Is California going to pay Black people billions of dollars in reparations for slavery?

Is California going to pay billions of dollars to Black people? A nine-member panel on Saturday voted to move ahead with recommendations on reparations to Black people for slavery. Let’s take a closer look: According to Yahoo, around 2.5 million African-Americans call California home. They comprise nearly 6.5 per cent of the state’s population. Each Black resident in the state could get as much as $148,099 were the suggestions implemented, as per Yahoo. The committee said the state should pay Black residents $3,366 for each year they spent in California from the 1930s to the 1970s – the years racism was the worst. The report further stated that each person should receive $2,352 for each year spent in California from 1971 to 2020 to correct the impact of ‘overpolicing and mass incarceration’ Those that are eligible include 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.”

The compensation for mass incarceration and housing alone could cross $500 billion, as per The New York Times.

Other economists have projected that the state could end up owing Black people upwards of $800 billion. A 71-year-old resident in theory could receive $1.2 million in compensation. “The initial down payment is the beginning of a process of addressing historical injustices, not the end of it,” the report states. According to CNN, the panel has issued a slew of other recommendations including

• Setting up an office to process claims
• To identify and mitigate the ways that current and previous policies have damaged and destabilized Black families”
• To restore sites of historical significance to Black people
• To support education
• To offer free legal aid and other services
• Updating the state Constitution
• Reworking standardised testing to remove bias
• Apologizing for acts of political disenfranchisement.

“An apology and an admission of wrongdoing just by itself is not going to be satisfactory,” said Chris Lodgson, an organizer with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, a reparations advocacy group. An apology crafted by lawmakers must “include a censure of the gravest barbarities” carried out on behalf of the state, according to the draft recommendation approved by the task force. [caption id=“attachment_12565812” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Dawn Basciano said her ancestors had land in Coloma taken by the state parks system. AP[/caption] Those would include a condemnation of former Gov. Peter Hardeman Burnett, the state’s first elected governor and a white supremacist who encouraged laws to exclude Black people from California. California has previously apologized for placing Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II and for violence against and mistreatment of Native Americans. The panel also approved a section of the draft report saying reparations should include “cash or its equivalent” for eligible residents. More than 100 residents and advocates gathered at Mills College of Northeastern University in Oakland, a city that is the birthplace of the Black Panther Party. They shared frustrations over the country’s “broken promise” to offer up to 40 acres and a mule to newly freed enslaved people. Many said it is past time for governments to repair the harms that have kept African Americans from living without fear of being wrongfully prosecuted, retaining property and building wealth. Elaine Brown, former Black Panther Party chairwoman, urged people to express their frustrations through demonstrations. According to CNN, the next meeting of the committee will be held on 29 June following which they will be presented to the legislature on 1 July. “I’m optimistic that they’ll take a look at our proposals and engage in a good faith effort to implement them,” task force chair Kamilah Moore told the LA Times. Moore, a lawyer, expressed optimism 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,” as per The New York Times.

“It will soon be in their hands to act,” Moore added.

According to the newspaper, opinions on reparations break down sharply on racial lines. The newspaper quoted a Pew poll as saying that 77 per cent of African-Americans as advocating for reparations in some form. Meanwhile, just 18 per cent of white Americans supported such a move. Democrats were almost evenly split with 49 per cent in opposition and 48 per cent supporting reparations. ‘No way’ But some remain sceptical about whether these recommendations will be passed by representatives. [caption id=“attachment_12565832” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] People listen to the California reparations task force, a nine-member committee studying restitution proposals for African Americans, at a meeting at Lesser Hall in Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland. AP[/caption] “There’s no way in the world that many of these recommendations are going to get through because of the inflationary impact,” said Roy L Brooks, a professor and reparations scholar at the University of San Diego School of Law.

This comes even as California stares at a fiscal deficit of $22.5 billion.

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The group’s work has garnered nationwide attention, as efforts to research and secure reparations for African Americans elsewhere have had mixed results. The Chicago suburb of Evanston, for example, has offered housing vouchers to Black residents but few have benefited from the program so far. In New York, a bill to acknowledge the inhumanity of slavery in the state and create a commission to study reparations proposals has passed the Assembly but not received a vote in the Senate. And on the federal level, a decades-old proposal to create a commission studying reparations for African Americans has stalled in Congress. Oakland city Councilmember Kevin Jenkins called the California task force’s work “a powerful example” of what can happen when people work together. “I am confident that through our collective efforts, we can make a significant drive in advancing reparations in our great state of California and ultimately the country,” Jenkins said. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News,  India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.