The picture of what reparations could look like in Asheville and Buncombe County is starting to become clearer.
At Monday’s Community Reparations Commission meeting, members heard the final version of the Cease the Harm audit, a collection of more than 100 recommendations on how the city and county can end racism in local government.
The 25-member commission was formed after local leaders adopted a resolution in 2020 to repair damage caused by systemic racism.
The audit analyzed mountains of public data, programs, practices and other internal processes from the city and county from 2020 through 2023. The goal of the audit is to pinpoint inequities in the City of Asheville and Buncombe County’s government and identity solutions to those shortcomings.
Carter Development Group led the study, which was commissioned by the Reparations Commission in late 2022 for about $175,000.
The audit was first presented in draft form at the commissions’ Jan. 22 meeting. After receiving input from the city, county and reparations commission, Carter has finalized its recommendations.
The audit calls for the Asheville and Buncombe County government to correct “four key harms,” according to consultant Adrian Carter, who led the presentation.
The harms include insufficient data around Black participation in city and county activities; insufficient evaluation of grant recipients; limited affordable housing supply that’s compounded by a lack of cohesive city-county strategy; and, a lack of wide-scale racial equity training for city and county staff.
The core recommendations of the audit are for the city and county governments to:
- Designate legacy Black communities as historic districts
- Increase workforce diversity in school systems and add cultural sensitivity training for staff, along with requirements for culturally relevant pedagogy in textbook selection.
- Conduct a Buncombe County Disparity Study and develop a dashboard to evaluate and encourage more government contracts for minority-owned businesses
- Develop a community-led Black Chamber of Commerce.
- Establish a Black Health Directory
- Address bias in policing through scenario-based, measurable training
- Improve strategies to recruit more Black detention officers
- Revise city and county hiring practices for equity and conduct a workforce equity audit
Carter expressed optimism about the many ambitious outcomes the commission wants.
“I see a tremendous amount of opportunity where not only do you make history, but actually you’re leading the country in how to implement and make these kinds of shifts and do it collectively,” he said.
The Cease the Harm audit is one piece of a larger reparations puzzle. Its focus is largely internal and will be presented to the Asheville City Council and Buncombe County Board of Commissioners this coming week.
The city and county have both passed resolutions to implement the audit’s recommendations.
Health care goals center on affordability, access
The commission also saw a presentation from JéWana Grier-McEachin, a representative of a health care working group. Her presentation included 10 recommendations, but Grier-McEachin focused mainly on four:
- “No cost insurance,” or a $1 million local health care subsidy fund for Black residents
- An Asheville Black Mental Health Network to subsidize therapy and build a directory of Black therapists
- A “Resiliency Sabbatical Fund” that provides up to $10,000 grants for historically marginalized residents
- Support of Black healing and birth centers, as well as doula services
Grier-McEachin said these proposals would rely on a mix of local, state and federal funding.
Land for housing and economic development
The commission held a special meeting on March 12 to discuss proposals from the housing, economic development and criminal justice working groups.
In a presentation, the city’s Equity & Inclusion Director Sala Menaya-Merritt said land ownership is crucial for building wealth. “You can build more houses, but you can't build more land,” she said.
One recommendation from the meeting: for the city to return property taken from the Black community during urban renewal – a period of 50 years when the city leveled land owned by Black residents, displacing families and businesses. Merritt also said the city and county should do a comprehensive study of unused and vacant land that could be transferred to the Black community.
The commission also made recommendations to help eliminate the “school-to-prison pipeline” and suggested establishing a student suspension review board and more oversight of school resource officers.
Commission member Bobette Mays suggested the reparations commission also focus on early childhood education.
“Before they even get to the third grade, they’re already saying they can't read,” she said. Mays went on to discuss how literacy rates directly impact incarceration in the Black community. “They're building more jails because they know that by the time they're in the third or fourth grade they cannot read well.”
June deadline a concern
Some members are still worried about wrapping up the process up by the June deadline. Commission Vice Chair Dewana Little called for an extension.
“This work will not be done by June,” she said. “This work took hundreds of years to get to this place. With everything we’re trying to address, it’s going to take longer than from March to June to get to the real solution. If we’re just gonna throw something out and check a box to say we did it, we’re right on course…but that's not what we are trying to do, so I want us to be intentional.”
The work was originally set to conclude in December 2023, but local governments provided for an extension at the commission's request.
The commission is scheduled to meet again on April 15 at 6 p.m. However, Little suggested that another special meeting be held in April given the looming deadline. Members will decide whether to hold a supplemental meeting.
