California Senate committee approves bill to create state agency to tackle reparations

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — A California Senate committee Tuesday approved a bill that would create a state agency to implement reparations programs.

Senate Bill 1403, brought by Senator Steven Bradford, a Gardena Democrat, would create the California American Freedman Affairs Agency. The agency would have genealogy and legal affairs offices that would work toward establishing eligibility for restitution programs for descendants of enslaved and free Black people who lived in the country before the 20^th century.  

With a green light from the Senate Judiciary Committee, the bill now heads to the Senate Governmental Organization Committee.

The agency is one of several recommendations offered in June 2023 by the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, a panel created by a 2020 law.

Kamilah Moore, who served as the task force’s chair, told the Senate’s Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that descendants of enslaved people continue to face inequalities today.

According to Moore, Black families have a median net worth that’s a fraction of white families. Black entrepreneurs are three times more likely to have a bank loan denied. Additionally, Black infants are more likely to die before reaching their first birthday than white infants.

“These statistics are not mere numbers,” Moore said.

The agency would be tasked with dismantling barriers and addressing deep-rooted disparities, Moore said.

She pointed to a poll that stated 59% of Californians oppose cash payments as reparations. However, that same poll shows 60% of people acknowledge “the deep and continuing human damage caused by centuries of slavery.”

No one opposed the bill in Tuesday’s committee hearing.

“This is a commonsense measure, something that’s long overdue for California and the nation,” Bradford said.

The task force said the agency should dedicate itself to implementing its recommendations. It also should have an oversight role, ensuring the state properly enacts any legislative acts based on task force recommendations.

The author of a bill analysis stated that Bradford’s legislation only creates the agency. It doesn’t enact any of the task force’s recommendations. The Legislature decides which recommendations to approve, sending those it views as constitutional to the agency.

Bradford’s bill defines who would benefit from any agency program. The person must be descended from an enslaved or free Black person living in the country before the 19^th century ended.

“As explained by the author’s office, this definition was chosen to ensure eligibility is tied to the acts for which the state wishes to atone,” the author of the bill analysis wrote. “Under this test, the race of the claimant would not be at issue; the sole question would be whether they are descended from the people whom the state subjected to the abuses for which it now seeks to make restitution.”

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