The California governor signed the bill five years after forming a task force to examine the impact of racist policies on descendants of enslaved people.
Five years after California Gov. Gavin Newsom created a task force to study the legacy of enslavement in California, a state agency has been created in order to facilitate restitution for the descendants of those who were enslaved in the state, despite not approving cash payments for the wrongs visited upon their ancestors.
“I signed a bill two days ago with the Black Caucus as it relates to creating a new office to address these systemic issues,” he told the hosts.
Kaplan spotlights Assemblymember Isaac Bryan and his bill, Assembly Bill 7, which notably turns the argument from the Supreme Court’s most vocal conservative, Clarence Thomas, that policies (like college admissions but notably not immigration enforcement) should be colorblind, on its head.
As Kaplan noted, “It’s an exquisite irony that a left-leaning Black elected official is using Thomas’ reasoning, even in small part, to argue for reparations, something Thomas decidedly does not support.”
Another notable development is the reintroduction of a bill targeting the restoration of the land or payment of homeowners whose land was taken by eminent domain by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, which seems in part, inspired by the creation of the new agency.
As McKinnor pointed out in May, “existing programs aimed at promoting homeownership do not specifically address the unique historical injustices faced by the descendants of formerly enslaved people. Without targeted measures, the state cannot adequately address the wealth gap and housing disparities rooted in these injustices and discrimination.”
At the time, Newsom argued that without the existence of an agency to disperse funds, he could not create a Bureau for the Descendants of American Slavery, which is a callback to the Freedmen’s Bureau, which was shuttered after only seven years of existence during the truncated Reconstruction period.
The Freedman’s Bureau is most notable for its responsibility in coordinating Field Order 15, which was to offer Black Americans parcels of land taken from white Southerners as restitution for the Civil War and their enslavement. However, the election of America’s worst president, Andrew Jackson, heralded yet another broken promise America would leave unfulfilled to the people who were responsible for building American wealth with forced labor.
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Source: Black Enterprise
