A California task force has voted to limit reparations to descendants of enslaved Black people.
On Tuesday, a California task force voted to limit reparations to the ancestors of Black families who were in the U.S. in the 19th century. According to task force member and civil rights attorney Lisa Holder, the group is working with economists to carve out a plan.
“We need to galvanize the base and that is black people,” she said. “We can’t go into this reparations proposal without having all African Americans in California behind us.”
The New York Post reports that this move comes after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed off on a bill that would allow “special consideration” to Black Americans who directly connected as relatives of enslaved Black people. The reparations may include help with purchasing homes, free tuition, the distribution of funding to start a business and other types of funding for organizations.
However, some Black Americans, including West and East-descending Africans, may be excluded from receiving compensation from the state. This would result in only a fraction of California’s 2.6 million Black residents would get compensation. The proposal also mentions that it has created a process for Black Californians to learn if they are a descendant of an enslaved Black person.
