California State Capitol. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)
Reparations Task Force To Release First Report on Harms Made Against Black Californians
500 page report will documents wrongs made against African Americans from the pre-Civil War era to the present day
By Evan Symon, June 1, 2022 2:50 am
The California Reparations Task Force announced on Tuesday that a report will be released in the coming days that documents California’s history of harm against African Americans in the past, as well as helping prepare legislators in the coming years for a decision about what reparations, if any, slave descendent African Americans are to receive from the state.
According to Task Force Chair Kamilah Moore, while the report will acknowledge California’s status as a free state pre-Civil War, it will also cover how around 1,5000 enslaved African Americans lived in California until 1852. The 500 page report will also cover how the Ku Klux Klan was prevalent in California for many years, how many black families had been forced out of neighborhoods due to major civic projects, and how many areas of cities were segregated between races well until the 20th Century.
In addition, the report covers how these events are connected to recent statistics showing racial disparity. One figure found that despite just 6% of California identifying as African-American, 28% of all prison inmates are black, with 30% of all homeless people being black and 9% living below the poverty line being black as well.
While no plan of reparations was suggested, with that part due sometime next year, the task force is to recommend compensating those forced out of their homes due to urban renewal projects, as well as set up a state Office of African American or American Freedmen Affairs to help document and file possible claims. Other non-monetary suggestions, such as expansion of voter registration and more avenues to hold police accountable for racial incidents, will also be part of the report.
“I hope that this report is used not only as an educational tool, but an organizing tool for people not only in California but across the U.S. to educate their communities,” said Moore on Tuesday the day before the official report release. “The report also highlights contributions of the African American community and how they made the United States what it is despite ongoing oppression and degradation.”
The first draft report by the Task Force
The Task force, which has had a largely mixed reception since being signed into law in 2020, has largely split many Californians. Even reparations supporters have been split on how to proceed, with a narrow vote in March only accepting African Americans with direct slave lineage to get any possible reparations instead of all African Americans as many other supporters wanted and still insist on. Since then, reaction to the task force has only cooled further.
“The report is moving away from fairness it seems, which is what they had initially started all of this all with,” explained legal adviser Richard Weaver to the Globe on Tuesday. “The report comes out Wednesday, but right now a lot of what they are saying is just not affecting those descendants. The 1,500 who were enslaved in California in the 1850’s after California became a free state. Yeah, perfectly sound argument for reparations there, should not have happened. But they’re getting into the nitty gritty here with incidents and policies that, while unfortunate and should not have happened, happened past that descendants window the task force set up.”
“We have only gotten about half of their big report with this and already any lawyer with half a brain can start tearing this apart. This is only a study, but if it leads to a reparations vote or proposition, you can bet there will be a ton of lawsuits waiting in the wings here. We still need to see the overall plan they have of implementing this, since this is just the background data, but this will not be the all encompassing reparations that many wanted or feared it would be. That much is certain.”
Once fully released to the California Department of Justice next year, the Task Force’s report will be the first government-commissioned report on harms against African Americans released since the 1968 Kerner Commission report.
The draft report is due out on Wednesday.
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February 25, 2022 -
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I have no doubt 99% of this garbage is written by $500 an hour lawyers to keep other lawyers employed. Everything about the latest slavery and guns laws is unconstitutional. But this is what corrupt governments do: they ignore the big problems: jobs, roads, crime, water, electricity, and spend their efforts on expanding the regulatory state.
How about the harms that some blacks have inflicted on innocent Asians in California over the past few years? No doubt the California Reparations Task Force will not address those harms?
Good thing that those who are being targeted by this cynical ploy are wising up in great numbers to seeing that the leftist Democrat party only seeks to keep them enslaved to the party by buying votes, an endless cycle. How ironic!
What does the majority Latino population think about paying reparations to blacks?
Great point.
Remember, the STATE is NOT going to pay the reparations. TAXPAYERS will pay the bill.
I’m actually looking forward to the bill that says that ALL of California taxpayers owe reparations to blacks. Especially interesting will be the response of the 39.4% Hispanics, the 15.1% Asians and the other groups who must all help foot the reparations bill payable to the 6.5% of California who are considered black.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/CA/PST045221
It’s probably true that with only 6% of the CA population, blacks comprise 28% of black inmates. But that’s largely because blacks have a FAR higher tendency to commit violent crimes than the rest of Californians.
In my San Diego County (3.4 million people — larger than 22 states), we are 4.4% black.
In 2019, blacks committed 24% of the county murders, 24% of the county’s rapes, 39% of the robberies and 21% of the aggravated assaults. (SANDAG 2020 crime report)
But bad as this disparity is, this comparison understates the black crime frequency. The statistically correct way to look at the crime rate is NOT to compare black crime rate with the overall average, but rather the black crime rate vs. the average crime rate of everyone else.
Using that criteria, we find that — compared to the average for all the other races — with 4.4% of the San Diego County population — per capita:
* Blacks committed murders 6.9 TIMES more frequently than the rest of the county population.
* Blacks committed rapes 6.9 TIMES more frequently than everyone else.
* Blacks committed robberies 13.9 TIMES more frequently than everyone else.
* Blacks committed aggravated assaults 5.8 TIMES more frequently than everyone else.
As far as I can find, no San Diego media outlet — and CERTAINLY not the woke U-T — reports these disturbing facts. Certainly not when reporting on “racial disparities” in police actions involving blacks.
BTW: Who are the victims of this black crime wave? Overwhelmingly OTHER blacks. How does keeping these crime figures from the public help the black community?
Actually, as a Jew (well, half Jew), I have a reparations claim that goes much further back than the 17th century slavery of blacks. Thousands of years ago, black pharaohs enslaved “my people” to build the pyramids.
https://www.grunge.com/174779/the-secret-history-of-egypts-black-pharaohs/
ERGO: Blacks owe us Jews BILLIONS (maybe TRILLIONS!), thanks to the magic of compound interest on stolen wages — and the barbaric conditions. That traumatic experience by my forebearers forever scared us poor helpless Jews forever — just like today’s helpless blacks are scarred by slavery — forever.
Of course, my demand for reparations is equally as baseless as the blacks’ current reparations claims. That being said, I can’t wait for guilt-laden blacks to pour reparation payments into my low-profile offshore bank account.