(JustPatriots.com)- Following a bill Dr. Shirley N. Weber, secretary of state for California, sponsored while serving in the State Assembly and Governor Gavin Newsom (D) signed in 2020, the state has debated reparations.
This manifested during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement’s fervor.
A committee was established to review restitution alternatives and provide recommendations to the legislature. Reparations may total $230,000 per beneficiary, but others say that won’t be enough. The state legislature will receive the committee’s final recommendations for consideration. Currently, California has a fiscal deficit of around $22.5 billion.
According to her, the goal of setting up this task committee was to instill a sense of equality and fairness in the discussion and provide California the chance to effectively set the national standard for reparations, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Weber said that by passing reparations for black slave descendants, the Golden State may “lead the country.” (Separately, San Francisco is considering making up to $5 million in reparations to its black inhabitants.)
“It’s about spreading the possibilities rather than stealing them from others. Ideally, the reparations would focus on altering our system to make it more equitable and fair. And then you have a long-term investment rather than simply something we do when it feels expedient to do so,” she said.
On September 9, 1850, California became a free state and joined the Union.
Concerns that California had not been a slave state and had not adopted Jim Crow laws as the South did were ignored by Weber.
She stated that several bigots, including the state’s first governor, had held elected office in the state and said that introducing workers for the gold rush had “enabled” slavery to flourish.
She pointed out that only those descended from American slaves were eligible, and she added that additional racial discrimination-related legacies contributed to current inequity.
That may not be enough, she said. “I don’t know whether $20,000 [sic] can withstand 400 years of tyranny.” She continued by saying that, even if black Americans had come to California to escape segregation in other areas of the country, $230,000 might not be sufficient to cover the sufferings of discrimination.
