By Erika D. Smith
Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Friday, June 30. I’m Erika D. Smith and I’m a columnist for The Times reporting from Sacramento.
For the past two years, I’ve had the privilege of covering California’s reparations task force — the nine-member body charged with researching and recommending how Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature should go about compensating Black people for the lasting harms of slavery and racism.
I call it a “privilege” because, in following the task force’s meetings, I’ve learned more about my history as a Black woman than I ever did in school. I now have a much clearer understanding of who my ancestors were, and what they endured before and after being enslaved in Mississippi, Alabama and, most likely, Louisiana.
But this isn’t just my history or Black history. This is American history. And so, on Thursday, the task force released its final report to the public — its last official act and its last official meeting.
A behemoth that rivals the girth of an Oxford dictionary when printed and bound, the report lays out in unassailable detail the many ways California’s government has disrupted the advancement of Black people, from our attempts to build generational wealth to our efforts to get housing, a quality education and even freedom. You can read it here.
“We experienced savage inequality!” task force member Pastor Amos Brown preached in a speech that prompted an auditorium full of Black people, many of whom had traveled hundreds of miles to Sacramento for the meeting, to leap to their feet in applause.
But hooting and hollering and shouts of “I’m Black and I’m proud” aside, it was lost on no one that the task force released its final report on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action policies at colleges and universities.
In a pair of decisions, the six conservative justices — including Clarence Thomas, who benefited from affirmative action at Yale Law School — ruled that Harvard University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were illegally discriminating based on race and violating the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“We all heard this morning about the Supreme Court,” a rueful California Secretary of State Shirley Weber told a group of reporters. It was legislation she sponsored as a member of the Assembly that led to the task force’s creation. “We fought that battle here in California many, many times. And I still have a firm belief in affirmative action.”
Indeed, it was Weber who led the last charge to get voters to overturn Proposition 209, which prohibits public universities in California for considering race and gender in public education, hiring and contracting. Voters didn’t go for it — again.
Perhaps because of this experience, Weber has long maintained that reparations must be about harm, not about race. So while the task force’s work is often discussed as benefiting “Black people,” it’s really about helping people whose ancestors were enslaved.
This decision to prioritize some Black people over other Black people based on their lineage was a big point of contention during almost every task force meeting. Not every member agreed it was fair because that’s not how racism works. Indeed, I also have my reservations.
But legally, it’s the only way reparations can work — as reinforced by the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday.
As Weber put it: “At some point, African Americans have to get an opportunity, they must get justice. And so this,” she said of the task force’s final report, “talks about the harm that’s done and the responsibility to repair it. When you have done harm, you have a responsibility to correct it. And to make sure it never happens again.”
Whether the lawmakers and the governor agree is another matter. Over the next few months, bills will be drafted based on the recommendations in the task force’s final report. Already, the idea of reparations isn’t politically popular, so it will be an uphill battle.
Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena), one of only two lawmakers on the task force, warned as much on Thursday.
“I’m not delusional at all in thinking that this is going to be some slam dunk and that folks are gonna come on board and accept it widely,” he told The Times. “I think even many of our allies are going to have problems with some of the recommendations.”
More on the reparations task force:
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