Last month, Palm Springs, the affluent desert city known for boutique hotels and immaculate golf courses became one of the first in the US to approve cash reparations for hundreds of its Black and Latino residents. Under the deal, about $6 million will be divvied up among those whose family homes and possessions were illegally seized and torched by the city in a violent urban renewal project in the 1950s and 1960s. Another $20 million will be set aside for first-time home buyers and a community land trust, and $1 million will go toward grants and loans for small businesses, with a focus on diversity and inclusion.
“The truth is that we can’t right the wrongs of the past,” said Palm Springs Mayor Jeffrey Bernstein during a council meeting to approve the deal. “What we can do is we can heal and move forward.”
Reparations are, of course, different from the DEI programs used at corporations and from the affirmative action policies now banned in college admissions. But many on the left and the right, including Trump, understandably tend to lump all three together, as each has a goal of making amends for past racial injustices. And so what Palm Springs is doing is no small thing.
Areva Martin, a civil rights attorney who represented the Black and Latino residents in Palm Springs, acknowledged that a lawsuit over the reparations deal is possible. But she dismissed it as unlikely to succeed, given the narrow claim of restitution for a very specific act of racial terror and property theft.
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