California will create a complete plan for reparations under a new law signed on Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The state will become the first state to mandate a study of how it can compensate for its role in the oppression of Black people.
What We Know:
- This law will create a nine-member task force to develop suggestions about how the state could deliver reparations to Black Americans, what structure those reparations might take and who will be awarded to receive them.
- Reparations could be presented in cash payments, student loan forgiveness, public works projects, or job training. The law does not limit the cost to slavery but requires the task force to give exceptional generosity for Black people who are descendants of slaves.
- California has never had a government-authorized system of slavery. It set foot in the Union in 1850 as a free state after gold was found in the Sierra Nevada peaks. However, the state did allow slave-owning whites to bring their slaves to California. The assembly even proceeded with a law which made it legal to apprehend runaway slaves and return them to their owners.
- Newsom stated that this is not just about California; it is about creating influence, and an effect, across the rest of the country.
- Newsom would designate five members from the task force of California. The other four would be placed from the Legislature, and two selected by the state Senate and Assembly leaders. The law states the task force has to include a minimum of two people from civil society and reparations administrations and at least one designee from academia, which is a specialist in civil rights.
The task force has to conduct its first meeting no later than June 1. It must send in its recommendations to the state Legislature one year after its first meeting.
