Lisa Deaderick

To close out September, Assembly Bill 3121 was signed into law, establishing the creation of a task force to study how slavery has impacted Black people in California and to recommend what kind of reparations should be distributed as a result.

The topic of reparations for Black people in America has been a curiously controversial topic for hundreds of years. Well, it’s less curious when acknowledging the ways in which White supremacy and racism work to dehumanize and undermine the worth and value of Black folks. In that framing, of course governments and courts resist and refuse to repair the harm enacted on a segment of its citizenry.

“On the surface, it is astounding that millions of people can be subjected to the most horrible abuses, with not a penny in compensation ultimately paid. After all, the structure of the legal system is designed to address wrongs, and slavery combines many of the most terrible wrongs imaginable — theft, imprisonment, assault, murder,” Kaimipono Wenger, emeritus professor and director of the Center for Law & Social Justice at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, writes in his chapter in “Injury and Injustice: The Cultural Politics of Harm and Redress.”

For this conversation, I spoke with Mary Frances Berry, professor of American Social Thought, history and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Berry focuses on U.S. constitutional, legal and African-american history and is the former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

She’s also written more than a dozen books, including “My Face is Black is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-slave Reparations.”

She took some time to discuss what she hopes the California task force will address, the different forms that reparations could potentially take, and the common arguments against reparations. (This email interview has been edited for length and clarity.) Q:

Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 3121 into law, establishing a task force to study the impact of slavery on Black people in California, and to recommend the appropriate compensation that should come from that study.

Where does this new law fit within the long conversation around reparations for the descendants of slavery in the United States?

A:

Since the introduction of H.R. 40 (last year by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-texas), calling for a commission to study and develop reparation proposals for African-americans, the continued killing of unarmed Black men and women and the Black Lives Matter protests have stirred local interest in the possibility of reparations.

Q:

In this studying of the impact of slavery on Black American descendants, what would you hope to see documented in the task force’s report?

A:

I’d like to see such issues as causes and remedies of the wealth gap, health disparities, mass incarceration, the impact of continued segregation in housing, schools and the achievement gap included in their report.

Q:

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-san Diego), who wrote the bill, has said that she hopes the task force will consider forms of reparations that go beyond distributing cash.

Can you talk a bit about what difference the form of reparations could make, and why that matters? A:

Reparations should include a superfund for programs to compensate for the intergenerational effects of continuing to keep Black people in bondage, even after the Civil War, in apprenticeships for Black children, convict leasing and unfair arrests, and sentencing which amounted to the perpetuation of slavery.

The effects of discrimination by state and local governments, and private sector discrimination — redlining, inequitable credit terms, unequal property tax assessments, denied access to government programs, including veterans benefits and pensions — against Black people should also be included.

There should also be direct payments for the descendants of slaves in the United States, who risked their lives to join in the late 19th-century, ex-slave reparations movement in hopes of gaining a pension in their old age.

Q:

What are people missing in these conversations about reparations, when they make arguments like “slavery ended 150 years ago,” “no one currently living was responsible for slavery,” or “this country already fought a Civil War, passed Civil Rights legislation, and elected a Black president”?

A:

Many scholars and activists have pointed out how the slave trade, slave laborers in cotton, sugar and other agricultural goods made possible the capitalist economic development of the United States.

Slaves also labored to build the White House, Capitol and other public buildings. Immigrants, who were themselves paid for their labor, benefited from the work of slaves. By 1900, only 21 percent of the Black population (or about 1.9 million persons) had been born in slavery.

If the United States had paid the pension formerly enslaved people had repeatedly asked for, the debt would already be paid in partial answer to the reparations demand. (Former enslaved persons asked for $15 per month, and a bounty of $500, for each ex-slave 70 years of age and older.)

Those under 70 would receive $300 as a bounty and $12 per month until they reached the age of 70, when it would increase to $15. Those under 60 years old would receive a $100 bounty and $8 a month until they reached age 60. Those less than 50 years of age would receive $4 per month, and then at age 50, $8 per month).