‘It’s Going to Rip Us Apart’: Georgia County Plans Reparations Study, Can’t Fund Basic Infrastructure

Fulton County, Georgia, is the latest to move forward with a $210,000 taxpayer-funded study to evaluate if reparations for residents who are descendants of slaves are practical. 

The Fulton County Board of Commissioners voted four to two in favor of the measure to fund the study led by the Atlanta University Center and county leadership, Fox 5 Atlanta reported. 

Commissioner Khadijah Abdur-Rahman, who voted in favor of the measure, said this study will bring on five researchers who will explore if reparations are warranted. 

“The purpose of the reparations task force is to evaluate if reparations are warranted, if they are warranted, in what form? Should it be educational, should it be financial? What should they be?” Abdur-Rahman told Fox 5 Atlanta.

However, Commissioner Bridget Thorne called the measure “divisive,” saying it pulls resources away from important issues such as building a new jail and a hospital, according to the Washington Examiner. 

“This is just such a divisive concept, and I feel like it’s just gonna hurt Fulton County, it’s just gonna rip us apart,” Thorne said.

She continued:

We heard in public comment, how people are gonna be paying for it — this is coming out of taxpayer dollars — this $210,000 is coming out of taxpayers dollars, whatever reparations, whatever they decide, whatever they find, they are going to make the taxpayers pay for it. And we don’t have money for a jail, we don’t have money for a hospital, that’s what we need to be focusing on.

Thorne also pointed out that the study failed to consider any measures taken by the county to alleviate racial disparity after 1980, according to Fox News.

“The study specifically excludes initiatives after 1980 because that data would reveal that the taxpayers of Fulton County have invested billions of dollars in supporting its most marginalized populations,” Thorne told Fox News. “With that view in mind, many would question the need to provide handouts to people who have never been enslaved, paid for by people who never enslaved anyone.”  

Reparation task forces have popped up across the country. In May, a task force in California recommended that legislators pay all black residents $1.2 million in slavery and racial discrimination reparations, despite California joining the Union as a free state, Breitbart News reported.