The group said an origin-based compensation and rehabilitation plan – as opposed to a race-based one, which would open up the possibility of compensation to a wider group – had the best survival change of a legal challenge. They also said that black immigrants who had chosen to immigrate to the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries did not share the trauma of people who had been abducted and enslaved. They also opened the eligibility for the release of blacks who immigrated to the country in the 19th century, due to possible difficulties in documenting the genealogy and the danger at the time of enslavement. The decision was approved by a vote of 5-4 on Tuesday afternoon after a day of lively debate. Others on the committee argued that compensation should include all blacks, regardless of origin, who suffer from systemic racism in housing, education and employment. They also said that it was difficult to prove their origin and that slaves often sent people to work on various plantations inside and outside the country. The two-year Remedial Working Group was formed in 2020, making California the only state to study and plan on the institution of slavery and its ills, and to educate the public about its findings. The committee has not spent a year in its two-year process and there is no compensation plan on the table. Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. Compensation could include free college, housing and start-up assistance, and grants to churches and community organizations, advocates say. However, the issue of eligibility has plagued the working group since its inaugural meeting in June, when viewers called on the nine-member group to come up with targeted proposals and cash payments to eradicate the descendants of enslaved people in the United States. The work of the committee has been informed by numerous testimonies. Arthur Ward, a Chicago resident, called at the virtual meeting on Tuesday, saying he was a descendant of enslaved people and had a family in California. He spoke in support of the US Alliance, but said that maintaining some independence was not the answer. “When it comes to some kind of justice, some kind of retaliation, we are supposed to take a step back and allow the Caribbean and Africans to be given priority,” Ward said. “Taking so long to decide something that should not even be an issue from the beginning is an insult.” The committee’s chairwoman, Camilla Moore, advocated for descriptive descent rather than race, saying she would have a better chance of surviving a legal dispute in a conservative U.S. Supreme Court. Shirley Weber, the California Secretary of State who drafted the law to set up the task force, had passionately advocated in January for offspring for forced labor, broken family ties and police terrorism. The daughter of shareholders who were forced to leave Arkansas overnight, recalled how the legacy of slavery had broken her family and limited their ability to dream of anything beyond survival. Opening reparations to modern black immigrants or even to the descendants of enslaved people from other countries would leave US descendants with mere pennies, he said. But members of the task force, which can almost all trace their families to enslaved ancestors, have struggled with a crucial question that is sure to shape compensation debates across the country. The committee had to make a decision so that economists could start the calculations. Critics say California has no obligation to pay because the state did not practice slavery and did not enforce Jim Crow’s laws that separated blacks from whites in the southern states. But the testimony given to the commission shows that California and local governments were complicit in taking away blacks’ salaries and property, preventing them from amassing wealth to pass on to their children. Their homes were demolished for reconstruction and they were forced to live in minority neighborhoods and could not get bank loans that would allow them to buy real estate. Today, blacks make up 5% of the state’s population, but are overrepresented in prisons, jails, and the homeless. And black homeowners continue to face discrimination in the form of home appraisals that are significantly lower than they would be if the home was in a white neighborhood or homeowners were white, according to testimonies. Nkechi Taifa, director of the Reparation Education Project, is among the longtime supporters who are excited that the discussion has become mainstream. But it is confused with the idea of limiting compensation to individuals who may show pedigree when the origin is not easy to document and enslaves people who move frequently between plantations in the United States, the Caribbean and South America. “I guess I tend to be more inclusive than exclusive,” he said, “and perhaps the fear of limitation is that there is not enough money to circulate.” A report is expected by June with a compensation proposal that is expected by July 2023 so that the Legislature can consider turning it into law.
