LOUISVILLE – During last summer’s reckoning over racial injustice, decades-long debates about whether to offer reparations to the descendants of slaves in the U.S.
finally seemed to be gaining momentum. State lawmakers in California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Oregon — where Democrats control the legislatures — introduced or hoped to revive proposals to study the possibility.
It turns out the wait for reparations will continue. The state efforts have mostly stalled, raising questions about whether they can win enough support to succeed on a wide scale.
California is the only state to approve a commission to study reparations statewide and how they might work. “We need a federal reparations bill, but I don’t know when we’ll get