A North Carolina city approved $300,000 for a reparations consultant with a history of posting online about “white accommodation” and how his neighbors “celebrate and romanticize segregation.”
On Tuesday, the High Point City Council greenlit $292,460 for Lea Henry and her team at the National Minority Economic Development Institute to lead its repair efforts.
At least two councilors have questioned the large sum, but there is little sign that members are aware of the hardline views that Henry, a Harvard University graduate, posts on social media.
On Facebook, Henry slammed his North Carolina neighbors for “celebrating segregation” and criticized “white accommodation,” a term critical race theory (CRT) advocates use to describe a type of black oppression.
Harvard graduate Lea Henry, 52, criticizes on social media that her neighbors ‘celebrate segregation’
High Point City Council approved $292,460 for Lea Henry and her repair crew
Whether taxes should fund cash payments and other plans for descendants of slaves is a hot topic in America’s culture wars. For critics, repair consultants are a waste of much-needed resources.
Henry’s posts raise questions about whether she is the right woman for the job.
In one, he refers to an online group for former and current residents of his own North Carolina town, Rocky Mount, to share nostalgic photographs of yesteryear.
“People comment on how wonderful those times and places were and everyone in the photos is white,” he posted in September.
‘Don’t you see that you are celebrating and romanticizing segregation?’
Those who commented positively on the photos were giving a “gut punch” to blacks who were “legally excluded” at the time, he said.
The comments were a “reminder about Jim Crow, and the reminder that the people who lived and enjoyed it are alive and well and still using social media,” Henry, 52, added.
Henry says Hollywood’s offerings for black audiences are full of “self-deprecation, self-parody and white accommodation”
High Point taxpayers may read Henry’s Facebook posts and wonder if she’s the right woman for the job
In another post, he complains about trailers shown in a movie theater before the main film, Color Purple, a musical about racism in Georgia in the early 20th century.
Councilor Tim Andrew said the repair work plan needed to be clearer.
He described “movies with black actors that seem like the worst self-hatred, self-parody, and worst white adaptation.”
“I was pissed before the movie even started,” she posted in December.
Henry, an expert on affordable housing and how to get blacks into home ownership, has already worked for the city of 115,000 when he produced his One High Point Commission report.
The 245-page document was released last year and called for policy changes to address the city’s deeply rooted racism and legacy of slavery.
Its goal is to help African Americans by improving schools and transportation in black neighborhoods and making it easier to get a mortgage.
Henry’s new 30-month project involves advising the city on which of those proposals should be turned into action.
Councilwoman Monica Peters said Henry’s council would help High Point by increasing “our tax base to help alleviate the cycle of poverty,” according to the High Point Enterprise.
Last year’s One High Point Commission report analyzed the city’s legacy of slavery.
Other council members were not convinced.
Member Britt Moore called the project an overspend.
Councilor Tim Andrew said Henry’s work plan was unclear, while member Britt Moore warned of overspending.
Reparations supporters say it is time for the United States to pay black people for the injustices of the historic transatlantic slave trade, Jim Crow segregation and inequalities that persist to this day.
From there, it gets complicated.
There is no agreed-upon framework for what a plan would look like. Ideas range from cash payments to scholarships, land donations, business start-up loans, housing grants or statues and street names.
Critics say payments to select black people will inevitably stoke divisions between winners and losers, and raise questions about why American Indians and others don’t receive their own subsidies.
While they are popular among black Americans, other groups that would foot the tax bill are less interested.