March 6, 2025 Story by: Editor
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A Democratic assemblymember in Nevada has put forward a bill to establish a commission dedicated to studying discrimination against Black Americans and exploring potential reparations.
Assemblyman Ruben D’Silva’s proposal seeks to create a commission within the Nevada System of Higher Education to examine “the economic, political, social, educational, and historical impacts of slavery, Jim Crow, racial discrimination, and other lingering effects of slavery,” as stated in a news release.
The commission would be responsible for compiling its findings and presenting them to the Legislature during the next legislative session. The report would include possible “forms of rehabilitation or restitution to descendants of formerly enslaved Africans,” according to a bill draft request.
“I am honored to bring forth this bill to the 83rd legislative session,” D’Silva stated in a news release. “This commission will study and address key issues that have stemmed from slavery, Jim Crow, as well as de jure and de facto racial discrimination through a distinctly Nevada lens. This bill is about education and justice.”
As of Tuesday, the bill had not yet been introduced in the Nevada Assembly.
However, the proposal has faced opposition from some lawmakers. Assemblyman Gregory Hafen, the Assembly’s top Republican, voiced his concerns, stating, “We should always strive against discrimination, but we don’t remedy any of the mistakes of the past by imposing penalties on the current generation, who is guilty of nothing.”
He also highlighted Nevada’s historical role in the Civil War, adding, “It should also be noted Nevada became a state to help end the Civil War. We helped fund the Union War effort with silver from the Comstock Lode. Nevadans joined Union soldiers to end slavery. We are known as the ‘Battle Born State’ because of our role in helping to get Abraham Lincoln reelected to end slavery. We are not a state with a history of slavery. We are a state whose very birth was rooted in ending it.”
Similar initiatives have been pursued in other states. In 2020, California lawmakers established a task force that later recommended monetary reparations for eligible individuals. However, the state legislature declined to move forward with any payment plans last year.
Other states, including Illinois and New York, have passed laws to examine reparations, according to the Associated Press. In the 1990s, Florida took a different approach by creating a scholarship fund for descendants of Black Floridians who were killed in a 1923 massacre.
Source: 8 News Now
