Mamdani Leaves Door Open to Paying Reparations to Black New Yorkers

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said this week that he supported reparations efforts in New York City but that it was too early to commit to making monetary payouts to descendants of slavery.

In a recent interview on The Root, Mr. Mamdani was asked whether he would support cash reparations if the city’s Commission on Racial Equity, which is currently studying the matter, recommended them. The mayor said he would have to wait for the commission’s report but acknowledged the city’s complicity in slavery.

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“I can’t give you an answer in advance of them,” the mayor continued, “but I can tell you that this is critically important because this is also what it looks like to acknowledge what history truly was.”

He told Mr. Blow that he stood by a pledge, written when he was running for mayor, that he would support the descendants of slavery in, as the pledge states, “rectifying historical discrimination” and “repairing ongoing inequalities.”

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There are currently separate city and state commissions studying reparations and reconciliation. In 2023, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a law creating the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies to study the legacy of slavery and the ongoing impact on descendants dealing with extreme wealth gaps and other social issues that are the consequences of the loss of generational wealth. The group is not expected to release its findings for at least two years.

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