The vexing questions on reparations
Santa Cruz County is diverse, with a growing Latino population. The Black population in the county, never robust, is only about 1% of the approximately 270,000 people, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
So the debate in state government about reparations for African Americans affected by slavery, segregation, health disparities, over-policing and financial and real estate discrimination may not seem a top priority to many.
But that could change, as a proposal for paying reparations to Black Californians is ruffling taxpayers' feathers and causing legislators to worry they face an unpalatable choice.
Earlier this month, after numerous hearings and testimonies, the California Reparations Task Force approved calculations that estimate as much as hundreds of millions of dollars owed to eligible Black residents. In San Francisco, where the Black population has been in steep decline due to the cost of living, some city politicians have proposed a reparations plan that includes $5 million cash payments and housing aid.
Although California's 1849 Constitution banned slavery, the committee claims the state government was complicit in the enslavement of Black people in southern states.
The task force says Black people are still suffering the lingering effects of slavery and recommends payments of $2,352 for each year slavery descendants lived in California during its “war on drugs” from 1971 to 2020. The war apparently ended when localities stopped enforcing drug laws during the pandemic.
Slavery descendants would also get $3,366 for each year they lived in the state between 1933 and 1977 when housing discrimination occurred, as well as $13,619 for each year they were a California resident to compensate for health disparities (America's Black communities experienced an excess of 1.6 million deaths compared with the white population during the past two decades, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, according to two new studies published this week). As many as two million Black Californians could be eligible, and the total cost could be as much as $1.2 million a person and $800 billion overall.
It's also a fact that many Black Californians have been discriminated against economically, unable to build generational wealth accrued through real estate and business loans. The median wealth of white households is about eight times that of Black households in the United States today.
So, it's a positive development that as a state and a society, we are again facing and discussing uncomfortable truths about how people of color have been treated throughout our state's history.
But while the move for reparations continues, with the state facing a $31.5 billion budget deficit, how could legislators carve out money for any payments? And, would the governor agree to sign legislation establishing financial remuneration? So far, he hasn't said, even though he created the task force.
And there remain even greater questions: What about discrimination against Latinos and Native Americans pushed off their land by settlers, among other injustices? How about Chinese Americans who suffered grievous discriminatory policies? What about Japanese Americans whose ancestors were sent to camps during World War II? All could bring forward their grievances and demand similar reparations.
The task force report, not surprisingly, also puts forward a number of progressive political aims, including repealing or amending Proposition 209, the 1996 initiative that forbids racial and ethnic bias in public accommodations. Furthermore, the task force calls for restoring voting rights to prison inmates, ending cash bail, repealing the state's three-strikes law and further raising the state's minimum wage.
Ultimately, legislators and the governor will have the final say on all this. When they do, our guess is no one will be totally pleased, not the Black community, who won't get what they feel they deserve, not politicians who have to face the potential wrath of voters, and not taxpayers, who wonder — where will all this end?