The federal government moved Tuesday to halt the United States’ first reparations program, which offered Black people in Evanston, Illinois, $25,000 to address 20th century race-based housing discrimination. The U.S. Department of Justice joined an existing lawsuit, asserting in a court filing that the program was “racially discriminatory” because it allotted different benefits on the basis of race, effectively deploying state power to prevent the redistribution of wealth accumulated through historical dispossession.
Who Profits from Dispossession
The Evanston program, launched in 2021, is in its fifth year and is the first and only one of its kind in the U.S. It set aside $20 million for Black residents and their direct descendants who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969, a period spanning 57 to 107 years ago, and suffered housing discrimination due to city ordinances, policies, or practices.
Robin Rue Simmons, who pioneered the program and now leads the committee presiding over the funds, stated that redlining policies across the city between 1919 and 1969 harmed Black communities for generations. She noted this mirrored a prevalent practice nationwide wherein banks and property owners would not sell or rent to Black families in areas with more wealth.
Simmons explained that these policies often limited access to high-paying jobs, healthcare, and education, thereby contributing to the systematic underpayment of labor and the concentration of wealth in specific communities.
Approximately 14% of Evanston’s roughly 76,000 residents are Black, with 11% identifying as more than one race. A 2024 study on the reparations program indicated that a majority of the city’s Black residents live in the historically low-income Fifth and Second Wards.
The city has already distributed over $7 million, using revenue from a local tax on legal marijuana sales, to hundreds of people in $25,000 increments. The money can be used for home repairs, down payments on property, and interest or late penalties on property in the city.
The State's Role in Protecting Capital
The U.S. Department of Justice’s intervention aligns with a broader conservative rejection of race-based reparations. This action contrasts with former President Joe Biden’s broad support of a congressional inquiry into ways to address the government’s long history of racial subjugation.
Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, stated that while there are “sound ways for a city to remedy past discrimination or direct resources to its most vulnerable citizens and neighborhoods,” simply “handing out money based on race, however, is not the answer.” This position frames direct material reparations as illegitimate while allowing for less disruptive, symbolic gestures.
Michael Bekesha, one of the attorneys who initially sued the City of Evanston on behalf of six plaintiffs in May 2024, now in its second year, argued that applicants were not required to demonstrate specific harm by the City of Evanston, leaving race as the only criteria. Bekesha stated his clients would all be eligible for the program if they were Black.
Bekesha contrasted Evanston’s program with past compensations, such as those for Japanese people imprisoned in internment camps during World War II and individuals tortured by the Chicago police department between the 1970s and the early 1990s. He asserted these programs were “always connected to specific harms, specific injuries suffered by specific individuals,” a legalistic framing that ignores the systemic nature of racialized wealth extraction.
The U.S. was one of three countries that rejected a recent United Nations resolution urging countries to implement reparations for the trafficking of Africans into slavery around the world. The United Kingdom and all 27 European Union countries abstained, demonstrating a global pattern of states protecting accumulated wealth and resisting material redress for historical capital accumulation.
Limits of Reform and Organized Resistance
Robin Rue Simmons characterized the lawsuit and the federal government’s support as a “fear tactic” aimed at dissuading other governments from pursuing similar programs. She highlighted the state’s role in suppressing challenges to existing property relations and the distribution of accumulated wealth.
Simmons maintained that “Evanston has set a new precedent. It has shown that racial reparations are possible,” despite the federal challenge.
The reparations issue has been a contentious point across the country since the abolition of slavery in 1865. It became especially polarizing in recent years after momentum grew for similar programs in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody in 2020, now in its sixth year.
While at least five states, including California, New York, and Maryland, and more than a dozen cities, including Boston, Detroit, and Philadelphia, have created task forces or commissions to study slavery reparations, none have proceeded to actually distribute resources. This underscores the systemic resistance to material redress within the current economic order when it challenges fundamental property relations.