By Alec Schemmel, The National Desk —
California’s Reparations Task Force has reportedly beefed up the amount it is suggesting Black residents who are the descendants of slaves should be paid.
The state of California’s Reparations Task Force was created by state lawmakers in the wake of 2020’s social justice protests, “to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans.”
Last year, the nine-member task force proposed that payouts could total as much as $569 billion, or roughly $223,000 per eligible Black resident. Now, according to a report from Bloomberg News, the task force is reviewing a model that could put the sum total as high as $640 billion, or roughly $360,000 per eligible resident.
There are approximately 1.8 million Black Californians with ancestral lineage that could qualify them to receive the benefits, according to Bloomberg.
The task force told The National Desk (TND) it has yet to identify where the money for these reparations would originate.
But the task force met on Friday and Saturday, during which it pushed for a California American Freedmen Affairs Agency that could be established to help dole out reparations for the state.
We will have a regulation drafting “Freedmen Agency”to provide direct services where required otherwise oversight of peer Agency implementation of the Freedmen regulations.
Thank you Dr Cheryl Grills for the language of Agency. Your reasonability will not be forgotten. #CRTF pic.twitter.com/7eZrowvMUW— RaceMan100 (@RaceMan93019145) March 5, 2023
The proposed agency would reportedly include a genealogy branch to confirm who will be eligible for reparations, as well as a legal affairs branch to provide free law services for qualified individuals, an education branch to provide free college tuition, a labor branch that would “supervise” discrimination claims, and more, according to a task force summary of its policy proposals.
The agency’s summary also suggested measures for existing state agencies, such as increased funding for the Department of Justice’s enforcement of voting rights in California.
If California can admit its sins and change the narrative, then there is a way forward for states and cities across the nation,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who wrote the legislation that created California’s Reparations Task Force, said.
The task force has until July 1 to make final recommendations to the state legislature. The group plans to hold additional meetings later this month, as well as others ahead of the July deadline.
When reached for comment the task force told TND that “no final recommendations or financial reparations have been finalized or presented yet to the California Legislature.” The task force added that it will continue to analyze possibilities for where the funds could originate from and will share those recommendations with the state legislature in their final report.
Source: The National Desk
Featured image: People applaud chair Kamilah Moore during a reparations task force meeting at Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, Wednesday, April 13, 2022. California’s first-in-the-nation reparations task force met for the first time since its inaugural meeting nearly a year ago. The live meeting also comes mere weeks after the group voted to limit restitution to descendants of enslaved or free Black people in the U.S. before the 20th century. (AP Photo/Janie Har)
