The California Senate recently announced that it will consider a series of proposals dedicated to reparations for Black citizens.
Announced on Tuesday, the proposals were passed by the Senate and are now set to go through to the state Assembly. Part of a variety of bills, through the proposals, lawmakers would support the creation of a program dedicated to providing reparations for Black Californians whose families had their land taken away.
A new agency, known as the California Freedmen Affairs Agency, would also be created for Black families to be able to trace their ancestry to qualify for reparations.
Proposal SB 1331 was also passed to create the Fund for Reparations and Reparative Justice in the State Treasury. The fund will support any additional measures taken to address Black Californians who have been negatively impacted by the state’s actions.
However, widespread payments have not been included in the legislative laws as the state manages a budget deficit.
The proposals were authored by Southern California Senator Steven Bradford who emphasized the state’s “responsibility” to address its previous actions.
My historic reparations legislation has passed the Senate! #SB1403 is the foundation! It would create the Freedmen Affairs Agency tasked w/ administering all future #reparations. This legislation now goes to the Assembly for consideration. Video:https://t.co/G5q40u42wh#CALeg pic.twitter.com/yUGhfTdx67
— Senator Steven Bradford (@SenBradfordCA) May 22, 2024
“If you can inherit generational wealth, you can inherit generational debt,” said Bradford per AP News. “Reparations is a debt that’s owed to descendants of enslavement.”
The proposals were first introduced in late January of this year as part of a package. Along with the three bills recently passed by the Senate, the package included allowing exceptions to California’s banning of affirmative action and prison labor.
One proposal also advocated for the issuing of a formal apology by Gov. Gavin Newsom to address the state’s treatment of Black citizens.
The package was created by The California Legislative Black Caucus and was based on a report by the nation’s reparations task force.
Considered to be the first of its kind, the nine-person California Reparations Task Force studied the nation’s history and created a report submitted last June detailing each effect California had on the lives of Black citizens.
Segmented into ten chapters, the report included topics such as political disenfranchisement, racial terror, unequal education opportunities and housing segregation.
“The African American story in the United States is marked by repeated failed promises to right the wrongs of the past—both distant and recent—and failure to acknowledge and take responsibility for the structural racism that perpetuated these harms,” said the authors per the report. “This report, crafted by the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans pursuant to its mandate under Assembly Bill 3121 (2020), seeks to change this story with incontrovertible evidence of the harms requiring reparations and meaningful recommendations designed to redress them.”
