California is the first state to tackle reparations for Black residents. What that really means

Reparations programs acknowledge and address harms caused by human rights violations such as slavery, segregation, or the systematic denial of fair housing, education, or employment opportunities. 

The United Nations identified five components to an effective reparations plan: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition. 

Compensation could take many forms, according to scholars. They could include direct cash payments, infrastructure investments in historically underserved communities, and vouchers for housing, college or medical insurance. California’s task force also proposed hundreds of policy recommendations falling under such categories as justice and law, voting, education, health, business, and housing. 

Yes. While California did not have large-scale plantations like the Southern states, slavery existed in various forms during California’s early history. 

California was not legally a slave state, yet more than 2,000 enslaved people were brought to the state from 1850 to 1860, typically by plantation owners, to work in gold mines, according to the task force. State and local government officials also at times upheld fugitive slave laws.

Click through the slideshow to see more examples of slavery in California.

The first state-appointed task force in the nation exploring how a state could make reparations to African Americans hurt by slavery and discrimination. It held close to 200 hours of public hearings and produced hundreds of pages of public documents. 

The 9-member panel did not always agree, but its work likely will be considered historic and could serve as a blueprint for the rest of the nation.

Figuring out who would be eligible for reparations is expected to be a complicated process. 

The task force in March 2022 voted to limit potential compensation to descendants of free and enslaved Black people who were in the United States prior to 1900. To qualify a person would have to trace lineage. The reparations panel narrowly rejected a proposal to include recent immigrants. The eligibility debate dominated the task force’s first year of work and highlighted a cultural schism within the Black community. 

The task force also voted to recommend the Legislature create a California American Freedmen’s Affairs Agency — an updated version of the Freedmen’s Bureau instituted by the federal government in 1865, after the Civil War, to assist formerly enslaved people. The new agency would help California residents trace their lineage. 

Kamilah Moore, chairperson of the task force, said nearly 80% of California’s 2.8 million Black residents would be eligible for reparations.

Some task force members predicted a large percentage of Black Californians would have trouble proving eligibility, including children in the state’s welfare system, incarcerated people and those suffering mental illness or homelessness.

 “Our most vulnerable could be left out,” said task force member Cheryl Grills. 

Task force economic experts say the current wealth disparity between Black and white California households — pegged at $350,000 per person — is the best indicator of the impact of racism. 

They also calculated the costs of other harms African Americans endured and estimated Black Californians could be owed more than $800 billion total, for decades of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration, home seizures and housing discrimination. That is more than two-and-a-half times California’s $310 billion annual budget. Yet it does not include a recommended $1 million per person to older residents for health disparities that shortened their average life span.

If those debts were paid, where would the money come from? 

Some people suggested tapping tax revenues from marijuana sales. Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, voted in 2019 to allocate $10 million of its marijuana tax revenues to reparations initiatives addressing gaps in wealth and opportunity for Black residents. 

Others told California’s task force the state should create a “superfund” with taxes and donations paid by wealthy donors.

Some task force members suggested the state make a “downpayment” on reparations or pay installments. Steven Bradford, a Democratic state senator from Gardena on the task force, proposed diverting 0.5% of the state’s annual budget to a $1.5 billion annuity, to fund reparations programs and payments over time.

Ultimately, the governor and Legislature would need to decide where money for reparations would come from.

Many times reparations have been paid for human rights abuses in the United States and abroad. The University of Amherst catalogs several dozen cases on its library website.

Reparations payments to Black Californians have garnered mixed support in polls, with some panel recommendations more popular than others. In a 2023 survey by the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California, nearly three out of five Californians supported the Legislature and governor offering a formal apology for human rights violations and crimes against humanity for enslaved Africans and their descendants. 

Yet the political calculus is likely to give lawmakers pause. Although most Californians surveyed believe racism is a problem, a majority of adults and a slightly greater majority of likely voters in the same poll said they had an unfavorable impression of the state having a reparations task force.

And a poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Government studies showed 59% of California voters opposed to cash payments to residents who are descendants of enslaved Black people, compared to 28% of voters in favor. The poll, conducted in late August, found Democrats and liberals largely divided on cash reparations while Republicans and conservatives were nearly universally opposed. Two out of three voters who reported no party preference said they are against cash payments to Black residents.

