A California panel on Saturday approved recommendations that could mean hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to black residents to address past injustices. The proposals to state lawmakers are the nation’s most sweeping attempt to create a program of reparations.
The nine-member Reparations Task Force, whose work is closely monitored by politicians, historians and economists across the country, has drawn up a detailed plan for how restitution should be addressed to address a host of racial harms, including discrimination in the field of housing, mass incarceration and unequal treatment. access to healthcare.
Created by a bill signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in the wake of nationwide racial justice protests following the 2020 killing of George Floyd, the panel has spent more than a year researching and conducting listening sessions of the Bay Area to San Diego.
It will be up to lawmakers to weigh the recommendations and decide whether to pass them into law, a political and fiscal challenge that has yet to be reckoned with.
The task force’s final report, due to be sent to lawmakers in Sacramento by the July 1 deadline, includes projected restitution estimates calculated by several economists working with the task force.
One such estimate in the report determined that to address the harm caused by bank redlining, which disqualified people in black neighborhoods from taking out mortgages and owning homes, eligible black Californians would receive up to $148,099. must receive. That estimate is based on a figure of $3,366 for every year they lived in California from the early 1930s to the late 1970s, when federal redlining was most prevalent.
To address the impact of overpolicing and mass incarceration, the report estimates that each eligible person would receive $115,260, or about $2,352 for each year of residence in California from 1971 to 2020, during the decades-long war on drugs.
In theory, a lifelong resident of the state who is 71 years old, the median life expectancy, could be eligible for about $1.2 million in total compensation for housing discrimination, mass incarceration and additional damages detailed in the report.
All of these estimates, the report notes, are preliminary and require additional research from lawmakers to work out details. The cost to the state was not detailed in the report, but totals of damages associated with housing and mass incarceration could exceed $500 billion, according to economists’ estimates.
While the panelists considered different methods of distributing reparations—some preferred tuition or housing allowances and others preferred direct cash payments—they ultimately recommended direct payments.
“The first deposit is the beginning of a process to address historic injustices,” the report reads, “not the end of it.”
Last year, the task force, made up of elected officials, academics and lawyers, decided on the eligibility criteria and determined that any descendant of enslaved African Americans or of a “free black person who entered the United States before the end of the United States lives” the 19th century” should receive reparations.
Still, there was sometimes contentious debate on Saturday about clearly stating the criteria in certain parts of the report, particularly with regard to compensation.
Should legislators pass legislation for payments, the panel suggested creating a government agency to process claims and make payments, prioritizing the elderly. Nearly 6.5 percent of California residents, about 2.5 million, identify as Black or African American.
“This is about closing the income gap and the racial wealth gap in this country, and this is one step,” Gary Hoover, an economics professor at Tulane University who has studied reparations, said in an interview. “Wealth is sticky and can be passed down from generation to generation. Reparations can close that stickiness.”
When voting on its final report on Saturday at the Oakland campus of Mills College at Northeastern University, the panel also suggested that state lawmakers draft a formal apology to black residents. A preliminary report made public last year outlined how enslaved black people were forced into California during the Gold Rush era and how in the 1950s and 1960s racially restrictive covenants and segregated black Californians in many of the largest cities of the state ended.
In emotional testimony throughout much of the past year, Black residents have stood before the panel, often revealing personal stories of racial discrimination, lack of resources in communities due to redlining, and traumas that have had negative impacts on health and well-being.
While the task force was a state’s first effort, a similar measure aimed at creating a committee to investigate reparations has stalled in Congress for decades.
In brief remarks to the panel on Saturday, Representative Barbara Lee, a Democrat whose district includes Oakland, praised the work members have done.
“California is leading on this issue,” said Ms. Lee, who is running for the U.S. Senate. “It’s a model for other states looking for reparations, realistic avenues to meet reparations needs.”
The median wealth of black households in the United States is $24,100, compared to $188,200 for white households, according to the most recent Federal Reserve Board Survey of Consumer Finances. In California, a recent report from the impartial Public Policy Institute of California found that for every $1 earned by white families, black families earn 60 cents — the result of inequities in education and employment discrimination, among other things.
Councilman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, one of two state legislators on the panel, said he had spoken with Mr. Newsom in recent weeks and expressed his optimism that legislation would be passed based on the panel’s report.
“The reality is that black Californians have suffered and continue to suffer from institutional laws and policies within our state’s political, social and economic landscape that have prevented blacks for generations from achieving life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” said Mr. . Jones-Sawyer, representing a Los Angeles district. “This is truly a trial of America’s original sin, slavery, and the repercussions it caused and the lingering effects in modern society.”
Mr Jones-Sawyer said he expected to present some form of legislation early next year.
But the efforts and support for racial justice that followed Mr. Floyd are now facing an economy overshadowed by recession fears. In January, Mr. Newsom announced that the state was running a $22.5 billion deficit in fiscal year 2023-2024, a reversal from a $100 billion surplus a year ago.
Nationally, opinions on reparations are sharply divided by race. Last fall, a Pew Research Center survey found that 77 percent of black Americans believe the descendants of people enslaved in the United States should be repaid in some way, while 18 percent of white Americans says the same. In fact, Democrats were split on the issue, with 49 percent against and 48 percent in favour. Other polls on the issue have found similar splits.
Still, cities across the country have made progress with reparations proposals. In 2021, officials in Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, approved $10 million in reparations in the form of housing grants.
More recently, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has expressed support for reparations that could bring in several million dollars. And in nearby Hayward, California, city officials are hearing proposals for reparations for land taken from black and Latino families in the 1960s.
Kamilah Moore, an attorney who chairs the California task force, said she was confident the legislature would “respect the task force’s official role as a legislative advisory body and work in good faith to pass our final proposals into law.” “.
“It will soon be in their hands to perform,” said Ms Moore.
