California’s first-in-the-nation task force on reparations is at a crossroads, with members divided on which Black Americans should be eligible for compensation as atonement for a slave system that officially ended with the Civil War but reverberates to this day.
Some members want to limit financial and other compensation to descendants of enslaved people while others say that all Black people in the U.S., regardless of lineage, suffer from systemic racism in housing, education and employment. The task force could vote on eligibility on Tuesday after putting it off last month.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation creating the two-year reparations task force in 2020, making California the only state to move ahead with a study and plan, with a mission to study the institution of slavery and its harms and to educate the public about its findings.
The committee is not even a year into its two-year process and there is no compensation plan of any kind on the table. But there is broad agreement among advocates of the need for multi-faceted remedies for related yet separate harms, such as slavery, Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration and redevelopment that resulted in displacement of Black communities.
Compensation could include free college, assistance buying homes and launching businesses, and grants to churches and community organizations, advocates say.
Yet, the eligibility question has dogged the group since its inaugural meeting in June, when viewers called in pleading with the nine-member group to devise targeted proposals and cash payments to make whole the descendants of people enslaved in the U.S.
Kamilah Moore, the committee’s chair, said she expects robust discussion at Tuesday’s meeting, which will include testimony from genealogists. She favors eligibility based on lineage, rather than race, saying it will have the best chance of surviving a legal challenge in a conservative U.S. Supreme Court.
A reparations plan based on race would attract “hyper-aggressive challenges that could have very negative implications for other states looking to do something similar, or even for the federal government,” she said.
“Everyone’s looking to what we’re going to do,” she said.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who authored the legislation creating the task force, had argued passionately in January for prioritizing descendants for generations of forced labor, broken family ties and police terrorism. The daughter of sharecroppers forced to flee Arkansas in the dead of night, she recalled how the legacy of slavery broke her family and stunted their ability to dream of anything beyond survival.
Opening up compensation to Black immigrants or even descendants of slaves from other countries would leave U.S. descendants with mere pennies, she said.
But members at February’s meeting — nearly all of whom can trace their families back to enslaved ancestors — questioned the need to rush on a pivotal question bound to shape reparations deliberations across the country.
Task force member Lisa Holder shared a poignant story of losing her child at delivery, because the medical staff did not take seriously the concerns of a young Black woman who knew something was wrong with her baby, she said. In the U.S., Black mothers are far more likely to experience a pregnancy-related death than white women.
“No one asked me if my ancestors were enslaved in the United States or if they were enslaved in Jamaica or if they were enslaved in Barbados,” said Holder, a civil rights attorney. “We have to embrace this concept that Black lives matter, not just a sliver of those Black lives, because Black lives are in danger, especially today.”
Critics say that California has no obligation to pay up given that the state did not practice slavery and did not enforce Jim Crow laws that segregated Black people from white people in the southern states.
But testimony provided to the committee shows California and local governments were complicit in stripping Black people of their wages and property, preventing them from building wealth to pass down to their children. Their homes were razed for redevelopment, and they were forced to live in predominantly minority districts neighborhoods and couldn’t get bank loans that would allow them to purchase property.
Today, Black residents are 5% of the state’s population but over-represented in jails, prison and homeless populations. And Black homeowners continue to face discrimination in the form of home appraisals that are significantly lower than if the house were in a white neighborhood or the homeowners are white, according to testimony.
Nkechi Taifa, director of the Reparation Education Project, is among longtime advocates who are thrilled the discussion has gone mainstream. But she’s baffled by the idea of limiting reparations to people who can show lineage when ancestry is not easy to document and slave owners frequently moved people among plantations in the U.S., the Caribbean and South America.
“I guess I tend to be more inclusive rather than exclusive,” she said, “and maybe it’s a fear of limitation, that there’s not enough money to go around.”
California Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, a member of the task force, said there is no question that descendants of slaves are the priority, but he said the task force also needs to stop ongoing harm and prevent future harm from racism.
“It’s in the system, it’s in our laws. It’s in how we treat one another, it’s how we talk to one another,” he said. “And no amount of money will make that go away.”
