Reparations

Slavery reparations gets real in California

By LARA KORTE, JEREMY B. WHITE and SEJAL GOVINDARAO

The road to reparations is running straight into a swamp of indecision.

After months of hearings, expert analyses and passionate pleas, California lawmakers now must decide how to compensate the descendants of slaves. The state’s Reparations Task Force completed its mandate yesterday, capping off two years of discussions with a 1,075-page report that outlines the widespread impacts of enslavement in California and offers more than a dozen ways lawmakers can ease the burden on descendants — including a formal apology and recommended methods for calculating financial compensation.

“This work must not be in vain,” said San Diego City Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steppe, one of nine task force members. “We are not asking for performative justice.”

This report brings California significantly closer to being the first state in the nation to enact reparations, but also highlights the profound difficulty of being a trailblazer. In recent months, as the task force wrapped up its work, lawmakers, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, poured cold water on the biggest-ticket item — cash payments.

Newsom, who is known to spend hours a day reading conservative news outlets and recently spent a week in the South learning about slavery and Jim Crow-era oppression, insisted on Thursday that he has yet to read the report, and hedged on questions about cash payments.

“I’ve been pretty consistent in my public comments,” he told reporters. “I am very mindful of our past.”

Both Newsom and legislators have been vague on specific policies. The closest we’ve gotten so far is a report from the LA Times’ Erika D. Smith, who wrote yesterday about Sen. Steven Bradford’s idea to give the state’s closed prison property to Black people as part of the repayments. Bradford suggested the idea caught the interest of the administration.

At the final hearing on Thursday, Bradford was blunt about the challenge ahead, saying it’s way too early to know what bills will look like or who will carry them.

Much of the work will likely happen next year, Bradford added, saying “it’s too much to unpack right now to think you’re gonna get it done between now and September this year.”

“I just think it’s going to require some real massaging and networking and working our colleagues to first get them to read the report as stated, accept what’s there, and then being willing to address it through impactful legislation,” he said.

“It’s going to be a tough task.”