Lawmakers: Reparations bills are a starting point

SACRAMENTO (AP) — Black lawmakers in California on Wednesday introduced a package of reparations legislation, calling it a starting point to atone for the state’s legacy of discrimination.

The California Legislative Black Caucus introduced the package of more than a dozen proposals months after a first-in-the nation reparations task force sent a report, two years in the making, to lawmakers recommending how the state should apologize and offer redress to Black Californians. The package doesn’t include widespread direct cash payments to Black families.

“We are witnessing the effects of the longstanding institution of slavery and how that impacts our communities,” Democratic Assemblymember Mike Gipson said at a press conference at the state Capitol.

The proposals must now garner political support as the state faces a massive budget deficit. Reparations advocates were quick to criticize the package’s exclusion of widespread compensation. Other critics said many of the proposals fall outside of the scope of reparations, and some say they would be too costly to implement.

A bill by Sen. Steven Bradford, a Los Angeles-area Democrat who was a task force member, would create an agency known as the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency to administer reparations programs and help Black families research their family lineage. Lawmakers have not yet released an estimate for how much this would cost.

California voters passed an initiative in 1996 to ban the consideration of race, color, sex and nationality in public employment, education and contracting decisions. Voters again decided to uphold that law in 2020.

One of the reparations proposals would allow the governor to approve exceptions to that law in order to address poverty and improve educational outcomes for African Americans and other groups.