Equity vs. Equality: California Reparations Commission Wants to Legalize Racial Discrimination

“With a ‘Reparations Management Council’ to operate independent of the government of San Francisco, what could possibly go wrong?” the Globe asked earlier this week.

San Francisco resident Richie Greenberg has identified that the San Francisco Reparations Plan “installs a neo-Apartheid system on a city of 45,000 Black/African-American residents being given super-prioritized services, funding and extraordinary privilege – out of total city population of 825,000. The result is Apartheid San Francisco, where 5% Black residents take the resources and economic earnings of the 95% non-Black residents.”

As the Globe reported in January, both the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee and State Reparations Task Force are expanding reparations beyond slavery. It’s become a grab and hustle for all grievances. But where does this end?

Buckle up and hold on tightly – they said the quiet parts aloud: “the racial wealth gap in the state of California.”

As the Globe reported in December, Reparations 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.”

Remember this: “Racial wealth gap.”

Another task force member Dr. Cheryl Grills said: “Racial terror leads to racial trauma … also known as race-based traumatic stress.”

Fox News now reports that the statewide California Reparations Task Force, created by legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, formally recommended that the state legislature repeal Proposition 209, a constitutional amendment that prohibits the government from discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, someone based on their race.

Proposition 209, a ban on affirmative action, 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 If passed, Prop. 16 would have repealed Proposition 209.

Imagine the coincidence that the statewide reparations committee is the result of legislation also authored by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), Assembly Bill 3121, passed in 2021.

So it now appears that the California Reparations Task Force has taken up the affirmative action mantle and will backdoor granting preferential treatment based on race via their final recommendations to the California Legislature.

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.

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.

As Fox reported:

“The [statewide reparations] task force highlights a study commissioned by the far-left Equal Justice Society, an organization of which a task force member is president, that concluded between $1 billion and $1.1 billion in contract dollars were lost annually by businesses owned by women and people of color due to Proposition 209. The task force’s report also argued admissions declined for Black applicants ‘at every campus.'”

“According to UCLA law professor Richard Sander, however, the number of Black graduates from the University of California had risen 70% above pre-Proposition 209 levels by 2017. That same year, he wrote, the number of STEM graduates rose from an annual average of around 200 before Proposition 209 to 510. The figure increased to 558 in 2018.”

“It is unclear how repealing a measure that bars discrimination or preferential treatment based on race would help combat racial discrimination,” Fox concluded. Indeed.

This topic isn’t going away, and the left isn’t giving up. A bill last year by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and 52 House Democrats sought reparations and a national apology for slavery. They are still pushing to set up a commission to “examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies,” the New York Post reported.

As the Globe reported in December, the state Reparations Task Force is already 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.

California has very serious problems that lawmakers seem disinterested in fixing:

• California is home to one-third of the nations’ welfare recipients and has the highest poverty;
• Our failing schools now rank 48th in the country;
• California lawmakers can’t build new homes or apartments for less than $800,000 each (luxury level costs);
• The governor and lawmakers can’t figure out what to do with several hundred thousand drug-addicted, mentally ill homeless vagrants living on city streets and taking over public parks;
• California lawmakers refuse to build additional reservoirs for water storage in a state in which drought conditions are historically normal, and now has a regular wildfire “season;”
• California lawmakers and governor mandated all electric vehicles within a few years, but can’t keep the power on during heat spells and winter storms;
• Lawmakers authorized more than $25 million worth of taxpayer-funded guaranteed income to some individuals in the state, but can’t really tell you why.

Reparations talk is a distraction from the failures of the governance of California. But distractions are the best failing politicians can come up with.