California created the nation's first state reparations task force. Now comes the hard part

Cash, land transfers, down payments to purchase homes and an overdue apology.

Those are just some of more than a dozen potential remedies for those affected by slavery and its legacy of discrimination that Black community activists have implored California's Reparations Task Force to consider at public meetings.

The variety of opinions underscores the nine-member panel's monumental challenge: crafting a historic reparations proposal that earns the support of Black Californians, who have pushed for justice for centuries, and a majority of California lawmakers, whose constituents might not fully understand the scope of the trauma and need for atonement.

"People have differences of opinion about the extent of harm that we've undergone, differences of opinion about the remedies that would in some way begin to remediate those harms and differences of opinion on who should be receiving any kind of reparations," said Cheryl Grills, a professor of psychology at Loyola Marymount University whom Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed to the task force. "Now, undergirding all of that, is the reality that we also live in a society that