America


$800B Reparations Plan Losing Support


in California Even progressives now oppose budget-busting payments to state’s Black residents.


T BY MATTHEW LYSIAK


he fight to pay race- based reparations to Cali- fornia’s Black residents and their descendants appears to


be running out of momentum. Both sides of the debate agree that


if the state were to hand out cash to Black residents, it would come at an astronomical cost to taxpayers. Economists from the California Reparations Task Force, a nine-mem- ber panel charged with studying the issue, estimated that the state’s tax- payers would be on the hook to Black residents for more than $800 billion as payment for decades of housing discrimination, overpolicing, and dis- proportionate incarceration. Task force chair Kamilah Moore claimed in an October interview with


12 NEWSMAX | DECEMBER 2024


The Guardian that the $800 billion figure had arrived as the best calcu- lation on how much the state had “dispossessed” from Blacks since the founding of the state. “That’s how much the state has


stolen from African Americans in California through exclusionary pub- lic policy — like housing segregation, mass incarceration, overpolicing, and the devaluation of Black businesses — that has hindered our opportunities to build wealth over time,” said Moore. The concept of reparations first


gained in mainstream popularity in the aftermath of the 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police. That same year, Gov. Gavin New-


som signed California Assembly Bill 3121 to establish the task force to


“study and develop Reparation Pro- posals for African Americans, with a Special Consideration for African Americans Who are Descendants of Persons Enslaved in the United States.” The nine-member group met from


June 2021 to June 2023, conducting research and listening to the testimo- ny of dozens of experts before releas- ing its final report, which included more than 100 policy recommenda- tions for “critically needed law and policy reforms” that redress the per- sistent harms to the Black community from “slavery and systemic racism.” Included in the suggestions were


the cash payments, as well as the repeal of Proposition 209, a 1996 law banning affirmative action in public agencies and the abolishment of the death penalty. Slavery remains “embedded in the


political, legal, health, financial, educa- tional, cultural, environmental, social, and economic systems of the United States of America,” the authors wrote. “Racist, casteist, untrue, and harm-


ful stereotypes created to support slav- ery continue to physically and men- tally harm African Americans today.” In September, Newsom took some


of the task force’s suggestions, sign- ing four bills into law, including an apology for the state’s role in promot- ing slavery, banning discrimination based on natural and protective hair- style, and reviewing the list of books banned in prisons, but fell short of the financial reparations many advocates had viewed as the centerpiece of the movement. Subsequent attempts by lawmak-


ers to pass bills that would offer direct cash handouts were met with resis- tance and ultimately never brought to a vote. The lack of momentum from poli-


ticians follows a dramatic shift in public sentiment as even progres- sive California voters began in over- whelming numbers to oppose paying the reparations, according to a poll last year by the UC Berkeley Institute


SIGN/CAROLYN COLE / LOS ANGELES TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES / WOODSON/X


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