Senator Steven Bradford. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)
California Democrats’ Backdoor Reparations Scheme
‘The whole thing is irresponsible’
By Katy Grimes, April 17, 2024 7:45 am
California Democrats have 14 reparations-related bills introduced this session. They are the first bills to come following the California Reparations Task Force’s final list of recommendations which are an attempt to legalize racial discrimination. The latest is a bill to create a “genealogy office” to help determine if an individual is “eligible” for reparations.
The California Reparations Task Force has taken up the affirmative action mantle and will backdoor granting preferential treatment and cash payments based on race. And now they are pushing a new State Agency to further this cause.
Early on in the Reparations Task Force, Reparations task force members made clear they were seeking state payments for being black. Task force member Jovan Scott Lewis said: “Spoiler-alert: We don’t yet know the racial wealth gap in the state of California. This is the preliminary conversation to figure out what we know and what we don’t know.”
Another task force member Dr. Cheryl Grills said: “Racial terror leads to racial trauma … also known as race-based traumatic stress,” the Globe reported in December 2022.
Remember this: “Racial wealth gap. Racial terror. Racial trauma. Race-based traumatic stress,” – they are creating new categories of grievances.
The Task Force recommended a plan that would have cost the state up to $800 billion. This received such widespread backlash from across the political spectrum, that Task Force ridiculously accused media of focusing on the monetary part of the plan. Another figure of $1.2 million to be given to each black resident was also scrutinized, the Globe reported last week.
Because of vehement opposition to giving any kind of monetary compensation coming from both California residents and lawmakers alike, all cash reparations proposals were dropped. Instead, lawmakers focused on general improvement bills, which they claimed would come at no or little cost to the taxpayer.
Senate Bill 1403, authored by Senator Steven Bradford (D-Gardena), to create the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency, was introduced ostensibly to help facilitate any and all reparations bills passed by the Legislature and signed into law. We are told, if SB 1403 is passed, it would only create the agency, and not implement any of the bills stemming from the Task Force’s recommendations.
“This is a commonsense measure, something that’s long overdue for California and the nation,” said Senator Steven Bradford.
There is nothing common sense about the plan or proposed state agency.
The bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
This is how Democrats get dubious issues passed – it’s the camel’s nose under the tent. The Judiciary Committees, as well as Public Safety Committees, have become committees where good bills go to die, and where the most radical bills are lauded.
“This looks like the kind of bill Governor Newsom is going to want to veto,” Gail Heriot, Professor of Law at University of San Diego told the Globe Tuesday. “If California creates a bureaucracy to administer reparations, the pressure to implement the Task Force’s extravagant recommendations will get stronger and stronger—like a train rolling downhill. Even if those recommendations were a good idea (which they aren’t), California cannot come close to affording them. The whole thing is irresponsible.”
SB 1403 Senate Judiciary bill analysis reports:
In 2020, the Legislature passed, and the Governor signed, SB 3121 (Weber, Ch. 319, Stats. 2020), which established the first-in-the nation Task Force to study and develop reparations proposals for California’s role in accommodating and facilitating slavery, perpetuating the vestiges of enslavement, enforcing state-sanctioned discrimination, and permitting pervasive, systematic structures of discrimination against African Americans.
The bill [SB 1403] also establishes, within the Agency, a Genealogy Office and an Office of Legal Affairs to carry out certain tasks, including determining how to establish eligibility for programs which may be adopted to provide restitution specifically to the descendants of chattel enslaved persons and free Black persons living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century. The author has proposed amendments to the bill’s definition of “descendants,” which are set forth in Part 5 of this analysis.
Here is Part 5 of this analysis in which the definition of a descendant is changed:
The author proposes the following amendments to the bill’s definition of “descendants,” which will harmonize the definition with the one in SB 1331 (Bradford, 2024). Deletions are in strikethrough and additions are in bold/underline, and the changes are subject to any nonsubstantive changes the Office of Legislative Counsel may make.
Amendment
At page 2, in lines 12-14, modify as follows: (b) “Descendants” means African American descendants of a an African American chattel enslaved person in the United States or descendants of a free Black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century.
The newest definition of descendent is shameless and just plain embarrassing for California.
As the Globe reported last August, “reparations of any type are likely violations of Proposition 209, recently reinforced by a second statewide vote. Those omissions are additional illustrations that the Cal DOJ has been converted from a major law enforcement agency into a slimy major political enforcement agency, and can never be trusted.”
“Members of the Reparations Commission that controlled creation of the reparations report were far from diverse in ethnic or ideological makeup, illustrating the pre-ordained ‘loaded dice’ outcome, that would never be allowed on a jury in a California court.”
The final report of the California Reparations Task Force outlined a very long list of more than 100 recommendations on how descendants of slaves in California could receive some form of compensation. You can read the list here.
As the Globe reported in January 2023, both the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee and State Reparations Task Force are expanding reparations beyond slavery. It’s become a cash grab and hustle for all grievances. But where does this end?
And what laws will reparations run up against?
Proposition 209, a ban on affirmative action and race based preferences, was passed by California voters in 1996, and prohibits discrimination or preferential treatment by the state, public universities, public employment, or other public entities, and banned affirmative action policies.
In 2020, voters even reaffirmed the ban on affirmative action policies and practices by voting down Proposition 16, 57% to 42%. Prop. 16 qualified for the ballot when ACA 5, authored by then-Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), was passed by the California legislature in 2020. If passed, Prop. 16 would have repealed Proposition 209.
