Reparations in California: What can lawmakers achieve?
How do you put a price on slavery’s continuing harm? That question is what California lawmakers will take up now that a historic report, released yesterday, has landed – with sweeping recommendations for financial, legislative, and administrative steps to take toward closing racial gaps in wealth, health, and opportunity.
State lawmakers and most Californians acknowledge a history of violence and racism in need of correction, in a state not generally linked with slavery. But there’s no consensus on how best to repair, and now lawmakers begin the complex work of administering justice that heals the past and recalibrates fairness moving forward.
Implementing the in its entirety would overhaul state government and the distribution of public resources. But in a demographically diverse state with 40 million people, 6.5% of them Black residents, the work
