01 Jul 2026 Curtis Hill: Evanston’s Reparations Won’t Make Up for Harms Done by Housing Discrimination

“Evanston’s reparations aren’t healing discrimination’s legacy; they’re monetizing it,” writes former Indiana Attorney General Curtis T. Hill, Jr., who now serves with the Free Enterprise Project and Project 21.

In a commentary published at the Chicago Tribune, Curtis says he has always opposed reparations payouts like the ones being paid out right now by Evanston, Illinois taxpayers:

Turning legitimate historical atrocities into a modern government payout scheme is a misplaced moral pretense. Evanston’s solution of paying off on old discriminatory local housing ordinances may allow municipal leaders to sleep at night, but it does not make up for the harm done to the actual victims who experienced the sting of government-sanctioned housing discrimination over 50 years ago….

Practical fixes exist without this circus. Enforce equal protection under the law. Promote school choice to shatter failing systems. Champion two-parent families, workforce skills and enterprise — the real engines of mobility my father’s generation leveraged despite barriers. End race preferences that insult competence. Secure borders and the rule of law so opportunity isn’t diluted.

Read Curtis’s entire commentary below.

The good people of Evanston — the self-proclaimed trailblazers of municipal virtue — have really done it. They’ve become the first city in America to actually cut checks for reparations to Black residents reportedly harmed by historical housing discrimination. Twenty-five grand a pop, funded by weed taxes, for the lingering sins of zoning ordinances from 1919 to 1969. How progressive. How healing. How have they been discrimination-free since 1969?

Curtis T. Hill, Jr.

As a former Indiana attorney general, with years prosecuting cases and defending commonsense measures such as voter identification laws, I’ve long opposed reparations for slavery — not because America’s past is spotless (it’s not), but because turning legitimate historical atrocities into a modern government payout scheme is a misplaced moral pretense. Evanston’s solution of paying off on old discriminatory local housing ordinances may allow municipal leaders to sleep at night, but it does not make up for the harm done to the actual victims who experienced the sting of government-sanctioned housing discrimination over 50 years ago.

One core challenge for this proposed fix is determining eligibility. Who counts as sufficiently Black to cash in? What about the Evanston resident with one Black grandparent and three others who are white, whose ancestors arrived after 1969? Or the recent Nigerian immigrant whose family did not face Evanston redlining but checks the right box? Evanston’s payout program ties eligibility to living in the city between those dates or being their direct descendants — yet somehow skips the messy business of proving individualized harm while demanding current taxpayers foot the bill.

The absurdity compounds quickly. If one could go back to 1958 and compensate a person’s great uncle for the actual harm he experienced, that would be one thing to consider — but calculating a cash award to a third- or fourth-generation legacy is meaningless.

Meanwhile, other groups begin lining up for their own claims. The Italian American whose grandfather was denied housing in the same era due to ethnic covenants? Tough luck; wrong melanin. Asians barred by exclusion acts? Native Americans with tribal claims predating the city? Reparations rhetoric ignores the full American tapestry of struggle, achievement and, yes, discrimination.

This isn’t justice; it’s selective feel-good action that has no rhyme or reason. Determining who qualifies as Black devolves into the very racial essentialism civil rights leaders once fought to dismantle. Today’s scheme reduces complex lineage to a bureaucratic blood quantum farce — complete with paperwork, appeals and inevitable lawsuits, as Evanston is now discovering in federal court.

And the broader reparations push? Slavery’s legacy demands we confront ugly truths: family breakdown, crime and dependency metrics that no check can fix. But equating 19th century chains to 21st century transfers ignores time, intermarriage, mobility and progress. Black Americans’ median wealth and outcomes today dwarf many global populations — thanks to capitalism, not central planning. Handing out selective reparations while ignoring root causes such as fatherless homes (hovering near 50% in some communities) or cultural shifts is technicolor theater. It divides citizens into perpetual debtors and creditors based on skin — breeding resentment, not reconciliation.

Evanston’s facade crumbles further under scrutiny. It touts $25,000 for home repairs or down payments as “restorative.” Yet these programs may subsidize poor decisions, inflate local costs or vanish into consumption rather than building lasting capital.

What of the working-class taxpayers — Black, white and every shade — who fund this via marijuana sin taxes? The single mom whose ancestors faced their own hardships, now subsidizing someone else’s? The program’s expansion to cash payments only heightens the concerns.

Practical fixes exist without this circus. Enforce equal protection under the law. Promote school choice to shatter failing systems. Champion two-parent families, workforce skills and enterprise — the real engines of mobility my father’s generation leveraged despite barriers. End race preferences that insult competence. Secure borders and the rule of law so opportunity isn’t diluted.

Evanston’s reparations aren’t healing discrimination’s legacy; they’re monetizing it. This prosecutor’s eye sees the cons: impossible to administer fairly, guaranteed to be litigated endlessly and destined to fail the very people it claims to uplift.

America advances by rejecting racial score-settling for individual striving. The sooner cities like Evanston ditch the ancestral ATM, the sooner we can pursue actual justice — for everyone.

Curtis Hill is senior adviser to the Free Enterprise Project of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a Project 21 ambassador and a former Indiana attorney general. This first appeared in the Chicago Tribune.