Reparations of up to $1.2m for black people in California

Proposed payment would compensate for decades of racial injustice including health and housing

BLACK Californians could receive up to $1.2million (£950,000) each in reparations to address decades of racial injustice, a state inquiry has proposed.

The scheme, which was approved by the Reparations Task Force set up on the order of the governor, would provide compensation for mass incarceration, housing inequality and health care. One estimate puts the total bill at $500billion (£400billion), dwarfing California’s annual budget of $296.9 billion, at a time when the state deficit stands at $22.5 billion.

The plans were drawn up by a ninestrong panel created by Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, who is tipped for a White House run, in the aftermath of national protests following the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a police officer in 2020.

The report is due to be submitted to the state’s legislature by July 1 for final approval.

California is the most advanced of several states drawing up plans to compensate black Americans for past inequalities including slavery.

Similar initiatives have been drawn up by Detroit city council and Amherst in Massachusetts.

A poll by Pew Research showed that 77 per cent of black Americans and 18 per cent of whites backed reparations.

The California proposals, drawn up with the help of a team of economists, have been calculated in minute detail.

Compensation for “redlining”, where banks denied mortgages to people living in black areas, is estimated as having cost individuals $3,366 a year. This could lead to some black Californians receiving as much as $148,099.

Compensation for over-policing and mass incarceration, as a result of the war on drugs, is estimated as being worth $2,352 a year.

An African-american resident in California from 1971 to 2020 stands to receive $115,260. The compensation for health inequalities is worth $13,619 for each year of residency.

In theory, based on life expectancy of 71 years, the average total payment works out at $1.2 million. About 2.5 million Californians, 6.5 per cent of the state’s total population, identify as black.

Under the proposals, not all would necessarily be eligible for reparations, and it is feared that the scheme could trigger a wave of litigation from black people who are excluded.

The task force said the scheme should be limited to those “determined by an individual being an African-american descendant of a chattel enslaved person or the descendant of a free black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century”.

That would bring down those eligible for compensation to less than two million. It would require the creation of a “genealogy branch” to trawl family trees to see who would qualify for the scheme if it is passed by California’s legislators.

The reparations may not come in cash, and could be handed out in housing vouchers and tuition subsidies, for example.

Barbara Lee, a Democratic US Congresswoman, hailed the plans. “It’s a model for other states in search of reparative damage, realistic avenues for addressing the need for reparations,” she said. Some of the residents attending a meeting in Oakland, where the plans were outlined, described the scheme as inadequate.

Reverend Tony Pierce said the US had failed to honour the pledge to offer “every freed slave 40 acres and a mule”.

“You know what that number is. You keep trying to talk about now, yet you research back to slavery, and you say nothing about slavery, nothing,” he said. “So the equivocal number from the 1860s for 40 acres to today is $200million for each and every African-american.”

Elaine Brown, a former Black Panther activist, urged people to take to the streets to voice their dissatisfaction.