California’s Reparations Task Force looks beyond slavery, turns to state discrimination



Marcus D. Smith
Fri, December 16, 2022 

Looking beyond the abuses of enslavement, California’s Reparations Task Force at an Oakland meeting this week dug into racist state policies of the 20th Century as it worked to quantify harms committed against Black communities.

Dozens of people gathered at Oakland City Hall to contribute to the discussion, sharing concerns and seeking information about California’s first-in-the-nation effort to advance reparations.

The committee has already recommended that California provide financial reparations to descendants of enslaved people and Black Californians who can trace their ancestry in the state to the 19th Century. It’s expected to submit a final report to the Legislature next year, after which lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom could act on its findings.

Now it’s working on other questions, such as how to compensate people for unjust property takings by eminent domain, devaluation of Black businesses, housing discrimination and homelessness, over-policing and the disproportionate mass incarceration of Black people, and health harms.

“This conversation deserves a lot more, it’s the most important conversation that we’re going to have,” said task force member Monica Montgomery Steppe.

The task force is trying to determine a time frame to assess damages against Black Californians.

For unjust property takings, the task force suggested the state consider damages from 1920 to today. Committee members described how city governments razed several Black residential areas and replaced them with infrastructure, such as railroads and highways. That dynamic played out throughout the Bay Area, including in San Francisco’s Western Addition and in a once-thriving commercial strip in West Oakland.

When it comes to the devaluation of Black businesses, the task force proposed to trace damage as early as 1900, which could include a lineage requirement.

In dealing with housing discrimination and homelessness, the task force advised lawmakers to revisit the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 and Home Owner’s Loan Corporation in 1937, which effectively created redlining, the blueprint to keep Black American to specific neighborhood with less resources.

Between 1946 and 1960, the task force found through studies that less than 1% of Federal Housing Administration loans went to Black people living in Northern California.

Redlining forced Black Californians into under-resourced neighborhoods, contributing to health harms that African Americans continue to face today. The task force report determined Black residents are 40% more exposed to carbon dioxide and particulate matter from cars, trucks and buses than white California residents.

The report found that Black people are 75% more likely to live near hazardous waste facilities. The task force considers 1900 to present day as a damage time frame regarding health harms Black residents face.

Committee members suggest that mass incarceration and over-policing became heightened in 1970 due to the War on Drugs, an issue which continues to persist in the present day and economists agree.

To repair some of the harms inflicted, members of the task force suggested a plethora of recommendations such as ending the three-strikes sentencing, implementation of anti-bias policing, allocate funds to remedy harms of incarceration such as abolishing cash bail, among other suggestions.

The task force is continuing to analyze how compensation fits into the deliberation of reparations. It is still unclear on how reparations will be paid and measured to ensure the form of payment aligns with an estimate of damages.

Task force members voted to continue the conversation to its next pair of meetings scheduled for Jan. 27 and 28 in San Diego. The task force will plan to hold meetings in Sacramento in February 2023.