A reparations proposal for African Americans passes the California Assembly and heads to the Senate.
What We Know:
- The California Assembly voted on a proposal to assemble a task force that will study and prepare recommendations on how to give African Americans reparations.
- With protests over systematic racism and police brutality still underway after the death of George Floyd, the bill passed by a 56-5 margin.
- The discriminatory practices of the past echo into the everyday lives of today’s Californians. Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, a black woman from San Diego that created the proposal, said the study “would reiterate California’s history of abetting slavery, even as it joined the union as a ‘free state’ in 1850”.
- The Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposal for African Americans would be made up of eight members, at least four of which would “represent major civil society and reparations organizations”.
- If the bill passes the Senate and is signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, the process would start no later than June 2021.
- The federal government has in the past given reparations, awarding $20,000 to each surviving victim of Japanese internment camps during World War II in 1988.
Democratic Assemblywoman Shirley Weber told CBS13, “We seem to recognize that justice requires that those who have been treated unjustly need the means to make themselves whole again”.
