California Task Force Releases First-Of-Its-Kind Interim Reparations Report

On Wednesday, the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans released an interim report on racial reparations.

The group put forward preliminary recommendations, as well as a comprehensive history of slavery and discrimination of African Americans across the country, and specifically in California.

Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed a bill establishing the task force in 2020. In March, the task force decided that only direct descendants of slaves would get financial reparations, which was controversial at the time. The final report will be released before July 1 of next year.

The report made the claim that “[h]istorians have argued that many of today’s financial accounting and management practices began among enslavers in the U .S . South and the Caribbean.”

In a subsection, titled “Enslavement,” the group laid out specific ways to change incarceration methods in California, which include getting rid of language from the California Constitution “that permits involuntary servitude as punishment for crime by passing ACA 3.”

They said Penal Code Section 2700 should be repealed, which says the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) “shall require of every able-bodied prisoner imprisoned in any state prison as many hours of faithful labor in each day and every day during his or her term of imprisonment as shall be prescribed by the rules and regulations of the director of Corrections.”

Without describing the effect of other factors, the report claims that “[t]he American criminal justice system overall physically harms, imprisons, and kills African Americans more than any other racial group relative to their percentage of the population.”

Other policy recommendations include passing bills that make “education, substance use and mental health treatment, and rehabilitative programs the first priority for incarcerated people.” They also said incarcerated people who are working during their time in prison should be paid “a fair market rate.”

The Task Force recommends that the final report be presented to the president and Congress, and that the federal government establish a commission for reparations.

It also said that a certain amount of money, determined on the estimated worth of black-owned businesses and property in California that were demolished or stolen “through acts of racial terror,” be given to black Californians. In addition, “housing grants, zero-interest business and housing loans and grants” should be made available to black Californians.

While some parts of the recommendations were specific, others were generalized approaches to reparations.

For example, the group recommended that “forms of expression, acknowledgment, and remembrance of the trauma of state-sanctioned white supremacist terror” be created, potentially involving memorials, and providing funds for “a long-term truth and reconciliation commission.”

It also said “forms of acknowledgment and apology for acts of political disenfranchisement” should be established. In another vague claim, it called for the identification and elimination of “anti-Black housing discrimination policies practices.”

In the area of education, the task force said that “racial bias and discriminatory practices in standardized testing” should be identified and eradicated. This testing includes the levels of K-12, collegiate eligibility, and career tests, including the State Bar Exam.

Another recommendation for education came in the form of starting “a K-12 Black Studies curriculum that introduces students to concepts of race and racial identity; accurately depicts historic racial inequities and systemic racism; honors Black lives, fully represents contributions of Black people in society, and advances the ideology of Black liberation,” which critics may likely point to as a methodology of Critical Race Theory.

It also said that scholarships should be provided for black students who graduate from high school to pay for four years of undergraduate schooling, and also calls for funding to be provided for California colleges and universities to be attended for free.

With regard to the legal system, the group recommended getting rid of “racial disparities in police stops,” as well as the “racial disparities in criminal sentencing and the over incarceration of African Americans.”

The report compared certain law enforcement incidences to lynching, stating, “[w]hile lynching and mob murders are no longer the social norm, scholars have argued that its modern equivalent continues to haunt African Americans today as extra- judicial killings by the law enforcement and civilian vigilantes.”

The group also wants to set up a cabinet-level secretary role for a California African American/Freedmen Affairs Agency, given the job of carrying out the task force’s recommendations, among other responsibilities.

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