Wes Moore, the nation’s lone Black governor, vetoes bill to study reparations

Governor of Maryland. Wes Moore dealt a blow to reparations advocates who relied on the only Black governor of a U.S. state when he vetoed a bill on Friday that would have required the state to identify the economic harms to Black descendants of enslaved people and suggest remedies. A. declare oneself an ally.

During his two and a half years in office, Moore has resisted the Democratic-controlled legislature with two dozen vetoes, the most prominent of which was the veto of a reparations study late Friday.

Moore stated that he was concentrating on legislation that assisted the state in recovering from the harsh effects of the federal spending cuts implemented by the Trump administration, considering the state’s economic issues.

Moore described the reparations study as “the most challenging” of his veto decisions, saying in an interview that “I was very transparent with the leadership and members of the General Assembly that anything that fails to meet the urgency of this moment, I will not sign it and it must wait for another time.”.

According to Moore, he doesn’t need to wait two years for the reparations commission to draft a study before he is prepared to start discussions about redressing the legacy of slavery.

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A study group is acceptable if they state that they will submit reports to the governor in two years. The governor, however, is prepared to act right now,” he stated.

As recently as Thursday, Moore told Black leaders that he was struggling with it.

Even prior to his veto of the bill, some prominent Black supporters felt betrayed and resigned by Moore’s refusal to accept a reparations study. They believed that the state’s first Black governor, who ran on a platform of addressing the racial wealth gap, was a logical leader in the century-long struggle to undo the generational harms caused by slavery.

Moore has stated that he is not seeking higher office, but his support for a reparations policy, which polls show is politically divisive across the country, may make him a more difficult candidate for president.

“This has upset everyone,” Sen said. C. Moore’s lack of support was brought up by Anthony Muse (D-Prince George), who led a rally outside Moore’s official residence in Annapolis last week to force the governor to sign the reparations bill.

The leaders of the General Assembly’s Black Legislative Caucus, of which he is a member, are generally perplexed by Moore’s hesitation, Muse stated prior to the vetoes. “There will be a real backlash from the Black community — not just in Maryland, nationwide,” he added.

“I’ve discussed it with him twice,” Muse stated. The same thought crosses everyone’s mind as they leave it: “What in the world?”.

The Black Caucus released a statement immediately following the veto, stating that “the legislature will have the final say” and that the study had a veto-proof majority. “”.

“This landmark legislation would have taken the state closer to directly repairing the harm of enslavement, but the state’s first Black governor decided to block it,” the caucus said in a statement. While piecemeal legislation and unilateral executive actions can help address disparities, they cannot replace comprehensive, long-term, and meaningful efforts. “.”.

For advocates, Maryland’s decision to address reparations was a tangible and symbolic win.

The state, which is bordered by the Mason-Dixon Line, has historically produced both individuals who fought to uphold slavery and Black leaders for equality, such as Thurgood Marshall and Frederick Douglass. Roger B. Chief Justice Taney of the Supreme Court authored the notorious Dred Scott v. Until 2017, Sandford, a Maryland resident, was prominently honored at the State House for his 1857 Supreme Court opinion declaring that Black people were not citizens.

Reparations advocates claim that discrimination and slavery’s aftereffects still affect Black Americans. Opponents contend that the wrongs of Jim Crow laws and slavery are long gone and that it is unfair to hold people who did not participate in racist government policies accountable for the wrongdoings of others.

Although federal efforts to implement reparations have been stalled for years, several cities and three states—California, New York, Illinois, and the District—have taken steps to investigate or implement reparations.

Prior to the veto, Nkechi Taifa of the national organization Reparation Education Project said of Moore, “It would be a slap in the face to the momentum of the movement if he didn’t do this.”.

She said, “The politics of the issue today must not intimidate him.”. It’s only a study and a commission to suggest changes, so why not just create a task force? What’s wrong with that?

Moore’s logic has been echoed by some reparations activists in Maryland, who claim that more research only serves to stall progress.

“We are aware of food deserts, missed educational opportunities, and housing redlining,” Sen. “D-Prince George’s Ron Watson said.”. “We must proceed. Nothing is done to encourage generational wealth by the reparations study. “.”.

Waiting two years for a study could cost Maryland a unique political opportunity, according to Larry S. Gibson, a civil rights lawyer and law professor at the University of Maryland who has taught seminars on race and discrimination in Maryland for decades.

We now have a state government that is obviously very progressive. “There is no assurance that we will maintain that,” he stated. “We should focus on making progress now. “.”.

