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Background

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FORMATION. Following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, triggering the largest protests in U.S. history calling for a racial reckoning, the California Legislature passed AB 3121 in September 2020 creating the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, with a Special Consideration for African Americans Who are Descendants of Persons Enslaved in the United States.

The Task Force’s objectives: (1) document the harm of slavery and the continuing impact of ongoing racial discrimination; (2) recommend appropriate ways to educate the California public of the task force’s findings; and (3) recommend appropriate remedies to the Legislature.

INTERIM REPORT. The Task Force convened in June 2021 and one year later fulfilled its first charge by publishing a sweeping, scholarly, nearly 500-page “Interim Report” drawing a through line from the harm of 246 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow and racial terror, and decades more of continuing discrimination, resulting in today’s outcomes, which are at once shocking but sadly, not surprising.

CALCULATING HARM. AB 3121 required that the Task Force determine economic methodologies for calculating the harm to eligible individual Californians. The Task Force hired four economists to develop data-based methodologies for calculating the harm in order to educate the public of its enormous economic extent and impact.

However, despite news media coverage reporting that the Task Force has recommended specific compensation of “$1.2M” or “billions,” etc., the Task Force has never recommended that the state pay any specific amount.

FINAL REPORT. On June 29, 2023, the Task Force presented to the Legislature its groundbreaking 1,100-page Final Report to consider, including its proposals, not just for individual compensation, but the 115-plus policy recommendations to stop the harm from continuing, and to determine a feasible approach, spanning years, to address harms that have been decades, if not centuries, in the making.

The final meeting of the Task Force attracted extensive media coverage, including this CNN article, an opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee, and a San Francisco Chronicle editorial board piece calling for reparations.

The monumental 1,100 page Final Report consolidates 27 hearing days and 48 hours of testimony from expert and lay witness statements, public comment, and an array of records and materials submitted to the task force. The report is organized as follows:

  1. Part I details the history of how, 158 years after the abolition of slavery, its badges and incidents remain embedded in the political, legal, health, financial, educational, cultural, environmental, social, and economic systems of California and the United States.
  2. Part II discusses the international framework for reparations as established by the United Nations, which requires compensation, restitution, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition.
  3. Part III offers recommendations as to how the State of California should apologize for the state’s perpetration of gross human rights violations against Africans who were enslaved and their descendants.
  4. Part IV sets forth methods for calculating some aspects of monetary reparations to address: (a) health disparities, (b) disproportionate African American mass incarceration and over-policing, (c) housing discrimination, (d) devaluation of African American businesses; (e) unjust property takings by eminent domain; and (f) labor discrimination.
  5. Part V delineates a broad set of more than 115 recommendations to the Legislature for critically needed law and policy reforms to address and redress the harms set forth in Part I and support the other recommendations in the Report.
  6. Part VI discusses the results of the Department of Justice’s survey regarding implementation of the California Racial Justice Act, which could offer a potentially powerful tool for rooting out and addressing bias in the criminal justice system, including charging decisions, convictions, and sentencing.
  7. Part VII includes a report commissioned by the Task Force intended to give the community voice in the conversation concerning reparations, including through listening sessions, collection of personal testimonies and oral histories, and a statewide survey.
  8. Part VIII sets forth the Task Force’s recommendation that the Legislature adopt a standard curriculum centered on the Task Force’s findings and recommendations, and that the Legislature fund the development and implementation of age-appropriate curricula across all grade levels.
  9. Part IX contains a compendium of state and federal laws and cases which demonstrate that from the birth of the nation forward, federal and state constitutional provisions, statutes, and court decisions have sanctioned, enabled, and institutionalized discrimination, on the part of government and private actors, against African Americans.

The Task Force calls upon the California Legislature to consider, balance, and make a long-standing commitment to implement these proposals now and in the years to come. The harm was long in the making, so the repairs need to be long in the implementation.

Each of the proposals for repair, including the policy recommendations for reforms in healthcare, education, housing, policing, etc. are important, so therefore, the Task Force has not recommended that, for example, individual compensation should be prioritized over any other remedy.