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Fulton County is following swimsuit with different cities, counties, and states throughout the nation which might be commissioning reparations research to guage the consequences of slavery.
Commissioners for the central county of Atlanta voted, 4-2, to approve a research that can study the social, financial, and political remedy of the county’s Black residents over the past three centuries in addition to the potential for reparations to their descendants.
The county is spending $210,000 to fund that evaluation which is able to happen over the following yr. The county’s reparations process pressure will use that cash to rent researchers to conduct that examination alongside the Atlanta College Middle. They’re anticipated to return their findings in late 2024.
County commissioners have been cut up on the choice to push the examination ahead, with some questioning the need of allocating a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} to such a research.
Bridget Thorne of District 1, one of many white commissioners who voted in opposition to the measure, vocalized her opposition to the research. She known as it unwise and “divisive,” including that that cash could possibly be spent on extra rapid wants.
“That is popping out of taxpayer {dollars} — this $210,000 is popping out of taxpayers {dollars}, no matter reparations, no matter they determine, no matter they discover, they’ll make the taxpayers pay for it,” Thorne instructed The Washington Examiner. “And we don’t have cash for a jail, we don’t have cash for a hospital, that’s what we must be specializing in.”
Thorne additionally famous that the county’s reparations process pressure, which was shaped in 2021, is just researching knowledge up till the tip of city renewal in 1980 and purposely negating the county’s quite a few pricey initiatives that helped marginalized communities since that decade.
The duty pressure serves as an advisory board to the county and is tasked with assessing aims and insurance policies within the type of reparations that can assist the revitalization and stabilization of the county’s Black inhabitants. The $210,000 that’s being spent on this newly-approved research comes out of the renewed $250,000 price range the group was allotted earlier this yr to proceed work on these suggestions.
Commissioner Khadijah Abdur-Rahman went on the protection in opposition to Thorne’s viewpoint, stressing that the purpose of the research is to first decide whether or not reparations are vital and in addition stating that this expenditure accounts for a small fraction of the county price range.
“The aim of the reparations process pressure is to guage if reparations are warranted. If they’re warranted, in what kind? Ought to or not it’s instructional? Ought to or not it’s monetary? What ought to they be?” Abdur-Rahman instructed Fox 5 Atlanta. “To me, for those who walked within the sneakers of my ancestors and others who’re of colour, your perspective wouldn’t be that.”
In response to 2022 Census knowledge, precisely 45 % of Fulton County’s residents are Black, and 44.2 % are white. The county is comprised of greater than a dozen cities together with Alpharetta, Atlanta, Chattahoochee Hills, School Park, East Level, Fairburn, Hapeville, Johns Creek, Milton, Mountain Park, Palmetto, Roswell, Sandy Springs, South Fulton, and Union Metropolis.
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