A nine-member Reparations Task Force has estimated that Black Californians could receive more than $223,000 each in reparations for the enduring economic effects of racism and slavery, more than two years on from the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police.

California has become the first U.S. state to require its agencies to present a separate demographic category for descendants of enslaved people.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that the taskforce, which was formed by a law signed by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in 2020, has spent months traveling across the West coast state to learn about the effects of these policies.

Those eligible for the reparations, the taskforce said in a March 2022 report, would be descendants of enslaved African Americans or of a "free Black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century."

Only people who can prove that they fit under these categories will be eligible for the reparations. California has an estimated 2.6 million Black residents, around 2 million of whom are descendants of slaves.

The five areas identified by the team (housing discrimination, mass incarceration, unjust property seizures, devaluation of Black businesses and health care) are the factors it is taking into account when determining the reparations.

The Times reported that, just based on housing discrimination between 1933 and 1977, $569 billion in reparations would need to be paid to African Americans in California–amounting to $223,000 per person. The total amount of reparations suggested, the largest in history, will likely be much higher than that.

Between 1619 to 1865, slavery deprived more than 4 million Africans and their families of freedom, citizenship, cultural heritage and economic opportunity.

The final costing for the reparations will be released in 2023, and then it'll be up to legislators whether to act upon the recommendations and determine how they will be funded. The reparations will have to be approved by Newsom and other lawmakers.

The panel is now mulling over how it will recommend the reparations to be distributed, whether that's through education, health care or housing grants, or cash payments.

"We are looking at reparations on a scale that is the largest since Reconstruction," taskforce member and associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Jovan Scott Lewis, told The Times.

"That is why we must put forward a robust plan, with plenty of options," Lewis added.

The taskforce looks to narrow the economic gap between white and Black Californians. Nationally, Black households have a median wealth of $24,100, compared to white households' median wealth of $188,200, according to the Federal Reserve Board Survey of Consumer Finances.

In an interim report from June 2022, the taskforce outlined how Black Americans were forced to California during the Gold Rush era and that the state has "historically criminalized African Americans for the purposes of social control, and to maintain an economy based on exploited Black labor."

The taskforce said that government policies helped white Americans create wealth and acted as barriers to prevent Black Americans doing so, resulting in "an enormous" wealth gap between white and Black Americans in California today.

Newsweek has contacted some academics for comment on whether and, if so, how the reparations will be paid.

They going to pay for this with money printed from solar energy or wind energy?

Maybe the woke CA businesses won't mind ponying up the cash for this.

OTOH, what is the chance this is just a "tease" incentive to keep CA democrat minorities voting D in the hopes of this becoming a reality (which it won't) just like student debt 'relief'?

If it does go through, I have a great suggestion on who should foot this bill.
Registered Democrats.
Democrats were responsible for slavery, Jim Crowe laws, segregation, the KKK (yes, that was the Democrat party).
Democrat governors were blocking schools for integration.
Hell, even Al Gore's father filibustered the Civil Rights Act.

Lincoln was a Republican.
The Civil Rights Act passed with a higher percentage of Rep. votes than Dem votes. Republican states fought Democrat states to free slaves. I think there were a lot of deaths trying to win that war too. There were a lot of white Americans that fought and died to free slaves, do their offspring get anything? Hard times being a widow or a child with no father in those days.

Silicon Valley has a lot of lefties and a lot of $$.
Bill Gates and Buffet could step up an foot some of this bill. So could George Soros.

But they will tax Californians some driving distance fee or some other B.S. like that.
I'm white, but my grandparents were born in Lithuania and Poland.. but that won't matter.

Reparations for LBGTQ+&%#£ is coming next.

Also, maybe a flood of African Americans will move to CA, get their checks, then move back to some lower taxed state.

I guess 40 acres and a mule California style.

I can see that this cockamamy scheme is going to try to be justified with bad history.
LEFTY's are the best at bad history followed closely behind by Neoconservatives and Strausians.
So when I hear RIGHTY's In Name Only counter LEFTY bad history with RIGHTY's own bad history, everything will be even more fugged up and the feckless proles will be left scratching their heads as to who to believe.

When I hear stuff like "Democrats were responsible for slavery, Jim Crowe laws, segregation BLAH BLAH BLAH...", I know somebody has been groomed with some BAD history, as BAD as what crazy fanciful chit that LEFTY comes up with to justify their shameless plundering.

Good thing the Asians get nothing, I mean they played NO PART in building the west…..

[eyeroll]

So, Democrats were not slavers, or all those other things?

Please "enlighten" me.

That IS the history of the Dem party- nobody groomed me for anything.

Politicians suck, and that includes a long list of Republicans. If they aren't Constitutionalists, then I have little patience for them. They whole lot need to be term limited out.

I'm still waiting for my check from Egypt.

I heard all you have to do is wonder around for 40 years.

No offence, it's just that common faux history is something that we have all been brought up with since children.
Faux history is perpetuated by left and right ideologues to use as a weapon and make themselves feel superior to the other side. On study of actual history that took place, the propaganda proves many times to be a distortion of actual history, if not outright lies.

I don't know how you can say "Democrats were responsible for slavery", when slavery and indentured servitude was around well before there was such a thing as a Democrat Party in North America. Do you really believe there were no members of other political parties that were involved in slavery and the slave trade?

Do you really believe Southern Democrats were responsible for Jim Crowe laws and segregation when real history shows that so-called Jim Crowe laws and segregation laws called Black Laws or Black Codes were introduced first in the North, originally in Connecticut. Those laws offered some severe punishment too to those free blacks that stepped out of line too.

Even old Dishonest Abe Lincoln was 100% on board with support for the Black Codes in his home state of Illinois.

http://slavenorth.com  by historian Douglas Harper is a great resource for accurate research into slavery and race relations in the Northern states.

No argument that most politicians suck and you can probably count on one hand the number that are Constitutionalists with any sense of the original intent of the framers. The rest will just blow smoke up your azz and tell you the Constitution means whatever they tell you it means.

I mean... ya built the friggin' PYRAMIDS! And they're still standing!

…and the Roman Colosseum. Can they get a pizza or a calzone….no.

mama don't let your children grow up to be slaves

Did Willie write that?

I think so

Maybe Axel?

You've never been in an empty room before

What about the Japanese WWII internees?

---

They weren’t in an empty room either.

Asians don’t count as POC according to the left, they’re just like patriarchal whities. Cracker azz sesame crackers.