A different poll, by UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, showed most respondents agreeing that some form of compensation is warranted. At least 81% endorsed investing in education, health care, and business development to benefit Black residents.

A common warning by some opponents of reparations is that it could encourage other historically aggrieved groups to seek payback from the government. 

Even some proponents agree. Task force members Don Tamaki and Reggie Jones-Sawyer, Democratic Assembly member from Los Angeles, have said the task force’s work could become a blueprint for other ethnic groups. 

Two Harvard University scholars argue the United States already pays reparations to a variety of groups, including coal miners with black lung disease, descendants of veterans, farmers, and people who have had bad reactions to COVID vaccines. Researchers Cornell William Brooks and Linda Bilmes said few groups are as deserving of reparative justice as Black Americans.

“When you talk about restorative justice in flesh-and-blood terms, it means how do we restore people in terms of land sold? How do we restore a people in terms of dignity robbed? Bodies violated? Liberty taken?” Brooks said during a podcast.  

One group that might seek reparations are families who had lived on land Dodgers Stadium occupies, now known as Chavez Ravine. The city of Los Angeles moved out hundreds of families, most of them Latino, during the 1950’s to build the stadium. Now some are fighting to get their land back. 

Other examples could include Native Americans, Mexican American and Chinese Americans  —  who were oppressed at various times in California’s history — as well as undocumented workers, LGBTQ+ community members and women. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom created the California Truth & Healing Council, which is expected to report  on California’s historic relationship with Native Americans and possibly recommend reparations in 2025.

The task force recommends more than 100 programs or policies that do not involve direct cash payments. (They can be found on pages 19-24 of the interim report.) The policy recommendations generally fall under these categories: justice, voting, education, health, business or housing. 

Some policy recommendations would have a defined cost while others, such as the recommendation that California apologize for slavery and systemic injustices, would not have a budgetary impact. 

Other recommendations to the state:

• Delete language from California’s Constitution permitting involuntary servitude as punishment for crime

• Make it easier to hold law enforcement (including correctional officers) accountable for unlawful harassment and violence

• Consider legislation to prevent the dilution Black votes via redistricting

• Let people with felony convictions serve on juries and prohibit judges and attorneys from excluding jurors for having a criminal record.

• Identify and eliminate anti-Black housing policies and practices.

• Repeal Article 34 of the California Constitution, which requires public votes before “low-rent housing projects” can be developed, constructed, or acquired by public entities.

• Identify and eliminate racial bias in standardized tests, including statewide K-12 proficiency assessments, undergraduate and postgraduate assessments and professional career exams 

Very few lawmakers publicly expressed support for the preliminary recommendations of the California Reparations Task Force. In CalMatters’ informal email poll of all 120 state legislators, just five not on the task force responded.

Those who expressed support include Assembly members in the Black Caucus — La Mesa Democrat Dr. Akilah Weber, Moreno Valley Democrat Corey Jackson, and Tina McKinnor, a Democrat from Inglewood — and Damon Connolly, a Democrat from San Rafael.

In opposition is Assemblymember James Gallagher, a Republican from Chico, who in a statement asked: “How can we ask new immigrants and low-wage workers to foot the bill for something done 150 years ago, on the other side of the country?” 

Gov. Newsom, who signed the law creating the task force, signaled caution. “Dealing with the legacy of slavery is about much more than cash payments,” he said in a statement.

Bradford, the Gardena senator on the task force, said he’s not surprised by caution from lawmakers. “This is an issue folks still don’t want to deal with head on,” he said, “and here we are in 2023 and not only California, but America wants to bury their head when it comes to addressing America’s original sin — slavery.”

Jones-Sawyer, the Assembly member on the task force, acknowledged: “Not all recommendations may see the light of day, but it is imperative that the ones aimed at undoing racially prejudiced laws are enacted.”

Some members of California’s Legislative Black Caucus kicked off a statewide tour in June, 2024 to promote 14 reparations bills including Assembly Constitutional Amendment 8,  would ban one of the last vestiges of slavery: forced labor in jails and prisons.

Proponents plan community listening sessions in six cities over the next five months to make the case for reparations bills addressing health care, education, business, criminal justice and civil rights. One obstacle confronting at least some of those proposals: a yawning budget deficit, which over the next two fiscal years is estimated at $56 billion. 

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