California’s Reparations Task Force has voted to approve recommendations on how the state may compensate and apologize for slavery and past injustices.
The nine-member committee, which first convened almost two years ago, gave final approval at a public meeting in Oakland on Saturday to a report detailing reparations to compensate for discriminatory policies.
But it will be up to lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom to consider the recommendations and decide whether to enact them into law.
Newsom signed a bill creating the nation’s first-ever task force to study reparations for slavery as the country grappled with its history of racial injustice in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, but the panel’s recommendations come at a time when the state is facing a massive budget deficit.
“I’m optimistic that they’ll take a look at our proposals and engage in a good faith effort to implement them,” said Kamilah Moore, the task force’s chair, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The task force will meet once more in Sacramento on June 29 before sending the recommendations to the state legislature, according to the Times.
The task force and Newsom’s office have been contacted for comment via email.
The task force’s report approved a public apology that must include “a censure of the gravest barbarities” carried out on behalf of the state.
“By participating in these horrors, California further perpetuated the harms African Americans faced, imbuing racial prejudice throughout society through segregation, public and private discrimination, and unequal disbursal of state and federal funding,” it says.
The report also included calculations on what the state owes descendants of enslaved people in compensation, divided into three categories of harms: housing discrimination, over-policing and mass incarceration, and health disparities.
According to the report, each eligible Black Californian should receive up to $148,099 to compensate for redlining—or $3,366 for each year they lived in California between 1933 and 1977.
Compensation for overpricing and mass incarceration was calculated to be $115,260, based on a figure of $2,352 for each year they lived in California during the war on drugs from 1971 to 2020.
And compensation for health disparities was estimated at $13,619 for each year of residency in California.
The report recommends the legislature adopt “a range of policies needed to guarantee restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and non-repetition,” including replying or amending Proposition 209 (which banned affirmative action), amending the California Constitution to prohibit involuntary servitude, abolishing the death penalty and ending the cash bail system.
“The enormity of the task before California and the nation cannot be overstated,” the report says.
“The policies recommended in this report, while wide-ranging, are not exhaustive—they are only a start. The harms to be repaired have been more than 400 years in the making. Their undoing will require ceaseless vigilance and a commitment to continually learn and meet the challenges ahead.”
Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, one of two state lawmakers on the task force, told The New York Times that he had spoken with Newsom in recent weeks and expects to present reparations legislation early next year.
“The reality is Black Californians have suffered, and continue to suffer, from institutional laws and policies within our state’s political, social, and economic landscape that have negated Blacks from achieving life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for generations,” Jones-Sawyer told the newspaper.
“This really is a trial against America’s original sin, slavery, and the repercussions it caused and the lingering effects in modern society.”
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