As Asheville, North Carolina, seeks to “make amends” for slavery and subsequent discrimination, the city and county’s reparations commission is pushing forward several proposals and will meet again next week to discuss the city’s plan. 

The commission voted this week in favor of recommending that the city create a guaranteed income program in the form of direct monthly payments aimed at helping individuals who have been “harmed by historic, systemic, and ongoing wage and employment discrimination.” The commission also approved recommendations including the creation of a Reparations Accountability Council and a Black Economic Development Center with job training services and a financial institution “designed for and led by Black residents.” 

Asheville’s moves come as reparations momentum is growing across the country, fueled partly by California’s reparations report and a slew of legislation proposed there as a result. While the state hasn’t yet implemented direct cash payments, some legislators are looking for ways to fund them, and one assembly member is even proposing a tax on products such as cotton, gold, coffee, and sugar — items that were once connected to slave labor.

New York, too, is charging ahead with reparations — despite state budget concerns — but less is known about the commission so far or what it will end up recommending, as the Sun has reported. Other reparations efforts have been underway in cities ranging from Boston to Detroit to St. Louis. 

In the summer of 2020, Asheville’s City Council voted in support of reparations and called for both North Carolina and the federal government to provide funding for reparations. “Hundreds of years of Black blood spilled that basically fills the cup that we drink from today,” a councilman and proponent of the city’s resolution, Keith Young, said at the time. 

“Systemic racism was created over centuries and will take time to dismantle,” the 2020 resolution notes, adding that “state and federal governments have a responsibility to adopt programs, policies, and funding to address reparations.” 

Yet, the reparations efforts in North Carolina and elsewhere have sparked heated debate about whether implementation of race-based proposals would be legal under the 14th Amendment. In a Supreme Court case last year banning affirmative action in college admissions, the court noted that “the Equal Protection Clause’s twin commands that race may never be used as a ‘negative’ and that it may not operate as a stereotype.” Some legal experts have said that reparations are another form of affirmative action and that policies that advantage or disadvantage individuals based on race are unconstitutional. 

In North Carolina, questions have also emerged about whether several state laws against diversity, equity, and inclusion could stand in the way of reparations, as the state has signaled opposition to DEI efforts more generally.

Last year, the legislature passed a law — overriding the Democratic governor’s veto –  that prohibits compelling state employees to “affirm or profess belief” in DEI concepts, including that one race or sex is superior to another, that individuals are “inherently racist” or “oppressive” based on their race, or that individuals — solely based on race — bear “responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race.”

The law also bans compelling state employees to profess beliefs that individuals based on race or sex should feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” because of that, or that America was “created by members of a particular race or sex for the purpose of oppressing members of another race or sex.”

The Sun attempted to reach out to Asheville’s reparations commission and received a response that the Office of Equity and Inclusion is closed for the remainder of this week.