SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The Slavery Reparations Movement reached a turning point Wednesday with the release of a comprehensive report outlining California’s role in continuing discrimination against African Americans, a major step towards educating the public and preparing the stage for a formal apology and case. of the Government for Financial Restitution.
The 500-page document sets out the damage suffered by the descendants of enslaved people even today, long after the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, through discriminatory laws and actions in all aspects of life, from housing and education to employment and the legal system.
Longtime advocate for reparations Justin Hansford, a law professor at Howard University and director of the Turgud Marshall Center for Civil Rights in Washington, D.C., called the moment exciting and monumental.
“It’s important to have official details about these stories coming from the state,” he said. “I know a lot of people say we don’t need to keep doing research, but the reality is that until it comes from a source that people think is objective, then it will be harder to convince everyone of some of the inequalities described. ”
The report comes at a time when school boards and states in the United States are banning books or restricting what can be taught in classrooms, with parents and lawmakers largely opposing sexuality, gender identity or race. State lawmakers have tried to ban schools from teaching the New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning Project 1619, which reformulates American history with enslaved people at heart.
California is heading in the opposite direction, said Adam Laats, a historian at Binghamton University, who called the document remarkable for his unwavering account, including details of how Los Angeles police and district attorneys were members or links to the Ku Klux Klan a century ago.
“Which children need to learn are the main actors in history for us as a nation has always been a real lightning rod,” he said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation to establish a two-year working group in 2020, making California the only state to move forward with research and a plan. Cities and universities have tackled the cause, with Chicago’s Evanston suburb of Illinois becoming the first city to provide reparations to black residents last year.
On Wednesday, Newsom issued a statement praising California for leading the country into a long-running debate on racial justice and fairness. State Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office supports the task force, said: “California was not a passive participant in perpetuating this damage.”
Such efforts are underway to deepen what Newsum called California’s dark history of violence, harassment, and neglect of Indians. The Truth and Healing Council report to be expected in 2025 may include recommendations for reparations. Many tribes throughout the country sought to acquire their ancestral land and jointly rule public land.
The African-American Reparations Working Group, which began meeting in June 2021, will release a detailed reparations plan next year. In March, the commission voted to limit reparations to descendants of African-Americans living in the United States in the 19th century, repealing advocates who wanted to extend compensation to all blacks in the United States.
“Four hundred years of discrimination have led to a huge and persistent wealth gap between blacks and white Americans,” said a report by the California Working Group on Research and Development of Reparations Proposals for African Americans.
“These effects of slavery continue to be embedded in American society today and have never been sufficiently removed. The governments of the United States and the state of California have never apologized to or compensated African Americans for this damage.
California is home to the fifth largest black country in the United States after Texas, Florida, Georgia and New York, the report said. Approximately 2.8 million black people live in California, although it is unclear how many are eligible for direct compensation.
African Americans make up less than 6 percent of California’s population, but they are overrepresented in prisons, youth detention centers, and prisons. About 28 percent of people imprisoned in California are black, and in 2019, 36 percent of juveniles placed in state juvenile detention centers were African American, according to the report.
Black Californians earn less and are more likely to be poor than white people. In 2018, black people earned an average of just under $ 54,000, compared to $ 87,000 for white Californians.
“We don’t own homes, and if you look at why there is such a huge mismatch between African Americans and white Americans and our ability to hold and maintain wealth, it’s because we don’t own homes,” said Assembly member Reggie Jones. Sawyer, member of the task force.
The main initial recommendations of the working group include reforms in the prison system. Prisoners should not be forced to work, and if they do, they should be paid a fair market wage. Prisoners must also have the right to vote, and people with criminal convictions must participate in jurors.
The group recommends setting up a state-subsidized mortgage program to ensure low rates for qualified African-American applicants, free health care, free training at California colleges and universities, and scholarships for African-American high school graduates to cover four years of bachelor’s degree.
The Commission also calls for a cabinet-level secretary to oversee the African-American Agency with branches of civic engagement, education, social services, cultural and legal affairs. This will help people research and document their 19th-century ancestry in order to qualify for financial restitution.
People who oppose the payment of reparations claim that California did not have plantations or laws from the Jim Crow era, as in the South.
But the interim report explains how California, while “free,” continues the damage that has been compounded for generations.
It notes that Missouri-born Basil Campbell was bought for $ 1,200 and was forced to move to Yolo County, California in 1854, leaving his wife and two sons. Campbell eventually paid the purchase price, married, and became a landowner. But when his sons demanded some of his property after his death, a California judge ruled that a marriage between two enslaved people was “not a marriage.”
More recently, it has been said that the home of Paul Austin and Tenis Tate-Austin is valued at a much lower price, as it is located in a predominantly black part of the prestigious Marin County, where African Americans were forced to live during World War II.
The report should offer other cities and states – and ultimately the federal government – a plan to seek reparations, members said. Next year, the working group will take on the difficult task of making an apology and creating a reparations plan to compensate and stop the damage.
The big question is: what will they do with it? The danger here is that everyone is reading it and nodding and waiting for the task force to initiate a response, “said Hansford, a law professor. “We need to have universities, local authorities, businesses and others working together to do their part to address … the recommendations proposed in the report.
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AP writers Cheyan Mumfrey of Phoenix, Arizona and Felicia Fonseca of Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed.
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