Chris Lange, FISM News
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California’s Reparations Task Force approved $800 billion in recommendations on Saturday.
The nine-member panel members appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) determined that every qualifying black resident of the Golden State should receive up to $1.2 million in compensation for slavery and racial inequity. The decision now awaits approval by California’s Democratic-led legislature.
The reparations are broken down into categories that include discriminatory lending practices from financial institutions and over-policing and mass incarceration that the panel determined disproportionately targeted black residents, among other grievances. Payouts would be calculated on the basis of the number of years qualifying cash recipients have lived in the state. For example, a 71-year-old black resident who has lived in California his entire life would be eligible to receive up to $1.2 million, per an analysis from The New York Times.
The panel also demanded that the state issue a formal apology to black citizens for “long-standing racial disparities and inequalities,” according to Democratic California Rep. Barbara Lee, per a Fox News report.
The reparations draft noted that, while California entered the Union as a free state in 1850, it failed to enact any laws enshrining the freedom of former slaves and, in fact, continued to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act which required the capture and return of runaway slaves.
During Saturday’s public meeting, residents had the opportunity to voice their opinions on the proposed reparations. Arguments grew heated on several occasions throughout the comment period as people for and against the payouts shouted over one another. Several attendees argued with vehemence that the $1.2 million figure recommended by the panel didn’t go far enough.
An activist named Rev. Tony Pierce referred to the “40 acres and a mule” failed wartime Field Order requiring that former slaves be provided with 40 acres of tillable land, according to Fox News.
“You know that the numbers should be equivocal to what an acre was back then. We were given 40, OK? We were given 40 acres. You know what that number is,” Pierce said. “You keep trying to talk about now, yet you research back to slavery and you say nothing about slavery, nothing. So, the equivocal number from the 1860s for 40 acres to today is $200 million for each and every African American.”
Lee, who is vying for ailing California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat in the upper chamber, applauded the panel’s recommendations following Saturday’s vote.
“Reparations are not a luxury for our people, but a human right long overdue for millions of Americans,” the congresswoman said. She added that “the atrocities committed against black Americans are undeniable, and reparations are a tangible route to acknowledging and making amends to the glaring economic and social impacts of slavery and systemic racism. We must repair this damage.”
REPARATION PAYOUTS WOULD MORE THAN TRIPLE SIZE OF STATE’S ANNUAL BUDGET
The proposed $800 billion in reparations has been slammed as fiscally absurd by critics who point out that the figure is more than 2.5 times higher than the state’s annual budget. The astronomical figure was calculated by a consulting team of five economists and policy experts formed by Newsom in 2020.
“There’s no way in the world that many of these recommendations are going to get through because of the inflationary impact,” Roy L. Brooks, a professor and reparations scholar at the University of San Diego School of Law, told NPR.
Stanford University’s Hoover Institution estimated in January 2023 that reparations would cost each non-black family residing in the Golden State at least $600,000.
Nevertheless, the panel is calling on other states and the federal government to pass similar reparations legislation, a demand also championed by Lee.
“I call on all lawmakers and citizens to support federal and state level legislation that aims to provide reparations for those who have historically been marginalized and had to deal with the impact of hundreds of years of being enslaved,” she said.
This article was partially informed by Daily Caller and Washington Examiner reports.