The California Reparations Task Force, established to examine the issue of compensating descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States, gave the green light on Saturday to a proposal that recommends paying $1.2 million to each qualifying black resident in the state as a way to address slavery and other injustices against African-Americans.
Established by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020, the nine-member task force is responsible for examining the generational consequences of slavery. The committee has been conducting research, holding public hearings, and consulting experts on the matter.
In addition to a formal apology, the task force has also approved a proposal recommending $1.2 million in reparations for each African-American resident in California. The amount was derived from the unfulfilled promise of 40 acres and a mule made to formerly enslaved individuals after the Civil War, adjusted for inflation and current land values.
However, Newsom declined to back the reparations on May 9 and added that addressing the legacy of slavery in the United States is about “more than cash payments.”
Larry Elder, an African-American conservative talk radio host and 2024 presidential candidate, disagrees with the move.
Elder equates reparations to the extraction of money from people who were never slave owners to people who were never slaves.
“First of all, California was not a slave state, It was admitted to the union in 1850 as a free state,” Elder told The Epoch Times.
“The reparations task force gets around this inconvenient truth by arguing the ‘wealth gap’ that blacks suffer is due to redlining, ’mass incarceration,‘ and ’over-policing.' Even if these issues caused the wealth gap, why is it the obligation of current California taxpayers to make amends?”
Chinese, Japanese, and Native Americans Too?
“Furthermore, is it true that these grievances caused the wealth gap? For example, Chinese in California experienced blatant discrimination, including laws that prevented them from participating in the laundry business in San Francisco. Japanese in California were legally barred from owning farmland. Yet, the household income of the average Chinese American exceeds that of the average white American. Similarly, the average household income of Japanese Americans exceeds that of white Americans,” Elder further argued.Human rights attorney Leigh Dundas, while condemning racism in the strongest terms, agrees with Larry’s point.
“Do we pay Japanese—Americans and Native Americans the same as blacks?” Dundas told The Epoch Times via email. “What of the descendants of the Jews tortured by Hitler, the Cambodians whose families were killed at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, the Tutsi exterminated by the Hutus in other countries? What humans have done to each other is horrifying and inexcusable and has no doubt created disparities, but enforcing a surcharge against those who have never done the above wrongs—in order to pay others who were themselves never enslaved—is not the correct answer (not to mention that this proposal would create a monetary liability that is mathematically insupportable as it’s more than double our state budget).
“Slavery, discrimination, and disparities in access are unequivocally wrong—and I’ve spent the last decade of my life specifically addressing these issues with my work against human trafficking. But the reparations approved in Oakland this week that seek to give each black resident up to $1.2 million are categorically not an answer to the problem. It’s a slippery slope that knows no end—many groups have been enslaved, wrongfully confined, discriminated against, and killed over the ages.”
Instead of the controversial reparations policies, Dundas is of the opinion that the means of education, “along with the implementation, enhancement, and enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, will bring us closer to tackling the underlying issues behind these injustices.”
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who is cosponsoring a bill in Congress to study restitution proposals for African-Americans, called on states and the federal government to pass reparations legislation.
“Reparations are not only morally justifiable, but they have the potential to address longstanding racial disparities and inequalities,” Lee said.
However, the task force’s proposals are far from implementation.
“There’s no way in the world that many of these recommendations are going to get through because of the inflationary impact,” said Roy Brooks, a professor and reparations scholar at the University of San Diego School of Law.
The task force will continue its work and submit a final report to the state legislature by June 2023, which will include detailed recommendations for implementing reparations.
Broken Families
Elder believes that the real racial gap is fatherlessness.“Seventy percent of black children enter the world without a father in the home married to the mother, compared to 25 percent of white children,” Elder said. “When I grew up, it was rare for any of my black friends not to have a mother and father in the home. Today it is rare for both a mother and a father to be in the home. This is a far bigger contributing factor to the wealth gap than any of the grievances the task force cites.
“And what about the poor performance of California government schools? Seventy-five percent of black third graders cannot read at grade proficiency, and 85 percent of black K-12 students in California cannot do math at grade level proficiency. Again, this translates into wealth depression far more than the grievances claimed by the reparations task force.
“Finally, the reparations premise is this: blacks are victims, not responsible for self-education, self-investment, self-improvement, sacrifice, and deferring gratification—all of which create wealth,” Elder said.
Old Debate
Reparations for African-Americans in the United States have been a topic of discussion and debate for many years. The concept can be traced back to the aftermath of the Civil War, when the U.S. government contemplated ways to compensate formerly enslaved individuals for their suffering and forced labor.One of the earliest proposals for reparations came in the form of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15, issued in 1865. This order granted 40 acres of land and a mule to each freed family along the coastal regions of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. However, the order was quickly rescinded by former President Andrew Johnson, and most of the land was returned to its former Confederate owners.
In the decades following the Civil War, the idea of reparations was largely pushed aside as the United States grappled with Reconstruction and the civil rights struggles of the 20th century. The reparations debate regained momentum in the late 20th century, as activists and scholars began to argue for the necessity of compensating African-Americans for the injustices of slavery and the enduring impact of racism.
During the 1980s and 1990s, various proposals for reparations surfaced, including demands for financial compensation and initiatives aimed at closing the wealth gap between white and African-American citizens. In 1989, Congressman John Conyers introduced H.R. 40, a bill that called for the establishment of a commission to study the issue of reparations. Despite being reintroduced in every subsequent Congress, the bill did not receive a hearing until 2019.
