“The Most Livable City in America”? Reparations Model Implementation, Progressive Mindsets, and Post-Racialism in Evanston, Illinois

In 2019 Evanston, Illinois passed the first local reparations program for Black Americans in the United States. This legislation has been joined by other localized legislative efforts across the U.S. though the federal-level push for reparations remains stagnant. Evanston serves as a notable case study illustrating how reparations initiatives can be conducted within a local government framework. Drawing on 11 interviews with city council members and other stakeholders in Evanston and an analysis of over 200 government documents spanning from 2018 to 2020, this study unveils the intricacies of executing reparations models in local policy. This study finds that previously developed reparations models are implemented in overlapping ways to mitigate potential legal challenges. Additionally, the discourses utilized by stakeholders are shaped by colorblind racism, the white racial frame, and post-racial attitudes to rationalize the adoption of reparations within the city’s jurisdiction. This article contributes to reparations and the sociological body of literature by addressing the implementation of the localized political discourse and subsequent reparations models.