It looks like Black Californians may be one step closer to receiving their 40 acres and a mule.
The Associated Press recently reported that economists estimated it could cost California more than $800 billion to compensate Black residents for years of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration and housing discrimination, economists have told a state panel considering reparations, the outlet wrote.
The state’s reparations task force will be discussing the findings and action steps toward making the reparation payments come to fruition.
“We’ve got to go in with an open mind and come up with some creative ways to deal with this,” said Assembly member Reggie Jones-Sawyer in a statement to AP.
The figure gargantuan figure is 2.5 times California’s $300 billion annual budget, and does not account for property unjustly taken by the government, or the devaluation of Black businesses, both trickle effects of the redlining tactics the state has been previously accused of.
The AP also pointed out that unfortunately, Black residents never the cash payments if the state’s legislature rejects the economists’ calculations. Despite this, the task force is reportedly forging ahead to give California lawmakers a cash amount as it nears a July 1 deadline to provide a recommendation on the state can make up for years of torment to Black communities.
Opposers say California shouldn’t be held responsible for reparations since it was never a slave state.
“No amount of money could ever ‘make right’ the evil of slavery, and it is insulting to suggest that it could,” said Bob Woodson, a Black conservative, in a statement to the AP. He calls the reparative measures “impractical, controversial and counterproductive.” He added: “Some of these communities only began coming apart after we lost sight of these values, which also hold the key to these communities’ restoration.”