On Wednesday, the Boston City Council voted unanimously to create a five-person task force that will study how the city government can provide reparations to black Bostonians.
Slavery was abolished in Massachusetts in 1780, more than 80 years before the Civil War, but supporters of reparations contend Boston has a racist history that blocked opportunities for black Bostonians. A wide wealth gap still exists today because of it, they claim.
In the famous and historical city, founded by English Puritans in 1630, black Bostonians currently comprise 23% of the city’s population of 654,000. White residents comprise 50%, according to U.S. Census figures from 2021.
Rasheed Walters, a Boston business owner and Project 21 member, predicts the reparations will never happen, and Democrats quietly know it, because the issue of ancestry is so complex because of family ancestry and ties to slavery.
“I'm not eligible for reparations,” he tells AFN. “Why? Because my family is from the Caribbean.”
AFN has reported the State of California has a "Reparations Task Force" that wants $223,000 for blacks who have ties to slavery in a state where slavery was never legal.
This week, an activist demanded California give $350,000 to those black descendants and $250,000 to black-owned businesses, Fox News reported.
Walters, a Boston native, says groups such as the NAACP stir up racial strife with their grievances but its leaders can’t point to how they have helped blacks improve their lives in the city.
“The Boston public schools are terrible. There are people unenrolling their children in record numbers,” Walters says. “The schools aren't safe.”
Politics in Boston mirrors most large U.S. cities, where Democrats still maintain political power, and have for generations, despite violent crime, political corruption, and terrible public schools.