Maryland has already established a commission on lynching and the Underground Railroad, among other government-sponsored studies. Some contend that no action has been solely focused on reparations and that studies are essential for laying the groundwork for passing reparations legislation by identifying the harms and reaching an agreement on a remedy.

The legislation in Maryland would have permitted a commission to suggest any remedy; however, one expert cautioned that this arrangement might result in no progress.

Black leaders, according to Muse, the state senator who sponsored the bill, have been debating whether to override Moore in the event of a veto.

“We’re going back to do it again if he doesn’t sign it,” Muse stated in an interview on Thursday. “The votes are with us. “.”.

Moore ran on a platform of addressing systemic racism and the aftereffects of discrimination, such as inequalities in health and education and racist home-lending practices.

“We don’t have an 8-to-1 racial wealth gap because one group is working eight times harder,” he frequently says in speeches, and he has donated millions to Maryland’s historically Black colleges and universities, which a court found had been underfunded for decades. “”.

Moore vehemently defended his record of supporting Black families and equality during the interview, saying he rejects any suggestion that he vetoed the reparations study because it would be a political liability to a presidential bid, which he has stated he is not launching.

He stated, “I never think that being able to address the racial wealth gap is a political liability.”.

He mentioned that he was concentrating on getting more state contacts to visit Black-owned businesses, pardoning marijuana convictions that disproportionately affect Black residents, and funding a child care subsidy that disproportionately benefits lower-income Black residents.

He declared, “I have a strong commitment to ensuring that we are repairing Maryland’s culture.”.

Moore stated that the vetoes that were issued on Friday could be broadly divided into three categories: laws that diverted state agencies from their primary responsibilities, proposals that would be too costly during a period of historic budget issues and economic uncertainty in the region, and laws that require reports and research on policy solutions that are either widely accepted by Democrats or would be ineffective to study rather than implement.

In a typical situation, I could simply say, “Well, you know, I’ll just go ahead and sign these bills.”. “However, these are simply not normal times,” Moore stated, citing multibillion-dollar budget deficits and a state economy that is stagnant and further stung by the Trump administration’s federal workforce cuts, which he described as “an exhaustive assault.”. “.”.

A study that would have created a tax on carbon polluters to fund climate change initiatives was also vetoed by Moore; this is already the case in New York. According to Moore, there is already a model for doing this at the state level, and the federal level is where the policy solution makes the most sense.

“A lot of work has already been done in other states or frequently by academic institutions, and we’re no longer in a position to fund and staff studies for which they can do things, you know, faster and cheaper,” he stated.

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Maryland has never conducted a reparations study before, according to Dayvon Love, a political organizer from Baltimore and the director of the advocacy group Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. Love said he personally made a final pitch to Moore on Thursday.

In an interview, Love stated, “Inequity and problems have been studied, but there hasn’t been a precise and rigorous strategy in how you operationalize a reparations effort.”.

Particularly in a state like Maryland, where 30 percent of the population is Black and the state has an unprecedented concentration of Black people in power in state government, Love noted the stark racial divide in public opinion regarding reparations and said it was difficult to view Moore’s decision without taking that into account.

A 2022 Pew Research poll found that only 18 percent of White Americans support reparations for the descendants of enslaved people, compared to 77 percent of Black Americans.

“In the White mainstream, reparations is a very contentious policy,” Love stated. Should he exercise his veto power, I believe it would show a certain amount of surrender and be a calculated political move to avoid upsetting the White majority. “”.

The William A. According to Darity, a Duke University economist and social scientist who has written a great deal about reparations, Maryland’s proposed study had a noble and essential goal of exposing the truth, but any state-level endeavor was insufficient.

He pointed out that this is due in part to states’ inability to cover the full cost of slavery’s economic damages and in part to the fact that descendants might no longer reside in the areas where the harms occurred—for instance, the families of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre may no longer reside in Oklahoma.

He estimated that a reparations plan would cost about $400 billion in a state with an annual budget of only about $65 billion, and he and his colleagues have been arguing for years that a reparations plan should at least eliminate the racial wealth gap.

The issue here is that state governments simply cannot implement a comprehensive reparations program for the black descendants of U.S. A. slavery,” he wrote in an email, adding that he doesn’t think those who are entitled to reparations “should settle for less than is due.”.

He stated that when “reparations” are insufficient, “we should not take a piece of a loaf, or even half of a loaf, in the form of something labeled’reparations.'”. Additionally, state and local efforts will inherently fall short of what is required. “.”.

This report was written by Emmanuel Felton and Katie Shepherd.