California’s first-in-the-nation reparations task force has decided to limit state compensation to the descendants of free and enslaved black people who lived in the US during the 1800s, narrowly rejecting a proposal to ban all black people. regardless of their origin.
Tuesday’s vote split 5-4, and the hour-long debate was at times spirited and emotional. Towards the end, Rev. Amos Brown, chair of the NAACP’s San Francisco branch and vice chair of the task force, pleaded with the committee to move forward with a clear definition of who would qualify for restitution.
“Please, please, please I beg us tonight, take the first step,” he said. “We need to provide emergency care where it is needed.”
Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation to create the two-year reparations task force by 2020, making California the only state to move forward with a study and plan, whose mission is to study the institution of slavery and its harm and educate the public. to inform them about its consequences. findings.
Federal-level reparations have gone nowhere, but cities and universities are addressing the issue. The mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, announced a city commission in February, while the city of Boston is considering a proposal to form its own recovery commission.
The Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, last year became the first U.S. city to make reparations available to black residents, though some say the program did nothing to right a wrong.
Members of the California task force—almost all of whom can trace their families back to enslaved ancestors in the US—are aware that their deliberations on a crucial issue will shape discussions on reparations across the country. Its members were appointed by the governor and the leaders of the two legislative chambers.
Those who favor a lineage approach said a compensation and restitution plan based on genealogy as opposed to race offers the best chance of surviving a legal challenge. They also opened up the right to free black people who migrated to the country before the 20th century, given potential difficulties in documenting family history and the risk of being enslaved at the time.
Others on the task force argued that all black people in the US who suffer from systemic racism in housing, education and employment should be compensated, saying they determined eligibility too early in the process.
Civil rights attorney and task force member Lisa Holder suggested sending economists working with the task force to use California’s estimated 2.6 million black residents to calculate compensation while continuing to hear from the public.
“We need to sink the base and those are black people,” she said. “We cannot act on this recovery proposal without getting all the African Americans in California behind us.”
But Kamilah Moore, a lawyer and chair of the task force, said expanding the eligibility would create its own cracks and fell outside the committee’s purpose.
“That will grieve the victims of slavery, who are the direct descendants of the enslaved people in the United States,” she said. “It goes against the spirit of the law as written.”
The commission has been in its two-year process for less than a year and there is no compensation plan on the table. Long-time advocates have spoken of the need for multifaceted remedies for related but separate harms, such as slavery, Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration, and redevelopment that resulted in the displacement of black communities.
Compensation can include free college, help buying homes and starting businesses, and grants to churches and community organizations, attorneys say.
The eligibility question has haunted the task force since its inaugural meeting in June, when viewers pleaded with the nine-member group to come up with targeted proposals and cash payments to heal the descendants of enslaved people in the U.S.
Chicago resident Arthur Ward called before the virtual meeting Tuesday and said he was a descendant of enslaved people and has relatives in California. He supports reparations based solely on ancestry and expressed frustration at the panel’s concerns about black immigrants experiencing racism.
“When it comes to some kind of justice, some kind of reward, we have to step to the back of the line and give priority to the Caribbean and Africans,” Ward said. “It’s an insult to decide for so long on something that shouldn’t be a question in the first place.”
California City Councilman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, who voted against restricting the admission, said there’s no doubt that slave descendants are the priority, but he said the task force must also stop ongoing harm and prevent future harm from racism. He said he wished the panel would stop “bickering” about money they don’t have yet and start discussing how to close a serious wealth gap.
“We are arguing about cash payments, which I firmly believe is not everything,” he said.
Critics of reparations say California is under no obligation to pay, as the state did not practice slavery and did not enforce Jim Crow laws separating black people from white people in the Southern states.
But testimony to the commission shows that California and local governments were complicit in robbing black people of their wages and property, which prevented them from building wealth to pass on to their children. Their homes were razed for redevelopment, and they were forced to live in predominantly minority neighborhoods and were unable to obtain bank loans to buy real estate.
Today, black residents make up 5% of the state’s population, but are overrepresented in jails, jails, and the homeless. And black homeowners continue to face discrimination in the form of home appraisals that are significantly lower than if the home were in a white neighborhood or the homeowners were white, according to testimonials.
A report must be submitted by June with a proposal for reparations to be submitted by July 2023 so that the legislator can consider turning it into law.
