In attempting to put a price on historical wrongs, California is forcing answers to questions that can’t be derived with neat equations: Who will be compensated and for what? Who pays the bill? And how will it be settled?As the most populous US state, California is setting a potential roadmap for reparations at the federal level, where legislation has been introduced in Congress in every session since 1989.
And task force members traveled around California holding public hearings that became raucous and tearful, listening to testimony on Black-owned homes, businesses and farms seized by eminent domain or devalued through redlining and discriminatory lending practices. They heard stories of lives shattered by violence and incarceration, of Black neighborhoods where poverty, substandard schools and poor health have limited human potential for generations.
State Senator Steven Bradford, one of two lawmakers on the task force, has proposed diverting 0.5% of the state’s $300 billion annual budget in order to generate a $1.5 billion annuity to fund reparations programs and payments over time. “If we are committed to it we can afford it,” he said. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and other advocates say the state’s fiscal woes are not an excuse for inaction. As a legislator in 2020, she wrote the bill creating the reparations task force.
In the US, building public support for reparations calls for a different conversation, one focused on return on investment rather than who pays what to whom, says Assembly member Reginald Jones-Sawyer Sr., the other elected official serving on the task force. “African Americans as a race were excluded from many neighborhoods in this country by public policy and the consequences for their descendants are enormous,” Rothstein said. “If there was unconstitutional public policy, then race-conscious remedies would be justifiable.”