Mamdani Is Open to Forcing New Yorkers to Pay Cash Reparations for Slavery, Says ‘We Were Very Complicit’
New York City socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani would not rule out issuing cash reparations for the descendants of slaves living in the Big Apple, should a city commission currently reviewing the matter decide in favor of it.
The Root’s Charles M. Blow, in a podcast episode released this week, read, in part, a written statement then-mayoral candidate Mamdani had submitted to one of those groups studying the issue, saying, “New York City participated actively in the slave trade and furthered its legacy through racist institutions, policies and laws. The city should reconcile and repair this legacy of slavery, stolen wealth and discrimination.”
Blow noted one of the commission’s findings is due out next summer.
“If a commission studying reparations in this city recommended cash reparations for people impacted by slavery in New York City, would you support that recommendation? he asked.
Mamdani responded that he stood by his statement made as a candidate: “It’s the truth; it’s not a personal assessment.”
“We often think about slavery and the complicity in slavery as being exclusively to certain geographic areas of the country. Here in New York City, we were very complicit, and so I look forward to whatever those findings are,” the mayor elaborated.
“I can’t give you an answer in advance of them, but I can tell you that this is critically important, because this is also what it looks like to acknowledge what history truly was,” Mamdani added.
As I argued on a recent Western Journal podcast and in the new edition of my book “We Hold These Truths,” about the influence of the beliefs found in the Declaration of Independence throughout U.S. history, America’s record regarding slavery is actually commendable when measured against the backdrop of human history.
The Founders took the first steps in the modern era to bring an end to the institution, which had gone on for thousands of years and lamentably continues in the world to this day.
Pennsylvania voted to end slavery during the Revolutionary War in 1780, and Benjamin Franklin, a former slave owner, became the president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, whose mission was to have other states follow Pennsylvania’s lead.
By 1804, during President Thomas Jefferson’s first term, all the states north of Maryland had voted to phase out or end slavery. Again, it should be noted that no other governments around the world were doing so at this time, including the former mother country, Great Britain, which did not outlaw slavery in its empire until 1833.