September 7, 2025
The Department of Justice threatened to investigate one day after reparations recommendations were presented to Buncombe County.
The federal government has sent the clearest signal yet that it has taken a direct interest in the local application of reparations. Only one day after the Asheville-Buncombe Community Reparations Commission submitted its suggestions on actions that Buncombe County, the county that houses Asheville, North Carolina; could take, the Department of Justice threatened to investigate if those suggestions are adopted.
According to The Asheville Watchdog, which obtained the letter that the DOJ sent to the county on Sept. 4, although the department is concerned about potential federal civil rights violations, the letter mentions the federal Fair Housing Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“The U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division has recently become aware of concerning recommendations presented to you by the Asheville-Buncombe County Community Reparations Commission. After our initial review, we are deeply concerned that many of the recommendations, if implemented, would violate federal civil rights laws,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, wrote in the letter.
Dhillon continued, “My office will be closely monitoring your actions. To the extent these recommendations are formally adopted, you are now on notice that my office stands ready to investigate and enforce violations of federal civil rights laws to the fullest extent possible.”
According to the Reparations Commission report, the “city of Asheville and Buncombe County took a historic step by passing resolutions to launch a Community Reparations process addressing the enduring harms of systemic racism. This bold action positioned the region as a national leader in reparative justice.”
The report continued, offering recommendations that included “establishing a Black wealth-building fund, creating community land trusts, expanding access to culturally responsive healthcare, reimagining school curricula to reflect Black history, and transforming public safety systems. The recommendations also call for ongoing accountability through a permanent reparations oversight body.”
Dwight Mullen, a retired University of North Carolina Asheville political science professor as well as the former chair of the Reparations Commission, indicated in his comments to the outlet, that the Trump administration’s objections are an indication of its belief in reverse racism.
“There’s consistency there, and the Trump administration has responded by, well, let’s cut off the data…because somehow that’s racist.” Despite this, he also acknowledged that a local government isn’t equipped for a court battle with the federal government. “The resources we have can’t compare to the resources that can be marshaled by the federal government,” Mullen noted. “It’s an unfair fight.”
Compare the Trump administration’s resistance to a local reparations package for Black people with Trump’s overt signal in March that he was potentially considering reparations for the January 6 insurrectionists, who were largely white Americans.
As Black Press USA reported at the time, during an interview with the far right Newsmax host Greg Kelly, he floated the idea of compensation but only said that there was “talk” about a compensation fund for the insurrectionists whom he has repeatedly referred to as “patriots.”
“Well, there’s talk about that,” Trump told Kelly. “We have a lot of people… a lot of the people that are in government now talk about it because… really like that group of people. They were patriots as far as I was concerned. They were treated so unfairly, so horribly.”
As Sen. Cory Booker noted when he reintroduced the “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act,” America has failed to repay Black Americans collectively for its original sin of enslavement.
“We as a nation have not yet truly acknowledged and grappled with the ways slavery, racism, and white supremacy continue to disadvantage African Americans,” Booker stated. “Commissioning a study to understand better where our country has fallen short will help lawmakers better address the racial disparities and inequalities that persist today as a result of generational injustices. Any conversation about compensation for insurrectionists while refusing even a serious study of reparations for the descendants of slavery shows just how far we have to go.”
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