California could become the first state in the US to offer reparations to black people Americans under new plans signed into law on Wednesday.
Seeking to make amends for the historic oppression of black people, officials have put together a detailed plan for potential reparations in a bill that was announced by governor Gavin Newsom.
The law does not stipulate that reparations must be cash payments. Support could come in the form of waiving student loans, paying for public projects or job training.
It does not limit reparations to slavery, although it requires a task force to give special consideration for black people who are descendants of slavery
“This is not just about California, this is about making an impact, and a dent, across the rest of the country,” governor Newsom said moments after signing the bill during a ceremony broadcast on his YouTube channel.
California never had a government-sanctioned system of slavery. It entered the Union in 1850 as a free state after gold was discovered in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
But the state did let slave-owning whites bring their slaves to California. The Legislature even passed a law making it legal to arrest runaway slaves and return them to their owners.
State legislatures in Texas, New York and Vermont have considered studying reparations, but none have passed measures.
Reparations are not without precedent in American. The US government partially funded German reparations to Holocaust victims following World War II.
Reparations for slavery have been debated for decades in the United States. A similar proposal to study reparations for black Americans was first introduced in Congress in 1989. It has never passed, but Congress held a hearing on the proposal last year.
And in 1988, the federal government set up a reparations program for Japanese-Americans who were held in concentration camps during World War II.
The news comes amid a wave of unrest in the US this year over the police killings of black Americas.
Protesters have been taking in place in some cities for months following the deaths of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and George Floyd in Minneapolis, with demonstrators calling for greater race equality and an end to police misconduct.
