/https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5f7521334fc79713474e281c/0x0.jpg?cropX1=0&cropX2=2999&cropY1=174&cropY2=1862&w=1200&resize=1200,675&ssl=1 "California Creates Taskforce To Consider Reparations For Slavery")
Topline
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed a law creating a taskforce to study the feasibility of reparations, making it the first state in the U.S. to move to seriously study the issue.
California State Assemblymember Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) introduced AB-3121.
Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Key Facts
AB-3121 establishes a nine-member task force to study how reparations could be awarded and who would be eligible for them in an effort to address the wrongs of slavery in the U.S.
The task force would give “special consideration for African Americans who are descendants of persons enslaved in the United States,” the law says.
Though California entered the Union as a free state in 1850, the task force will study issues like an 1852 fugitive slave law that said an “enslaved black person who had entered California when it was still a territory had no legal right to freedom even though the state constitution banned slavery,” according to the California Historical Society.
The task force will also look at discrimination against Black people after slavey, examining issues such as “sharecropping, convict leasing, Jim Crow laws, redlining, unequal education, and disproportionate treatment at the hands of the criminal justice system,” the law says.
Any state level reparations authorized under the law “are not to be considered a replacement for any reparations enacted at the federal level,” the law says.
Crucial Quote
“Hundreds of years of racial discrimination in the United States have left many African Americans still disadvantaged in terms of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, the racial wealth gap, and other indicators of economic and educational opportunity,” said Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, who introduced the bill, in a statement.
Chief Critics
The measure passed both houses of the California legislature is bipartisan support. There were 12 Republicans in the Assembly who voted against it and three in the Senate. Assemblyman Kevin Kiley’s office told CalMatters, “the federal level is a more appropriate place for this discussion to take place.” On a national level, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opposes the idea entirely. “We’ve had waves of immigrants as well who have come to the country and experienced dramatic discrimination of one kind or another,” he said. “So no, I don’t think reparations are a good idea,” he said last year.
Key Background
Since the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014, politicians have started taking the idea of reparations seriously. A bill to establish a commission to study the issue was introduced last year in the House of Representatives and Democrats hope Congress will vote on the legislation later this year, CNN reported. The city of Evanston, Illinois, which is outside Chicago, also created a first-in-the-nation program last year that uses taxes on legal marijuana sales to fund reparations (the city hopes to start making payments later this year or early next). And Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said in June he supports studying the feasibility of reparations, despite being hesitant about them for years.
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