Calif. group votes to limit reparations to slave descendants
Associated PressCalifornia’s first-in-the-nation task force on reparations voted Tuesday to limit state compensation to the descendants of free and enslaved Black people who were in the U.S. in the 19th century, narrowly rejecting a proposal to include all Black people regardless of lineage. Civil rights attorney and task force member Lisa Holder proposed directing economists working with the task force to use California’s estimated 2.6 million Black residents to calculate compensation while they continue hearing from the public. “We can’t go into this reparations proposal without having all African Americans in California behind us.” But Kamilah Moore, a lawyer and chair of the task force, said expanding eligibility would create its own fissures and was beyond the purpose of the committee. The eligibility question has dogged the task force since its inaugural meeting in June, when viewers called in pleading with the nine-member group to devise targeted proposals and cash payments to make whole the descendants of enslaved people in the U.S. Chicago resident Arthur Ward called in to Tuesday’s virtual meeting, saying that he was a descendant of enslaved people and has family in California.