Guest Column: Why I support reparations for Black Americans

As he has the previous two state legislative sessions, Senator Lew Frederick of Portland will likely sponsor in 2025 a Black reparations bill. It’ll call legislators to respond to the legacy of seventy-five years of state-sanctioned slavery and a century of state-sanctioned racial discrimination and segregation. States like California and New York and cities like Providence, Rhode Island and Asheville, North Carolina are modeling how to explore the coupled history of Black disadvantage and white advantage. 2025 is the year Oregon should follow those models and pass a bill funding a commission to study Black reparations. My support for reparations was recently boosted by a comparison of personal genealogical evidence and typical Black American experience.