DETROIT — The Detroit City Council could ask voters in November whether it should form a committee to consider reparations for residents.
The council's proposed question, which is expected to be voted on Tuesday, asks: "Should the City of Detroit establish a reparations committee to make recommendations for housing and economic development programs that address historical discrimination against the Black community in Detroit?"
Council President Pro Tem Mary Sheffield has sponsored two resolutions on reparations that acknowledge African Americans have been "systematically, continually and unjustly enslaved, segregated, incarcerated, denied housing through racist practices and redlining."
To combat it, Sheffield said, the city must create a process that would develop short- and long-term reparations recommendations in a bid to create generational wealth as well as boost economic mobility and opportunity for Black residents.
"Historically, we've been faced with discriminatory policies, and there are a lot of things that have caused African Americans to be left out, and locked out," she said. "This is an idea to right the wrongs and to begin to look at some of those injustices that we faced."
Following George Floyd's death, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2020 presidential election, conversations about reparations resurfaced. The developments prompted Sheffield to meet with members of the Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus, City Planning Commission and Reparations Taskforce. They asked for the proposed question to be on the ballot, Sheffield said, to gauge the interest of residents.
The council could form its own reparations committee, said Lauren Hood, chair of the City Planning Commission. But for there to be a "real allocation of some sort of reparation, the demand has to come from the ground up," said Hood.
"Government, on its own, isn't going to say, 'Hey you people deserve this and we're going to figure out what it is and how to get it to you.' The demand is going to have to come from the ground up," said Hood, who added she speaks for herself, not the commission.
"So, in order to demonstrate that demand exists, you put it on the ballot, so that people can have a voice, and it's something that you can point to and say people want this."
The difference, she said, is getting the right organizations at the table to examine the ways in which people of color have been harmed. The committee should include people who, for example, have lost their homes to overtaxation or hurt in other ways, Hood said.
Reparations for slavery have gained national momentum this year after a U.S. House committee advanced for the first time legislation to study reparations for Black Americans that former Detroit U.S. Rep. John Conyers reintroduced to each Congress over 30 years. It has yet to reach a floor vote.
Congress previously didn't act on the legislation as critics questioned a causal link between slavery, segregation and today's racial inequities.
But reparations — how they would be doled out, in what form and who would pay for them — is being debated among Black Detroiters, some of whom said they detest the talk of what some would perceive as a handout for grievances and discrimination from decades ago.
The proposals aren't seeking "a handout," Sheffield said.
"It's about providing that access and equity to ensure that lift Detroiters to better economic opportunities," she said. The measure would "begin to explore how that could possibly look in our city," she added.
While the Duggan administration understands and supports the intention of the effort, the magnitude of addressing the impact of slavery must come from the federal level, said Deputy Mayor Conrad Mallett Jr.
"The resolution is to create an investigatory process to assess, catalog and understand the damages associated with slavery as they evidence themselves in the city of Detroit," Mallett said. "The funding of a response is going to be something that will have to occur at the federal or state level.
"The bottom line is, the size and the scope of the response that a genuine investigation associated with reference reparations would require would have to be based on federal initiative and, at the very least, from the state of Michigan."
Across the nation, city councils in Asheville, North Carolina, and Evanston, Illinois, have passed resolutions for reparations. There are also pending reparations initiatives in St. Paul, Minnesota; Durham, North Carolina; Providence, Rhode Island, and California.
In March, the Evanston council approved the Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program, granting qualifying households up to $25,000 for down payments or home repairs using funds from the city's Reparations Fund established by the council two years earlier.
"Detroit is one of the Blackest cities in America," Sheffield said, "so I do think that it's right for us to be a part of these conversations that are happening nationally."
Should the council approve the resolution, it will head to the election commission for review and then to the November ballot.
The proposed measure could bring some legal concerns over how it will be funded.
Under the Michigan Constitution, taxpayer money can't be allocated to a specific race. A 2006 voter-approved constitutional amendment bans programs in public hiring, public employment and public education that "give preferential treatment to" or "discriminate against" individuals on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity or national origin.
But Keith Williams, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus, said the hope is to establish the committee first and potentially derive funding from marijuana sales.
Former Wayne County commissioner Keith Williams, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party's Black Caucus, supports asking Detroit residents to approve the formation of a reparations committee for the city.
"In Evanston, they addressed zoning laws and ordinances that were caused by the city council. If they can do it in Evanston, why can't we do it in Detroit?" Williams said.
"We got to fix our neighborhoods. Then you got to create economic development where we're not depending on the system to take care of us."
Hood said support for reparations would free Detroiters to establish the "thriving Black Mecca we deserve." First, the acknowledgment must happen and then a historical analysis, she said.
"I wouldn't say we're pioneering, but I do think we have a chance to be the most bold because we are the Blackest," Hood said. "I just think that gives us permission to be a little more audacious in our ask."
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