Black California Residents Get Estimates for Reparation Payments

The first dollar estimate on California's plan for reparations has been announced, putting the figure at over a million dollars for some Black residents over a lifetime.

On Monday, the California Reparation Task Force released its report detailing the estimates and methodology it used to determine those amounts. The task force was established in 2020 by state lawmakers and Governor Gavin Newsom, who directed the force's nine members to study how California's history of slavery and racial discrimination has harmed Black residents and to recommend cash payments that would restore justice to them.

Although the calculations for each eligible resident vary depending on racial harms, which include over-policing, housing discriminations, and business devaluations, among other factors, as well as the length of time they've lived in California, estimates range from $2,300 to $77,000 per person.

"In California, what we are looking at is everything from Jim Crow racism and discrimination up through contemporary issues with political disenfranchisement, mass incarceration, ongoing threats against Black communities over policing," task force member Jovan Scott Lewis previously told Newsweek. "So, in a way what we're talking about is a series of harms that are identified as the lingering effects of slavery."

Theoretically, under the plan, a 71-year-old Black person who has lived in California for their whole life could receive more than $1.2 million in restitution, the San Francisco Chronicle estimates. Economists on the panel said reparations could cost the state, which has an annual budget of roughly $237 billion, more than $800 billion.

The documents released on Monday come ahead of Saturday's big vote when members will meet in Oakland to decide whether or not to adopt the draft report. Those recommendations will then be sent to the California Legislature, which will create a new bill that will be sent to Newsom to sign off on. A state bill is likely to face pushback from Republicans and moderate Democratic legislators, who are against cash payments.

If approved, the panel recommends that compensations begin being distributed in "substantial down payments," rather than waiting for a full loss calculation.

"Delay of reparations is in itself an injustice that causes more suffering and may ultimately deny justice, especially to the elderly among the harmed," the report states.

Newsweek reached out to Newsom via email for comment.

Determining the eligibility of Black residents has been tricky for the panel. Last year, the panel voted to limit reparations to residents who could trace lineage back to free or enslaved Black people who were in the United States during the 19th century.

Lewis told Newsweek that many of the genealogists who testified before the task force were "supportive" that establishing that lineage could be done with "little to no costs."

"There are existing services that can actually help people trace their records. There was a real-time example provided about how one person could find their ancestors in the census without much difficulty," he said. "So, we will work out what the appropriate measures are for determining lineage, we will make recommendations based upon what we think will help individuals establish their claims.