Current Events > California approves task force to consider paying reparations for slavery

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https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-30/california-task-force-reparations-slavery-gavin-newsom-shirley-weber

With Gov. Gavin Newsoms signature, California became the first state government in the country on Wednesday to adopt a law to study and develop proposals for potential reparations to descendants of enslaved people and those impacted by slavery. Newsom said the new law and bipartisan support for its passage is proving a paradigm that we hope will be resonant all across the United States. In a year of national protests against racial injustice, state lawmakers approved Assembly Bill 3121 to force the state to begin to confront its racist history and systemic disparities that persist today. Although California entered the Union as a free state in 1850, slavery continued there after the state Constitution outlawed it the previous year. Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865. The new law creates a task force to recommend appropriate remedies to the state Legislature and determine who should be eligible to receive compensation, which advocates hope will become a model in a country where movements to make amends for centuries of slavery have failed to gain traction at the federal level. California has come to terms with many of its issues, but it has yet to come to terms with its role in slavery, said Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), the author of AB 3121. Were talking about really addressing the issues of justice and fairness in this country that we have to address.

The bill states that 4 million African people and their descendants were enslaved in the United States from 1619 to 1865, and the practice was constitutionally approved for more than 75 years. California has a long history of allowing slavery and discrimination, dating back to before it gained statehood. Until 1863, California also had laws that barred Black people from testifying against white people in court. Racial discrimination has persisted into more modern times, with issues such as school segregation and busing dividing cities including Los Angeles into the 1970s. Just last year, the Sausalito Marin City School District received the states first desegregation order in 50 years. White homeowners for decades restricted Black people from living in their neighborhoods under agreements not to sell to Black buyers. Movements to pay reparations have long existed, but no state has approved such a sweeping law to consider ways to make amends for slavery and its impact. The state of Florida paid more than $2 million in reparations to survivors of the 1924 Rosewood massacre. In 1988, Congress approved $20,000 to each survivor of the Japanese American internment camps during World War II. When you start looking at the difference between poor whites and poor Blacks, its an enormous wealth gap just among those groups alone, Weber said. So, hopefully, they will look at what policies we put in place, and that they will have a list of policies that they believe the Legislature might want to take up. The new law calls on the task force to educate the public about the history of slavery in the U.S. and California and the discriminatory policies that came after.

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Well shit, I imagine Oregon and Washington will do the same within weeks.

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Throwing money at a problem and hoping it goes away usually doesn't work.

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never gonna happen
every single human being has ugly hatred and injustice in their pedigree
once "the blacks" get their payement, every one else will come running up asking "where is mine?"
theres no way to tell which black people are direct descendants of slaves

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Earlier this year the California legislature voted to repeal this part of the states constitution:

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.

It was specifically the grant preferential treatment part that they took issue with. Its all connected.

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