However, as we reported in January, both the San Francisco and state Reparations committees are seriously neglecting the state’s rich ethnic history, favoring race hustling instead. California was not
A local historian friend sent this:
“Before and during the Civil War militia companies were ethnic, generally social groups with others from the ‘old country’ such as German, Irish, and Italian companies all over northern California. This was not then considered segregation, it was a place to socialize with those of similar backgrounds. Sacramento had a black militia company in that era. Many from those units joined the California Volunteers and fought in the eastern battles.
In the [Sacramento] Land Park area (there is a monument marker in the park) was Camp Union Sutterville where seven regiments of infantry, two regiments of cavalry, and smaller specialized units were trained and participated primarily in two Union moves. One was to replace regular army troops in the west and they garrisoned posts all the way to Salt Lake City, founding an army base in that area that is still active. The other went to southern California and joined units raised in that area. Confederates had occupied what is now Arizona and New Mexico up to the California border. Camp Union troops were involved with pushing them back into Texas and when the war ended Sacramento troops were well established in that state.”
Every kid in California should know this. And every California voter should be embarrassed that our elected lawmakers are pursuing such a blatant scheme to enrich “descendants of a free Black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century.”
As the Globe reported, the state Reparations Task Force is pulling a bait-and-switch on Californians – with talk of a “racial wealth gap,” “racial terror,” “race-based traumatic stress,” and “guaranteed income for dependents of slaves.” But what they are really promoting is social justice reparations and nothing more than a redistribution of wealth.
Reparations talk is a distraction from the failures of the governance of California. But distractions are the best failing politicians can come up with.
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Has anyone thought about reparations for the 360,000 Americans who were killed to free the salves?
More farcical B.S. from Dem/Marxists such as Sen Steven Bradford & Co. And it never ends. How about at least being honest with the public about what you are really up to here? Is that too much to ask? But that’s like waiting for hell to freeze over, isn’t it. Because you CANNOT disclose what you’re up to. If you did the game would be over. Quit wasting our time and get back to work. California has a lot of problems, or have you not noticed that?
The Dem Party promotes reparations because they serve the Dem Party’s interests. Reparations are vote buying (less important in CA where 5% of residents are Black) and, more importantly, they promote racial division.
–“They are trying to wreck the country.” Tucker Carlson
When you look through that lens, and only when you look through that lens, everything the Dem Party and its cronies, collaborators, and comrades are doing makes sense.
Reparations also grow government and create more government employees aka forced contributors to the Dem Party.
Yup!
And there are other perks for the Dem/Marxists (they think) in raising this sort of nonsense. For one, they can lie and lie and lie and put their lies on repeat while never actually accomplishing the rot they propose. Just SAYING it is enough (they think) to buy the votes and create discord and division and all the rest of it.
ALL sensible people have had enough and are fed up with this crap. It’s enough with the time-wasting, enough with the dramatic theatrical presentations (which aren’t even that good and certainly not that entertaining), enough with all of it. Our God-given common sense and intuition tells us that the percentage of the electorate that still cleaves to this stuff is very small now. Everyone else has awakened. So knock it off Dem/Marxist politicians and if you are not willing to do the jobs you were put in office to do (well, maybe) and for which you are being handsomely paid, then resign.
In a recent interview, Congresswoman Crockett suggested that the federal government should waive taxes for Black people as a form of reparations, and then quickly recanted because (as she stated) “most Black people don’t pay taxes….”
The entire issue of giving reparations in a state running a huge budget deficit, and in a country driving off a fiscal cliff is why people view these irresponsible politicians with great disdain.
Preaching to the choir here, I know, but VOTE these idiots OUT!
(Thanks, Ms. Grimes for the reporting.)
What do you bet that Bradford’s name will be the first on the list of the reparations’ payees???
Democrat Senator Steven Bradford is the reparations stooge? Like Katy Grimes mentioned, reparations is just another distraction by the criminal Democrat mafia who are desperate to keep Blacks on their plantation?
It’s ironic that Blacks in office like Democrat Senator Steven Bradford are pushing reparations when it was Democrats who instituted slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws and the KKK? Maybe it’s time Democrat Senator Steven Bradford and other legislative Democrats pay for the sins of their Democrat predecessors?
It’s curious as to how Democrat Senator Steven Bradford, who is African-American, got elected in the 35th senatorial district when it is overwhelming Latino/Hispanic at almost 55%? Was he installed with Democrat voter fraud and rigged voting machines?
TJ, Yes, Yes, Yes, to ALL of your points.
If this passes, reparations will occur! This agency/department will push and oversee different types of programs with the help of newly hired employees, most with an agenda, including attorneys, with an unlimited budget. It’s difficult to fight against these woke State of California departments, especially once they’re established. They don’t go away, they only get bigger.
Katy, you done it again, THANKS!
Who is on the committee and their ethnic backgrounds, please.
It is understandable why an untaxed, $1.2 million cash payment is the goal given the fact that Mia Bonta just donated $1.25 million to the Black Panther Party museum/Huey Newton Foundation. They have to ‘transmogrify’ those campaign funds into personal funds somehow. I’m still waiting for either an California FPPC or Special Counsel investigation into the source of said $1.25 million and an of how this doesn’t violate a whole host of laws and campaign finance rules. I wonder if they claimed this donation on their taxes?
I was born and raised in the state of CA . I was forced to leave to provide day care for my children. I left CA at the age of 22. My family continued to live in CA . I feel that although I reside in another state, I experienced racism in the state of CA and should be included.