SACRAMENTO — The leaders of California’s groundbreaking Reparations Task Force condemned the Supreme Court for striking down affirmative action Thursday, the same day the group released its final report calling on lawmakers to compensate Black Californians for the wrongs of slavery.
Task force member Cheryl Grills, a psychology professor at Loyola Marymount University, encouraged the Supreme Court to review the task force’s final 1,075-page report, which outlines how the legacy of enslavement continues to harm African American people. The task force released the full report at its last meeting Thursday, hours after the Supreme Court banned U.S. colleges and universities from considering race or ethnicity in admissions.
“This country is disingenuous,” Grills told reporters before the meeting. “First they used race to exclude us and now they’re refusing to use race to include us.”
The task force anticipated the court’s decision, said Kamilah Moore, a reparations scholar and attorney who chairs the task force. The task force purposefully avoided making reparations recommendations based on race, but instead embraced recommendations based on lineage, Moore said. The task force’s recommendations include limiting reparations to people who can directly trace their lineage to chattel slavery in the United States or whose ancestors immigrated before 1900, a distinction that caused significant tension over the course of the task force’s work.
At its final three-hour meeting, task force members heard many stories of the harms Black Americans have faced, including mass incarceration, hate crimes, poverty and homelessness.
The task force’s recommendations include what it describes as a rough, partial estimate of what it would cost California to compensate Black people for the legacy of slavery and discrimination. That estimate, which amounts to up to $1.2 million for some Black Californians, would be very difficult for lawmakers to approve. The recommendations do not call for every Black Californian to receive that much money, but rather lay out a formula to calculate reparations owed based on each year of California residency to compensate for harms from mass incarceration in Black communities, housing discrimination including redlining and unequal access to health care.
An economist for the reparations panel has said the plan could cost California more than $800 billion. That’s more than twice as much as the $310 billion state budget Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Wednesday.
Newsom approved the creation of the Reparations Task Force and has said he supports its work. But in an appearance on Fox News this month, he said he doesn’t necessarily support sending money to Black Californians.
“It doesn’t have to be in the frame of writing the check,” Newsom said. “Reparations come in many different forms.”
Other actions endorsed in the report include issuing a formal apology for slavery and providing free college admission to the descendents of enslaved people. The report also recommends granting voting rights to incarcerated Californians, something some lawmakers are pushing to implement through a proposed constitutional amendment that currently awaits a vote in the state Assembly. If two-thirds of lawmakers in both chambers of the Legislature approve the proposal, it would go to voters, who would decide whether to change the law. A majority of voters would need to approve the amendment for it to become law.
During public comment, many Black people praised the task force for its work and called for reparations. One person led the room in a chant: “What do we want? Reparations! When do we want it? Now!”
“Gavin Newsom’s gonna need our support later,” another man said, prompting some cheers from the crowd in the auditorium. “We need his support today.”
Outside the secretary of state’s building, where the final hearing was held, a few people gathered ahead of the proceedings holding signs that read “Reparations Now 2023.”
Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who wrote the state law that created the task force, noted that the United States has given reparations to other groups, including to Japanese Americans who were imprisoned during World War II. She said it’s time to do the same for African Americans across the country, even in states like California that did not have slavery but still are affected by its legacy.
“The policies and the laws of this nation affected every state,” she told reporters before the meeting. “Reparations are due whether you’re in Mississippi or you’re in California.”
Whether any of the recommendations in the report become law now becomes the decision of state lawmakers and Newsom.
Assembly Member Reggie Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, said he will work to convince his colleagues to “get as much done out of the recommendations that we’ve been given to day as possible.”
That will be an uphill battle, said Sen. Steven Bradford, D-Gardena (Los Angeles County), who noted that many of his fellow lawmakers are hesitant to approve payments to Black Californians.
“We know a lot of folks across the street don’t want to support reparations,” he said.
Reach Sophia Bollag: sophia.bollag@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @SophiaBollag
