California panel calls for billions in reparations for black residents

OAKLAND, California – A California panel on Saturday approved recommendations that could mean hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to black residents to address past injustices.

The proposals to state legislators are the United States’ most sweeping effort to devise a programme of reparations.

The nine-member Reparations Task Force, whose work is being closely monitored by politicians, historians and economists across the country, produced a detailed plan for how restitution should be handled to address a myriad of racist harms, including housing discrimination, mass incarceration and unequal access to healthcare.

Created through a Bill signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in the wake of the nationwide racial justice protests after the murder of Mr George Floyd in 2020, the panel has spent more than a year conducting research and holding listening sessions from the Bay Area to San Diego.

It will be up to legislators to weigh the recommendations and decide whether to forge them into law, a political and fiscal challenge that has yet to be reckoned with.

The task force’s final report, which is to be sent to lawmakers in Sacramento before a July 1 deadline, includes projected restitution estimates calculated by several economists working with the task force.

One such estimate laid out in the report determined that to address the harms from redlining by banks, which disqualified people in black neighbourhoods from taking out mortgages and owning homes, eligible black Californians should receive up to US$148,099 (S$196,250). That estimate is based on a figure of US$3,366 for each year they lived in California from the early 1930s to the late 1970s, when federal redlining was most prevalent.

To address the impact of over-policing and mass incarceration, the report estimates, each eligible person would receive US$115,260, or about US$2,352 for each year of residency in California from 1971 to 2020, during the decades-long war on drugs.

In theory, a lifelong state resident who is 71 years old, the average life expectancy, could be eligible for roughly US$1.2 million in total compensation for housing discrimination, mass incarceration and additional harms outlined in the report.

All of these estimates, the report notes, are preliminary and would require additional research from lawmakers to hash out specifics. The costs to the state were not outlined in the report, but totals from harms associated with housing and mass incarceration could exceed US$500 billion, based on estimates from economists.

While the panel members considered various methods for distributing reparations – some favoured tuition or housing grants and others preferred direct cash payments – they ultimately recommended the direct payments.

“The initial down payment is the beginning of a process of addressing historical injustices,” the report reads, “not the end of it.”

In 2022, the task force, which is made up of elected officials, academics and lawyers, decided on the eligibility criteria, determining that any descendant of enslaved African Americans or of a “free black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century” should receive reparations.

Still, on Saturday, there was sometimes contentious debate over clearly expressing the criteria in certain sections of the report – particularly regarding compensation.

Should lawmakers pass legislation for payments, the panel suggested that a state agency be created to process claims and render payments, with elderly individuals getting priority. Nearly 6.5 per cent of California residents, roughly 2½ million, identify as black or African American.

“This is about closing the income and racial wealth gap in this country, and this is a step,” said Tulane University economics professor Gary Hoover, who has studied reparations. “Wealth is sticky and is able to be transferred from generations. Reparations can close that stickiness.”

Nationwide, opinions on reparations are sharply divided by race.

Last autumn, a survey from the Pew Research Centre found that 77 per cent of black Americans said the descendants of people enslaved in the US should be repaid in some way, while 18 per cent of white Americans said the same.

Democrats were evenly split on the issue, with 49 per cent opposed and 48 per cent in support. Other polls on the issue have found similar splits.

Even so, cities across the country have moved forward with reparations proposals.

In 2021, officials in Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, approved US$10 million in reparations in the form of housing grants.

More recently, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has expressed support for reparations that could offer several million dollars. And in nearby Hayward, California, city officials are hearing proposals for reparations for land taken from black and Latino families in the 1960s.

Ms Kamilah Moore, a lawyer who is chair of the California task force, said she was confident that the legislature would “respect the task force’s official role as a legislative advisory body and work in good faith to turn our final proposals into legislation”.

“It will soon be in their hands to act,” she said. NYTIMES