California task force votes to limit reparations to slave descendants

California’s first-in-the-nation task force on reparations has decided to limit state compensation to the descendants of free and enslaved Black people who were in the U.S. in the 19th century, narrowly rejecting a proposal to include all Black people regardless of lineage.

The vote Tuesday split 5-4, and the hours-long debate was at times testy and emotional. Near the end, the Rev. Amos Brown, president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP and vice chair of the task force, pleaded with the commission to move ahead with a clear definition of who would be eligible for restitution.

“Please, please, please I beg us tonight, take the first step,” he said. ”We've got to give emergency treatment to where it is needed."

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation creating the two-year reparations task force in 2020, making California the only state to move ahead with a study and plan, with a mission to study the institution of slavery and its harms and to educate the public about its findings.

[SOURCE: AP NEWS]

California to Study Reparations for Black Americans

California will develop detailed proposals for granting reparations to Black Americans under a new law.

The legislation, which was authored by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, a Democrat representing San Diego who is chair of California's Legislative Black Caucus, does not commit to any specific payment. Instead, it establishes a nine-person task force that will study the impact of slavery on Black people in California and recommend to the Legislature what kind of compensation should be provided, who should receive it and what form it will take.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law on Wednesday.

The task force must give its recommendations to the state Legislature one year after its first meeting.

The law would not limit the reparations to slavery.

But it does require the task force to give special consideration for black people who are descendants of slaves.

Similar proposals have been introduced in Congress for decades but have never passed.