What to know about California’s reparations proposal for Black Americans
What to know about California’s reparations proposal for Black Americans - The Washington Post
California’s reparations task force has approved recommendations that could result in billions of dollars in restitution to Black Californians for decades of state-sanctioned discrimination.
What to know about California’s reparations proposal for Black Americans
Some older Black Californians could receive more than $1 million under the proposal, which still must be approved by state lawmakers
“It’s a model for other states in search of reparative damage, realistic avenues for addressing the need for reparation," U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who is running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, said at Saturday’s meeting.
The next challenge facing reparations activists will be to convince fellow Californians to get behind the most expensive reparations plan for Black Americans ever proposed by a government body.
A 2021 Washington Post poll found that 65 percent of Americans opposed paying cash reparations to the descendants of enslaved Black Americans. While 46 percent of Democrats favored the idea, 92 percent of Republicans opposed it. Two-thirds of Black respondents supported the idea, but only 18 percent of White respondents did.
The report comes nearly three years after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation creating the task force in the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The proposal will land on lawmakers’ desks long after the height of racial justice protests and at a time when the state faces a $22.5 billion budget deficit.
What is possible in politically progressive and ethnically diverse California could set a benchmark for the reparations movements that have sprouted across more than a dozen cities and states across the country in recent years.
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