US first reparations taskforce narrowly votes to limit payouts to direct descendants of slavery victims

Reparation proposal is due in July 2023 for the legislature to consider turning it into a law

California’s taskforce responsible for studying the issue of reparations for Black people voted on Tuesday to limit the state compensation to descendants of people enslaved in the US in the 19th century.

The members voted 5-4 rejecting the proposal to include all Black people, who regardless of lineage, suffer from systemic racism in housing, education and employment.

The first-in-the-nation taskforce was trying to study and develop a reparation proposal for African Americans to work out the eligibility criteria for restitution.

While the committee has so far not tabled any compensation plan, there is a broad agreement among the advocates for need of multifaceted remedies for related harms, such as slavery, Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration and redevelopment programmes resulting in displacement of Black communities.

Compensation could include free college tuition, assistance buying homes and launching businesses along with grants to churches and organisations.

In 2020, governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation to create the two-year reparations taskforce with the aim to study the institution of slavery and its harms and to educate the public about its findings.

The nine-member committee, not even a year into its process, has largely been dogged by the question of eligibility since its inaugural meeting in June.

“Please, please, please I beg us tonight, take the first step,” said reverend Amos Brown, the vice chair of the taskforce, as he urged the committee to make concrete recommendations.

“Are we going to act like we live in a country where there are no political realities, no laws," Reverend Brown was quoted as saying by Fox news affiliate KTVU. “Are we just going to go through an exercise and end up at the end of the day coming up with no measurable outcomes whatsoever?”

The committee’s members — nearly all of whom can trace their families back to enslaved ancestors — said that a compensation and restitution plan based on genealogy as opposed to race has the best chance of surviving a legal challenge.

The members were also of the opinion that the free Black who migrated to US in the 20th and 21st century did not share the trauma of people who were kidnapped and enslaved, reported CBS Sacramento.

But there were those on the taskforce who supported race based eligibility, arguing that it should include any Black person who has experienced discrimination and systemic racism since the founding of the nation.

Civil rights attorney and taskforce member Lisa Holder suggested directing economists working with the task force to calculate the compensation for California’s estimated 2.6 million Black residents as the committee continued to hear from the public.

“We need to galvanise the base and that is Black people,” she said. “We can’t go into this reparations proposal without having all African Americans in California behind us.”

California Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer said the taskforce also needs to stop ongoing harm and prevent future harm from racism as he voted against the limited eligibility.

He further slammed the panel for “bickering” over the money they don’t have yet and urged them to instead begin a discussion on closing a severe wealth gap. “We’re arguing over cash payments, which I firmly don’t believe are the be all and end all,” he said.

While reparations critics said that the state is not obligated to pay up as it did not practice slavery or enforce Jim Crow laws, which segregated Black people from white, the testimony provided to the panel has showed that California and the local government were complicit in stripping Black people of their wages and property, and preventing them from building wealth to pass down to their children.

The reparation proposal is due in July 2023 for the legislature to consider turning it into a law.

Additional reporting by agencies