PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Two City Council members have proposed establishing a reparations task force that would suggest ways to compensate Philadelphians who are descendants of enslaved people.
Councilmembers Jaime Gauthier and Kendra Brooks introduced a resolution to create the task force at a council session last week but included no details, like potential members or a timeline. Her office says those details are still being worked out with the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America.
What Gauthier did focus on was why the task force should be created.
“It is crystal clear that many of the crises plaguing our city have their roots in American slavery,” she said.
Gauthier declared that Philadelphia would never solve its problems until it reckoned with the legacy of slavery. Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1780, but Gauthier says the effects lingered in discriminatory practices.
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“Redlining prevented Black families from earning generational wealth. Employers paid Black employees less than their white counterparts and segregated public schools forced Black children to learn in crumbling and overcrowded environments,” she explained.
Gauthier tied those practices to the poverty and violent crime that plague the city.
“It is not an accident that formerly redlined areas full of blighted properties, crumbling schools and uncollected dumping experience the most violent crime,” said Gauthier. “Until these communities receive the investments required to rectify these problems, gun violence will continue to haunt this city.”
Gauthier offered no solutions, leaving that to the task force, whose proposals would likely be nonbinding.