California Black reparations panel approves state apology, payments

California's reparations task force has voted to approve recommendations for how the US state may compensate and apologise to Black residents for generations of harm caused by discriminatory policies.

The nine-member committee, which first convened nearly two years ago, gave final approval at a meeting on Saturday in Oakland to a hefty list of proposals that will go to state lawmakers to consider for reparations legislation.

The panel's first vote approved a detailed account of historical discrimination against Black Californians in areas such as voting, housing, education, disproportionate policing and incarceration and others.

Other recommendations on the table ranged from the creation of a new agency to provide services to descendants of enslaved people to calculations on what the state owes them in compensation.

US Representative Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who is cosponsoring a bill in Congress to study restitution proposals for African Americans, at the meeting called on states and the federal government to pass reparations legislation.

"Reparations are not only morally justifiable, but they have the potential to address longstanding racial disparities and inequalities," Lee said.

"An apology and an admission of wrongdoing just by itself is not going to be satisfactory," said Chris Lodgson, an organiser with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, a reparations advocacy group.

An apology crafted by lawmakers must "include a censure of the gravest barbarities" carried out on behalf of the state, according to the draft recommendation approved by the task force.

Those would include a condemnation of former governor Peter Hardeman Burnett, the state's first elected governor and a white supremacist who encouraged laws to exclude Black people from California.

After California entered the union in 1850 as a "free" state, it did not enact any laws to guarantee freedom for all, the draft recommendation notes. On the contrary, the state Supreme Court enforced the federal Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed for the capture and return of runaway enslaved people, until for over a decade until emancipation.

"By participating in these horrors, California further perpetuated the harms African Americans faced, imbuing racial prejudice throughout society through segregation, public and private discrimination, and unequal disbursal of state and federal funding," the document says.

$800 billion in reparations

The task force approved a public apology acknowledging the state's responsibility for past wrongs and promising the state will not repeat them. It would be issued in the presence of people whose ancestors were enslaved.

Saturday's task force meeting marked a crucial moment in the long fight for local, state and federal governments to atone for discriminatory polices against African Americans.

California has previously apologised for placing Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II and for violence against and mistreatment of Native Americans.

"There's no way in the world that many of these recommendations are going to get through because of the inflationary impact," said Roy L. Brooks, a professor and reparations scholar at the University of San Diego School of Law.

Some estimates from economists have projected that the state could owe upwards of $800 billion, or more than 2.5 times its annual budget, in reparations to Black people.

Oakland city Councilmember Kevin Jenkins called the California task force's work "a powerful example" of what can happen when people work together.

"I am confident that through our collective efforts, we can make a significant drive in advancing reparations in our great state of California and ultimately the country," Jenkins said.