Black New Yorkers already clashing over who should get reparations as state panel starts

A New York commission that will recommend whether to give reparations for slavery and discrimination to black residents hasn’t even met yet — but it’s already sparked a rift among black New Yorkers over who should be eligible for payouts. A similar panel in California said monetary reparations should be limited only to descendants of chattel enslaved persons to the US — $360,000 per eligible person — but not for other black Americans who may have suffered from discrimination.Even with that restriction, the pricetag for the proposal has been estimated at an eyewatering $800 billion. A New York commission is now examining whether the descendants of slaves are entitled to reparations. However, a huge segment of New York’s black residents are not descendants of US slavery. In New York City alone, well over 500,000 people are Afro-Caribbean or African immigrants — more than 25% of the black population, census figures show.But some New York black activists said California’s reparations package was too restrictive.Bertha Lewis, head of the Brooklyn-based Black Institute, told The Post that reparations must be considered for all black residents, because they have suffered from decades of systemic racism resulting from slavery — even if they are not...