A report is due by June with a reparations proposal due by July 2023 for the Legislature to consider turning into law.
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NO ONE !!!!!
The only reparations any Democrat minded American should be considering these days are making Russia pay to rebuild everything they have destroyed in the Ukraine. If parts of our own American cities look like bombed out war ravaged store fronts and burned-out hulks it is because the Democrat party blacks have done it to themselves, and now seek to guilt trip productive Americans into replacing and repairing the very damage they have done to their own neighborhoods. Millions to Ukraine, not a penny more in government social blackmail paid to rebuild democrat party inspired carnage, until the leaders of the American black communities show half the backbone of courage and personal responsibility to EARN their freedoms like the Ukrainians are showing the world today, whose actions reflect Washington at Valley Forge while today, the brain depleted Biden and the Democrats act like offended vegetables in the valley of the Jolly green giant.
AND the nations all these illegal invaders, who are literally FLOODING OUR NATION, are coming from.. THEY ALL NEED TO PAY Reparations to WE AMERICANS!
Reparations has already been paid. It was paid with the BLOOD of Union soldiers who shed that blood helping to put an end slavery! There is NO need for any more reparations.
True, and it was also paid by southerners in the years of reconstruction following the end of the Civil War. Most of the discrimination and unfair treatment of blacks in the last century was a direct result of the federal reconstruction abuses suffered by southern whites who had nothing to do with owning slaves. Although wrong, it is understandable that resentment arose from whites in the south that lasted for decades because of the punishment delivered to them after the Lincoln assassination. History is always recorded by the winners, and uncomfortable facts have a way of falling by the wayside.
Abraham Lincoln Freed all those held as Slaves when he Issued ” The Emanaipation- Promaction , Then former Slaves became Themselves, Slave Holders. David Horowitz wrote, ” 10 Reasons Repartions Is Wrong And Racist Too. ” I. Think The only thing holding those held in slavery was a lack of Ambition of some of those Former Slaves.
Comment to Anti- Lib
A Lot of Young White Men Died To Free the Black Slaves, I Think these White Men Paid The White Races Dept in their Blood , No more Is Owed.
No one alive today in the U.S. was a slave, nor has anyone alive today in the U.S. owned any slaves. No one in my family tree EVER owned slaves…..
I don’t owe nobody nothin’, and my taxes shouldn’t be used to pay bs “reparations” to anyone.
Slavery was abolished with the Emancipation Proclamation” of 1863, and by Constitutional Amendment in 1865.
Slavery ended 155 years ago. Why the hell should today’s taxpayers be held responsible for anything?
Secondly, how on earth could they possibly figure out exactly who would get “reparations? I guess just being black is the only qualification, all the proof you need?
Moronic drivel.
I wholeheartedly agree, Bill! My great grandfather emigrated to the U.S. from Ireland! Shall we address the issue of how the Irish were treated? Like you, my family NEVER owned slaves!
Not just that, but what of the BLACKS WHO THEMSELVES, sold each other INTO SLAVERY?? why shouldn’t THEIR Countrymen who did that, pay any reparations!
Corre tion, ” Emancipation Proclamation. ” Sorry.!
The old Quote, ” Huray For Me, And F. You ” Is The Atitude Of Present- Day Minorities And I Might Add, The Atitude Of The Socialist, zCommunist, elite of the democrat party Inorder to get Their Votes.
I refer to ” I have a dream, ” Speech by Martin Luther King Who said In His , ” I Have A Dream Speech, ” I have a Dream That my Little Children Will Live In A Nation where They will B e Judged Not By The Color of Their Skin But By The Content Of Their Chacter. ” If only S ome of the Colored Legislators Only belived As The Civil Rights Leader, Martin Luther King Professed that he belived In.
Are you kidding me? They’ve been getting reparations at taxpayer expense since Lincoln freed them. This phony “ WOKE “ BS is doing nothing but making more and more people turn against their so called “ cause “. Time they started working for their own for well being.
