I was thankful, this week, to read my NBC News colleague Curtis Bunn’s report on the occasionally tense conversations surrounding California’s slavery reparations task force and its plans to compensate descendants of enslaved people.
On May 6, the task force voted to approve its recommendations for how the state ought to compensate and apologize to Black residents for historic discrimination they and their families have suffered. The proposal will now be given to state lawmakers to consider for potential legislation. Members of the task force determined California’s history of racist discrimination, and its past enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed for the capture and return of runaway enslaved people, made the state responsible for damages incurred by enslaved or free Black people who were in the country by the end of the 19th century.
Over the past couple years, I’ve written about the task force’s early deliberations and findings, and how the debate over whether and how California could provide reparations to Black people was bound to be a contentious one.
As Bunn reports, that’s been the case:
Public hearings on the issue of reparations have not gotten into fisticuffs, but they have been highlighted by Black people stepping to the podium or calling in by phone to express the depths of their emotions about how slavery has impacted them generations later, how important reparations are, and in what form they should come.
Later in the article, Cheryl Grills, a member of the task force, explains what’s driven some of the meeting’s most impassioned exchanges.
She says:
Author ‘Zora Neale Hurston said, in essence, that there’s nothing more painful than having an untold story buried deep inside of you,’ she added. ‘That’s the situation for Black folks. This assault has been going against people of African ancestry, where for hundreds of years, they’ve been in a world that profoundly devalues them. If you’ve gone through all…
Read the full article here