SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s Reparations Task Force has already made history.
The panel’s nearly 500-page report released this year shattered the myth that the state was free from slavery. Its systematic review of the racist harms inflicted on generations of Black people is the first of its kind at a state level. And a hotly-debated decision to limit reparations to California residents who descend from enslaved people or Black freedmen could become a model for future efforts.
But starting Wednesday in Oakland, the nine-person committee will begin perhaps its most daunting task: Deciding what forms reparations could take.
“This is really the meat of why we all came together,” said Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, D-South Los Angeles, a task force member.
Coming up with final recommendations is expected to take months, with a new report due by July 1. Whatever the committee decides must be approved by the State Legislature before going into effect.
The group’s work so far suggests that it is considering remedies that go beyond simply providing cash restitution.
The committee’s report lists dozens of potential ideas. They include removing involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime from the state’s constitution, requiring anti-bias training for school teachers and reducing the prevalence of fast-food restaurants in Black neighborhoods.
“The harms were multi-dimensional,” said Cheryl Grills, a task force member and psychology professor at Loyola Marymount University. “My hope is that we will see a robust multi-faceted set of recommendations.”
Questions among Sacramento’s Black residents
While the state task force works toward its final recommendations, Black Sacramento residents have questions, along with their own vision of what reparations should mean.
On Saturday they gathered at Drip, a Black-owned coffee shop in Midtown. The group was convened by the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California (CJEC), a reparation advocate group working with the task force. Chris Lodgson, lead organizer for CJEC, explained at the gathering what is meant by reparations.
“What we mean is very simple,” he said. “Taking actions to provide benefits to the survivors and descendants of the institution of chattel slavery and the effects of it that came after.”
For Sacramento resident Ingrid Pinkett, it was a chance to give validation to her ancestors’ trauma.
“To just bring validation to some of the things that were stolen,” she said. “We are descendants of people that were brought over here, unwillingly, We do have our own identity.”
Cathy Johnson, a retired state worker, said reparations in a compensatory form would relieve her of debt.
“I’m trying to get completely out of debt from everything,” said Johnson. “I would use it to pay off my mortgage.”
Johnson said she regularly stays informed about the work of the task force through the CJEC website and updates.
“I’m really looking forward to (seeing) what is going to come out in the report, which is right around the corner,” she said.
Building a case for California reparations
Task force members said their recommendations will be rooted in the exhaustive report the group released in June. It documents the discrimination and atrocities inflicted on Black people across the country and in California.
It begins with enslavement. While California’s constitution was anti-slavery, the reality was much different.
At least 200 people were enslaved in California in 1850, the year it became a state. Two years later, lawmakers passed a requirement that state officials help capture enslaved people who escaped.
“We practiced every tenet of slavery,” said Sen. Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, who is also on the panel. “California can’t wash its hands of this.”
Later, the report moves into the 20th century where it describes the Ku Klux Klan’s deep roots in California. It identifies “sundown towns” such as Burbank and Richmond that prohibited Black people from staying after dusk. It explains how government officials seized and bulldozed land occupied by Black residents to build freeways.
It continues into present day California, outlining massive and persistent disparities in homeownership, life expectancy and wealth, among other areas.
“What’s happening now is that the state is acknowledging that this is not something that Black people have done wrong,” said Lisa Holder, a panel member and president of the Oakland-based Equal Justice Society. “There’s a narrative shift that’s happening that is long overdue.”
Proposals to create a national commission to study reparations have languished in Congress for decades. Grills said California’s initiative, while important, is not a substitute for federal action.
“That’s something America has never done,” she said. “Tell the full, unvarnished, non-sugar coated truth.”
Reparations plans still uncertain
Economists advising the committee presented rough estimates in September of what residents could receive in monetary compensation.
After reviewing disparities in home values produced by decades of redlining and other housing discrimination, they said reparations could amount to as much as $223,239 for an individual. Harm to health, based on the seven-year life expectancy gap between Black and white people, could warrant up to $966,921.
The task force has not committed to using those figures in its recommendations. Still, some members in interviews said they saw monetary compensation as an important part of the group’s eventual recommendations.
“If somebody took something from you, wouldn’t you want them to give it back?” Grills said. “Let’s atone for the wrongs.”
Who will be eligible for reparations, if they are approved, was a source of sharp disagreement earlier this year. In a 5-4 vote, the task force limited eligibility to Californians who descended from enslaved people or free Black people living in the United States before 1900.
There are precedents for reparations in American and state history. In 1988, the federal government apologized to Japanese Americans for their internment following World War II. It also paid out $20,000 to more than 82,000 as a form of atonement.
Beginning this year, California started a program to compensate people who were sterilized while they lived in state-run hospitals, homes and correctional facilities.
That said, committee members cautioned that financial compensation is only one of the areas they are considering. Holder said it is important to her that the proposals will work to stop ongoing discrimination.
“In order to do that, you have to enact broad based, macro-level policies,” she said. “How do you create system change so that the harms are not repeated 10 years down the line, 15 years down the line, 20 years down the line?”
Whatever the committee recommends will likely face opposition, said Jovan Scott Lewis, a UC Berkeley geography professor and member of the group. But, Lewis added, he did not want that to get in the panel’s way.
“If we are too overly concerned with those debates then we don’t actually do our job for the injured communities.”
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