From Staff Reports 

With 20 members present, the Community Reparations Commission on Dec. 5 unanimously approved its second recommendation to Buncombe County and the City of Asheville.

The proposition requests “an official third-party audit of both local governments to ensure harms being done to black residents are stopped,” according to a Dec. 6 report in the Asheville Citizen Times.

“There could be ongoing harms that are going unabated, while we as a commission are trying to repair the damage. And that is not tenable. We can’t really go forward with it,” Dwight Mullen, commission chairman, was quoted as telling the ACT in a Dec. 5 telephone interview preceding the meeting.

(Mullen is a professor emeriti of political science at UNC Asheville. He has led the “State of Black Asheville” project for the last decade.)

As for the commission’s allegation of harm to local blacks, the ACT reported that “Mullen said that that must be the No. 1 priority of any reparations process,” and quoted him as saying, “Before any restitution, any recognition, any repair work has to be done, that at least the harm that initially caused it has been stopped.”

The reparations commission’s first recommendation was that any reparations awarded be funded into perpetuity.

Vice Chairwoman Dewana Little expressed the same sentiment as Mullen at the Dec. 5 meeting, when the ACT quoted her as saying, “How are we trying to fix something while the harms are still existing and continue to be perpetuated against black people?”

Further, the ACT noted, “As proposed, the audit would also provide key data to help the commission make further policy recommendations to Asheville City Council and the Buncombe County Commissioners, which is the intended purpose of the 25-member body, (which was) officially seated in April (2022).” 

“The initiative empowers the commission to make short, medium, and long-term recommendations that will make progress toward repairing the damage caused by public and private systemic racism, according to the Community Reparations Commission’s mission statement.”

Meanwhile, in a Jan. 1 story, the ACT noted that Brenda Mills, the city’s equity and inclusion director, said the commission is a pioneering effort, breaking new ground in reparations in the United States.

“It was really scary, because we don’t have a blueprint,” she told the ACT in a Dec. 15 interview. “There’s not a blueprint across the country for what we’re doing.”

A resolution supporting community reparations for black Ashevillians was passed in July 2020 by Asheville City Council. 

“The Community Reparations Commission was assigned to make recommendations to the city and county for repairing damage caused by public and private systemic racism,” the ACT reported. “After repeated delays, the board first sat in April (2022)” — eight months after council’s approval of its setup.

In her interview with the ACT, Mills said that, in part, “Asheville reparations are intended to answer for the urban renewal program of the 1970s and ‘80s that devastated black neighborhoods and businesses.”

In a separate interview, Mullen told the ACT that “... I think our model has taken us further than any other model I have seen, any other reparations activities I have seen. This is as far as I’ve ever seen it ever get, and I’m really kind of proud of that. But we have a long way to go.” 

Despite Mullen’s optimistic outlook, the entire process has been riddled with problems and complications.

For instance, besides the eight-month delay in achieving stability in seating the commission, project management also was rocked when — reportedly — to everyone’s shock, Debra Clark Jones, president of consulting firm TEQuity, publicly announced Nov. 7 that she was resiginng from management of the Asheville reparations process.

 â€œThe $365,583 contract was reassigned by City Council on Nov. 15 to Charlotte-based Civility Localized, helmed by Christine Edwards,” the ACT noted. “The transition did not require any additional city funding.”

Other turnover affecting the reparations commssion have included the following:

• The resignations of five commission members, including both public housing representatives, two county appointees and a county alternate.

• The departure of Rachel Edens, Buncombe’s first chief equity and human rights officer, who left the job after less than a year. 

In addition, an anonymous survey taken by 18 commission members following their Nov. 7 meeting cited “too much talk, too many lectures, little truth-telling, (no) data and ad infinitum” among process concerns, the ACT noted. “Another response says, ‘Another meeting in which nothing was done.’”