Two cities start the reparations conversation — will the country follow?

Welcome to Minority Report, a weekly newsletter from the LEVEL team that packs an entire week into a single email. From the long road to reparations to the week in racism, from pop-culture picks to a must-read LEVEL story, it’s everything you need and nothing you don’t. If you’re loving what you’re reading, tell a friend to tell a friend.

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Back in 2003, Dave Chappelle imagined a reality in which the U.S. paid more than $1 trillion in reparations to descendents of enslaved people. That Chappelle’s Show episode — in which a hot-handed Harlem dice roller named Tron overtakes Bill Gates as the world’s wealthiest man after gambling his newfound earnings — was all the more hilarious for its absurdity, playing on a premise that seemed just as unlikely back then as America electing a Black president. Nearly two decades later, in the midst of an intensifying national reckoning with racism, it seems like that unbelievable scenario may be materializing into something real.

This week, Asheville, North Carolina officials formally apologized for the city’s historic role in slavery and discrimination, and presented a plan for reparations. Councilman Keith Young, one of the city’s two Black council members and the one who proposed the original resolution — which ended up passing unanimously — insisted that taking down monuments of storied…