A recently proposed bill in the Georgia House of Representatives aims to tackle the persistent effects of systemic racism statewide. The bill, titled “House Bill 955,” creates the Georgia Equity and Fairness Commission and assigns them to examine the economic, educational and health impacts of slavery on the descendants of enslaved people.
From their findings, the commission will propose a variety of legislative and educative reforms that address systemic inequalities; it is likely that financial restitution programs, also known as “race-based reparations,” are to be the primary subject for the proposed reforms.
ReparationsPush, a Georgia-based organization with a goal to politically organize for the passing of race-based reparations, has assisted in the development of this bill.
“This is the civil rights capital; Georgia is,” said Anqous Cosby, a faculty member of ReparationsPush. “We have Dr. King’s legacy, Malcolm X’s family legacy. We have Elijah Muhammad’s legacy.”
However, systematic racism targeting Georgian African Americans goes much further than the impacts of slavery alone. Historically racist legislation, such as Jim Crow laws and segregationist judicial orders, can amount to immense inequalities and intensify the effects of slavery in Georgia.
“When we look at the unequal distribution of wealth by race, it is both a consequence of very early U.S. history [slavery, colonization, overt racial exclusion], more recent history [redlining, blockbusting, racial steering] and very, very recent history [targeted sub-prime mortgage loans in racially segregated communities],” said Dr. Stephanie McClure, a sociology professor at GC.
These complexities often make it difficult to predict the effectiveness of certain reforms, and in relation, complications further arise when assuming the impact of institutional racism through an uneducated lens. This underlines the importance of the commission’s effort to procure racial research and leads many to believe that inclusive education is a necessity to form effective solutions.
Dr. Michael Snowden, the chief diversity officer at GC, shares similar beliefs: that miseducation and wrongful understandings of systemic racism are probable drawbacks in the fight for systemic change.
“Dismantling a system is challenging, especially when there’s disbelief in the problem’s existence, hindering efforts to find solutions,” Snowden said.
Coincidingly, the expected recommendation from the commission, race-based reparations, builds upon this educational focus. Some scholars indicate that reparations have the potential to address these multifaceted issues and can be an effective tool for past and modern instances of institutional inequalities among African Americans.
“The overall case for reparations indicates, at minimum, a two-pronged approach which addresses not only the vestiges of inequality which persist from the past but the impact of ongoing current forms of institutionalized racial discrimination which further exacerbate existing inequalities,” McClure said.
Regardless of the commission’s probable reparation-focused recommendations, some critics of this bill are keen to argue that the research and recommendations have minimal inherent power; that in essence, well-educated scholars have already provided abundant research for the purposes of being used to enact change, not go ignored.
“They [the commission] can simply drive two hours to UGA or GC and find the most incredible, in-depth research into Black history in the South that has ever been done,” said Emerson Hamm, a senior political science major. “This bill, to me, just seems like a waste of time when the information is already there, and the representatives can just look at the information.”
Diana Cazacu, a sophomore art and philosophy major, critiques the bill for a different reason: Political institutions are complex and often reliant on bipartisanship to enact change, making it an unreliable source for statewide results.
“Even with the best intentions, even if the bill did pass, it will inevitably hit roadblocks due to the requirement of many other additional pieces of legislation to make this bill worthwhile,” Cazacu said.
Be that as it may, the bill does mark a firm step toward addressing systemic and historic inequalities for African Americans in Georgia. While the effectiveness of this bill is questionable, the bill provides an empirical amplification of these problems that are essential to reaching landmark solutions.
