The California Reparations Task Force voted to approve a plan to provide eligible Black residents with cash payments to atone for slavery and racism.
The reparations plan, which also includes an apology from the state, was approved during a vote by the nine-member committee on May 6.
According to The Associated Press, the plan was approved in Oakland over the weekend but will now be forwarded to the California Legislature. It will be up to the state’s lawmakers to determine if the reparations plan will be made into law.
The task force was convened by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020 to study how California historically harmed and discriminated against Black people and create a plane for atonement.
Related: ‘This Ain’t It’: San Francisco NAACP Creates Twitter Firestorm After Rejecting City’s Proposal of $5M Payments to City’s Black Residents, Calls for ‘More Practical’ Reparations Plan
Following a two-year investigation, the committee’s 500-page draft included recommendations that the state apologizes for California’s racist behaviors and policies against Black residents dating back to 1850, the year the state was established.
The task force also recommended the state compensate residents with cash for offenses such as the over-policing of Black communities, unequal access to health care, housing discrimination and environmental pollution.
The cash payment estimates range from $2,300 per resident for every year they lived in California to compensate for the over-policing of Black communities to $77,000 per person to compensate for Black-owned business devaluations and losses due to racist policies.
The task force estimated that each Black person living in the state lost approximately $115,260, or $2,352 per year between 1971 and 2020 for mass incarceration due to the over-policing of Black communities
Between 1933 and 1977, Black residents lost $3,366 per year or $148,099 per person due to the…
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