The plan costs PC – guarantees right wing backlash and shatters Democratic unity

Trip Gabriel et al, Maya King, Kurtis Lee and Shawn Hubler 23 {Trip Gabriel is a national correspondent. Maya King is a politics reporter covering the South. Kurtis Lee is an economics correspondent based in Los Angeles. Shawn Hubler is a national correspondent based in California} - ("Reparations Are a Financial Quandary. For Democrats, They’re a Political One, Too.," No Publication, published 5-27-2023, accessed 7-21-2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/27/us/politics/reparations-democrats-black-americans.html)//marlborough-wr/

Now, as those commissions announce their recommendations, the political climate is far different from just three years ago. A widespread “anti-woke” movement on the right has targeted programs aimed at social and racial justice, and the hard-cash figures being proposed as reparations are causing sticker shock. A  recently recommended more than $500 billion in reparations to Black residents.  is considering compensation of $100 billion. And Representative Cori Bush of Missouri said 

Republicans have seized on the figures to argue that the left’s pursuit of social justice has run amok. But for Democrats, the re-emergence of the long-dormant issue poses a deeper set of problems on the horizon.

Democratic officials had for years nodded approvingly at the idea of reparations as a far-off ideal to close the racial wealth gap, a position that appealed to many Black voters, who are the party’s most loyal constituency. But the headline-grabbing recommendations by lawmakers and local and state task forces are forcing Democratic leaders to wrestle with financial and political implications sooner than many would have liked.

Few Democrats in positions of power take seriously the possibility of spending billions of dollars to redistribute wealth to the descendants of slaves. But that reality is putting party leaders eager to retain the allegiance of Black voters in the uncomfortable position of finding ways to say no, or not yet, or to change the subject entirely pending some dramatic improvement in the economy.

 priced the reparations owed to older Black residents at up to $1.2 million each, compensation for the state’s long history of housing discrimination, mass incarceration, unequal health care and other harms outlined in its report. But Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who signed the law setting up the task force, dodged the issue of costs, declaring that reparations are “about much more than cash payments.”

 expressed support for setting aside $5 million in compensation for some residents, but Mayor London Breed, a Democrat who is Black, has not committed to payments.

Both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as candidates in 2020, endorsed a federal study of reparations, but they have expended little political capital to advance the project in the White House. Mr. Biden has spoken on the legacy of systemic racism in America, but he has not issued an executive order to create a study commission on reparations, as some have urged.

“As long as people are talking about this, it’s a positive for Democrats,” said David Townsend, a Sacramento-based consultant to many of the moderate Democrats in the California Legislature. “The problems don’t start until you have to start writing the checks.”

The issue presents a dilemma that quietly divides the Democratic voter base. In polling, Black voters , but other groups that Democrats cannot afford to push away in the run-up to the 2024 presidential race largely oppose them, including white, Asian and Hispanic voters.

According to a  conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2021, fewer than one in three Americans agree that descendants of slaves should be repaid in some way, such as with land or money. Seventy-seven percent of Black adults favored reparations, but only 18 percent of white adults did so. Among Hispanics, support was 39 percent, and among Asians, 33 percent. About half of Democrats said the descendants of enslaved people should be compensated, while only 8 percent of Republicans agreed.