CA To Consider Reparations For Slavery With New Task Force

CALIFORNIA — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the first state law in the nation Wednesday that will begin looking into reparations for descendants of enslaved people. A task force will be assembled to advise the state Legislature on who could be eligible for compensation.

AB 3121 was signed in following the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. For months, millions have marched the streets demanding an end to structural racism in the wake of George Floyd's death at the knee of a police officer on May 25.

Newsom and the law's author, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) said Wednesday the law is long overdue.

"Often times people will say 'well why can't we wait for the federal government to do its part?' And I think most folks have waited a while," Weber said Wednesday during a zoom meeting that gathered lawmakers, human rights advocates and even famed Los Angeles rapper Ice Cube.

"It's remarkable that we haven't established these frameworks and these criterias in the past but I'm very pleased nonetheless that we're finally here," Newsom said

Newsom also noted that the new law has received bipartisan support, "proving a paradigm that we hope will be resonant all across the United States."

The bill states that more than 4,000,000 Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States from 1619 to 1865.

California entered the Union as a "free state" in 1850 but slavery still existed up until 1865, when it was abolished by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The task force will be comprised of 9 members, appointed by Newsom and lawmakers and will identify and compile evidence of the lasting damage wrought by slavery that has continued to affect African Americans in 2020.

“California has come to terms with many of its issues, but it has yet to come to terms with its role in slavery,” Weber said during the live-streamed Zoom meeting. “We’re talking about really addressing the issues of justice and fairness in this country that we have to address.”

The gathered task force is expected to analyze the lasting affects of slavery as well as how it has benefitted private and public institutions which have led to inequities, not only in wealth but in education, employment, health and incarceration.

Specifically, the bill states that historic and continued discrimination has led to the following disparities:

• Nearly 1,000,000 black people incarcerated.
• An unemployment rate more than twice the current white unemployment rate.
• An average of less than one-sixteenth of the wealth of white families, a disparity that has worsened, not improved, over time.

"We can demonstrate what it is to talk about reparations and to try and repair people's lives," Weber said.