to get a mortgage.

Henry’s new 30-month project includes advising the city on which of these proposals should be put into action.

Councilwoman Monica Peters said Henry’s advice would help High Point by “expanding our tax base to help alleviate the cycle of poverty,” according to the High Point Enterprise.

Other council members were not convinced.

Councilor Tim Andrew said Henry’s work plan was not clear, while member Britt Moore warned against overspending.

Reparations advocates say it is time for America to pay back blacks for the injustices of the historic transatlantic slave trade, Jim Crow segregation and the inequities that persist to this day.

From there it gets tricky.

There is no agreed framework for what a settlement would look like. Ideas range from cash payouts to scholarships, land giveaways, business start-up loans, housing subsidies or statues and street names.

Critics say payouts to select black people will inevitably divide winners and losers and raise questions about why American Indians and others aren’t getting their own benefits.

Although popular among black Americans, other groups that would have to pay the tax bill are less enthusiastic.