This Quate expresses a truth that is undenieable, ” That A Rising Tide Raises All Boats . ” inferrs that if Blacks were a part of Ameroca, they also did relatively well when the countriy did Well. The Black Race weren’t, As were the White Race, All on the same Social/ Ecomic Level and thus made Gains in their lives According to which Social /ecomic level they were on.
People are individually responsible for their outcome – positive or negative (with help from caring parents). A reading test was give to 628 public high school students in Baltimore (a city of which we can all be proud – NO). The average reading level about 5th grade. 71 students read at a kindergarten level and 88 students at a first grade level. Only 12 students or 1.9% read at their grade level. And only 61% of the students graduate. That’s the fault of slavery, racism? I think not. It’s the fault of “parents” (in biology only) who don’t care. It’s also the result of 65% of mothers in Baltimore are single. Sad statistics.
The Elite of Education decided that since they couldn’t smarten up the Whole Classroom
That they would ” Dummy-Down every Kid in the Class Room .
Since they want to be so generous why not include those who suffered under slavery when California was ruled by Spain and later Mexico, I’m sure their descendants would be grateful also.
One more thought, confine reparations to those who were slaves in California, other states should take care of their own!
Just another cheap attempt at buying votes… The Dems are the party of Jim Crow, the KKK, slavery, not to mention the greatest amount of political corruption since the Marxists….
The idea of Reparations should be looked at for the poor business owners who lost everything in Minneapolis, Seattle, and Portland due to the Dem-funded riots over the phony Floyd “martyrdom”….
AND SINCE DEMS helped FUND those riots, me thinks, THEY NEED To pay reparations, to ALL those business owners!!!
” It Is Difficult To Free From From Chains that. They Rever. ” Voltaire The Socialist- Communist Party Of America, ” Welfare, ” has Secured The Black Races Vote for the democrat party but The Blac k Race Are Starting Tp Wake Up.
Get your hand out of my pocket.
That English Legislator , Thatcher Once Said About Socialism, ” Socialism is find until you run out of other peole’s Money. ” The Colored People Are Realizing that with the hord of illegal i!migrants coming across America’s en Borders, that Welfare System is going to go broke and will not be there any longer so they haf better look to the Republican Party for Help and so are Switching Parties.
How about getting your fair share from the Marxist Democrats that started up the Marxist Black Lives Matter group. They should have plenty, since they have not contributed anything to rebuilding anything in the cities that rioting ( oops ! mostly peaceful protests) occurred. Only spent money on themselves. One original marxist BLM member purchasing 4 new Homes for herself.
how about a plane ticket to the african coutry of your choice.
How many times do reparations have to be paid? How much has been out paid so far? Since it’s the taxpayers who have had nothing to do with slavery in their lifetimes, that the reparation money comes from, what has been the return on their forced “investment”?
As has been said many times.. WE COULD GIVE THEM EVERYTHING we have, and it would STILL NOT BE ENOUGH.
Greed and dishonesty can’t be assessed by the amount of melanin in a person’s skin. That type of deviance is formed in the brain.
Thes Colored Race democrats who are more-Than – Willing To ( Grab on to All The Loot They Can) Dont Give A Fig that Some Of The Colored Race Weren’t Part of , nor Were Their Ancistors Former Slaves . These Colored Race of Huslers Are saying, ” Huray For Me And F. You. ” Auther Unknown.
Booker T. Washington expressed Why present Day Blacks Continue to Seek ” Reparations ” Ad Who it is zPushing For Tax payers Money for Slavery back In Abraham Lincoln”s Era back in 1863. Booker T.Washington Said This, ” There is A. Class Of Colored People Who Make A Business Of Keeping The Troubles , The Wrongs , And The Hardships Of The Negro Race Before The Public . Having Learned That They Are Able To Make A Living out Of Their Troubles , they Have Grown Into The Settled Habit of Advertising Their Wrongs – Partly Because It Pays. Some Of These People Do Not Want The Negro To Lose His Grievances , Because They Do Not Want To Lose Their Jobs. ” “