Free college for black students urged as slavery compensation
California task force on reparations proposes move to address the injustices that ‘created exclusion’
CALIFORNIA should pay for scholarships for all black university students, the state’s task force on reparations for slavery recommended yesterday in a groundbreaking report.
The report, the first governmentconducted study in the United States into addressing the legacy of slavery, concluded that California’s government, private sector and judiciary “created a widespread exclusion of black people that has not been sufficiently addressed”.
Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, signed legislation creating the task force in 2020, making it the only state in America to investigate the subject of reparations.
The 500-page report recommends that the state “provide scholarships for black high-school graduates to cover four years of undergraduate education to address specific and ongoing discrimination faced in California schools”.
It also proposed a primary school curriculum that “accurately depicts historic racial inequities” and “advances the ideology of black liberation”. Another suggestion, to be put to lawmakers next year, is the creation of a special office to help African Americans descended from free or enslaved black people seek “financial restitution”.
The report, released yesterday, said that California, which has a population of 40 million, actively participated in disenfranchisement of black citizens.
The state, it said, supported slavery before it was abolished and oppressed black residents through discriminatory laws and practices in education, housing, jobs and the courts.
The report also recommends compensating people forced out of their homes for construction, as happened to San Francisco’s historically black and once-thriving Fillmore neighbourhood.
The specifics of how black people might prove their lineage has yet to be determined. Task force members heard testimony from genealogists who discussed various methods, including census records, DNA and ancestry tests.
“I hope that this report is used not only as an educational tool but an organising tool for people not only in California but across the US to educate their communities,” said Kamilah Moore, a lawyer and reparatory justice scholar who chairs the task force.
Ms Moore said nearly 80 per cent of California’s 2.6 million black residents would be eligible for reparations, based on calculations by an economist on the task force.