California’s first-in-the-nation task force on reparations is at a crossroads, with members divided on which Black Americans should be eligible for compensation
- as atonement for a slave system that officially ended with the Civil War but reverberates to this day.
Compensation could include free college, assistance buying homes and launching businesses, and grants to churches and community organizations, advocates say. A reparations plan based on race would attract “hyper-aggressive challenges that could have very negative implications for other states looking to do something similar, or even for the federal government,” she said.California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who authored the legislation creating the task force, had argued passionately in January for prioritizing descendants for generations of forced labor, broken family ties and police terrorism.
Task force member Lisa Holder shared a poignant story of losing her child at delivery, because the medical staff did not take seriously the concerns of a young Black woman who knew something was wrong with her baby, she said. In the U.S., Black mothers are far more likely to experience a pregnancy-related death than white women.
But testimony provided to the committee shows California and local governments were complicit in stripping Black people of their wages and property, preventing them from building wealth to pass down to their children. Their homes were razed for redevelopment, and they were forced to live in predominantly minority neighborhoods and couldn’t get bank loans that would allow them to purchase property.
“I guess I tend to be more inclusive rather than exclusive,” she said, “and maybe it’s a fear of limitation, that there’s not enough money to go around.”
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