‘Five million is too little!’ California reparations taskforce told black residents EACH get $7.6m
California’s reparations board has been told to increase the amount awarded to each black resident from $5 million to $7.6 million, as one economist said the proposed $800 billion budget was not enough.
California’s nine-person reparations committee held a hearing in Sacramento on Wednesday, its 13th since its launch in June 2021.
The group has until July 1 to provide its full set of recommendations.
Wednesday’s hearing was the first since the San Francisco Board of Supervisors began debating 111 preliminary recommendations issued by its own reparations panel, the most headline-grabbing of which included $5 million per black person; guaranteed income of at least $97,000; $1 homes and personal debt forgiveness for qualified individuals.
In Sacramento, the state committee was urged not to be swayed by the San Francisco recommendations, which they considered insufficient.
The Rev. Tony Pierce gave an impassioned speech in Sacramento on Wednesday insisting that $5 million per black resident was not enough for repairs.
Another black resident agreed, arguing that $7.6 million per person would be more appropriate.
“I think $5 million in reparations is too little for the work that founding black Americans have done for this country and other countries as well,” said one speaker.
“I think $7.6 million is a number that can be used very wisely in our founding African American communities.”
Founding Black Americans are descendants of Black people who were enslaved in the US.
Another speaker, the Rev. Tony Pierce, agreed that $5 million was not enough, arguing that a large percentage would be lost in taxes.
‘Where is the money? Where’s the cash? Where is the check? he asked her, in an impassioned speech.
‘$5 million, San Francisco already made a move. $5 million is nothing, and I’ll tell you why.
He said that $5 million spread over 50 years would only add up to $100,000 a year, and then with taxes, “you’ll be lucky if you end up with $40,000 a year.”
‘Where is the money?’ she concluded raising her voice.
Kamilah Moore, a restorative justice expert and lawyer, who chairs the task force, said they would not comment on how much money should be budgeted for repairs.
The chair of the task force, Kamilah Moore, has stated that she plans to be as “radical as possible” when it comes to deciding who will receive reparations and how much.
California State Senator Steven Bradford (left) and Dr. Cheryl Grills (right) also appear on the task force
Task force members Lisa Holder (left) and Donald K. Tamaki (right)
Task force members Councilwoman Monica Montgomery Steppe (left) and Jovan Scott Lewis (right)
Reginald Jones Sawyer (left) and Remedial Task Force Vice Chairman Dr. Amos C. Brown
Some economists have estimated that the cost may be as high as $800 billion for decades of excessive policing, disproportionate incarceration, and housing discrimination.
The sum is more than 2.5 times California’s $300 billion annual budget and does not include a recommended $1 million per older black resident for health disparities that have shortened their average lifespan.
The figure also doesn’t include compensating people for property wrongfully taken by the government or devaluing black businesses, two other harms the task force says the state perpetuated.
Thomas Craemer, a professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut, told the panel Wednesday that they should not view the $800 billion figure as a limit, but rather focus on all aspects of discrimination, no matter the cost.
“All forms of discrimination must be considered in the reparations,” said Craemer, who is not participating in the deliberations.
“The task force should feel free to go beyond our loss estimates and determine what the correct amount would be.”
Thomas Craemer, a professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut, said he believed spending more than $800 billion could be justified.
Any repair plan would have to be approved by the California legislature and signed off by the governor.
Several people who made public comments Wednesday spoke of the urgent need to pay black Americans for everything that was taken from them.
“My family came from the South because they were running for their lives, they were afraid of being lynched, just to vote,” said Sacramento’s Charlton Curry, who discusses the repairs on his Big C Sports podcast.
Cash payments are required. Money talks.’
He noted that whites benefited from free land from the US government through the Homestead Act of 1862, and Japanese Americans imprisoned during World War II and Jewish Holocaust victims received reparations.
Critics attribute their opposition in part to the fact that California was never a slave state and say today’s taxpayers should not be liable for damages related to events that germinated hundreds of years ago.
Bob Woodson, a leading black conservative, calls the repairs impractical, controversial and counterproductive.
“No amount of money could ‘correct’ the evil of slavery, and it is insulting to suggest that it could,” he said in an email to The Associated Press.
He said that black communities began to heal through faith and family, after slavery.
“Some of these communities only started to fall apart after we lost sight of these values, which are also the key to the restoration of these communities,” he said.
Financial repair is only one part of the package being considered.
Other proposals include paying jailed inmates market value for their labor, establishing free wellness centers and planting more trees in black communities, banning cash bail, and adopting a K-12 black studies curriculum.
Reparation talks are deadlocked at the federal level.
Kamala Harris, the vice president, said Wednesday from Ghana that she and President Joe Biden support a reparations study, but the president has so far evaded calls from advocates to create a federal commission.
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