California Reparations Task Force Says Descendants of The Enslaved Potentially Owed Extreme Amount, Study Says
Estimating a potential “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” a California task force report examining reparations to be paid to California’s Black descendants of enslaved Africans shows the costs are high.
California’s nine-member task force worked with a team of economic experts to describe reparation compensation for the pervasive racial discrimination and infliction of pain and suffering on Black Americans who were enslaved and systemically disenfranchised after being granted freedom from chattel slavery.
According to the Los Angeles Daily Times, the task force voted in March that should California make some form of reparations available, they should go to Black Californians who can prove their lineage is traced to enslaved ancestors, rather than to those who are more recent immigrants, or descendants of recent immigrants. What form the reparations could take is still being worked out. Cash, grants, tuition assistance, loans or other financial programs are all being considered according to the task force.
At this meeting, the task force described several scenarios for which Black Californians could receive monetary compensation. Taking into account the disparities in health outcomes, housing, incarceration and education, determining a way to compensate modern day people for the atrocities committed to their ancestors, yet still felt in some ways has proven a difficult equation to solve.
However, during 17 community listening sessions and in 46 testimonies uploaded to a website hosted by UCLA’s Bunche Center think tank, cash payments were the most popular form of reparations suggested.
Task force member and State Sen. Steven Bradford said he thinks reparations would be a difficult case to make. He told an audience at public meetings in Los Angeles it would be a “major hurdle” to pass any reparations plan in the Legislature.
