CA Task Force Offers Window Into Reparation Estimates, Calculations

LOS ANGELES, CA — Chris Lodgson stepped up to the mic after a long series of impassioned speakers and asked audience members to raise their hands if they were descendants of slaves. The vast majority of the near 100-person crowd threw their hands into the air.

"Say reparations," Lodgson prompted. The word boomed through the California Science Center, kids playing upstairs. To Lodgson and many other speakers, the need for reparations is obvious.

"We need financial repair as a people,” Lodgson said. “We need cash, we need money, we need wealth."

Lodgson, a community organizer with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, was one of dozens of people to address the California Reparations Task Force on Sept. 23 at a meeting in Los Angeles. In the next few years, California could become the first state in the country to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per person to descendants of people enslaved in the United States.

The task force had already ironed out some details, like who could be eligible for reparations. Last weekend’s meetings offered a window into potential dollar amounts in the hundreds of thousands per person that would be paid out in the form of cash payments or some other financial investments.

The task force will make its final recommendation to the state legislature in June 2023, which will offer legislators a roadmap to draw up a bill. The resultant legislation would have to make it through votes in the state senate and assembly before receiving the final stamp of approval from Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The task force voted in March to limit reparations to people who can prove their ancestors were enslaved in the U.S. or free Black people in the U.S. before the 19th century. But the topic of eligibility continued to be contentious at Friday's meeting, with multiple public commenters arguing for both lineage- and race-based eligibility.

The Money

The Task force will use historical data to determine the cost associated with a number of key harms affecting descendants of enslaved people.

Experts identified five examples of harms to be considered: unjust property takings; devaluation of Black businesses; health-related harms; mass incarceration and overpolicing; and housing discrimination and homelessness. The list is not exhaustive, but draws from available data, according to Kaycea Campbell, a professor of economics at Pierce College who is working with the task force. The estimates presented were not finalized, Campbell said.

Housing Discrimination

Experts proposed paying reparations to eligible residents living in California from 1933 to 1977, a time when the disparity between Black and white property values increased exponentially, according to Campbell. The experts calculated each qualifying person living in California for the entirety of that time period would receive $223,239 or $5,074 for each year of residency.

Mass Incarceration & Over-Policing

Experts started calculating quantitative loss related to mass incarceration and over-policing aims to account for projected wage loss, loss of freedom and the salary related to state labor. The reparations would focus particularly on the War on Drugs, a time when Black incarceration rates significantly outpaced other races, Campbell said. The estimated loss associated with disproportionate incarceration during the War on Drugs was $170,670 per person per year, according to Campbell.

It was not clear who would qualify for this payment.

Health Disparity

Black Americans on average are sicker and have died younger than white people, Campbell said. The life expectancy of a Black American is 7.6 years shorter than that of a white American. This figure was used alongside the value of statistical life to calculate a preliminary figure of $127,226 per year of shorter life expectancy.

Unjust Property Takings

To determine the quantity owed for unjust property takings, the experts would consider instances where state-sanctioned projects such as the building of a convention center, an airport or a major roadway displaced Black people. For example, the reparation could account for the difference between the resident's property value and the amount they were compensated, with adjustments for current property values.

Black Business

Devaluation of Black businesses would be estimated by considering the loss of profits and revenues associated with discrimination. This category could account for things like corporate wealth disparities and the effect of missing out on government contracts said William Spriggs, chief economist for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Eligibility

Lineage-based eligibility was determined in March but not without healthy discussion and a tense 5-4 vote, CalMatters reported. The topic was revisited multiple times during Friday's meeting. Many public commenters expressed their support for a lineage-based model while a few asked the task force to reconsider and expand eligibility.

Community surveying showed more public support for lineage-based eligibility, according to Michael Stoll, the project leader with the UCLA Bunche Center.

Eligibility is a nuanced question that people are emotional about, said Kristin Nimmers, Policy and Public Affairs Manager at California Calls. Nimmers helped lead community listening sessions for the task force.

"We heard a range of perspectives on eligibility. A lot of folks were uplifting the need to really repair the full Black community. There are harms that are indistinguishable between different communities, [and] there’s also nuances between Black immigrants," Nimmers said. "The slave trade was global, white supremacy is global.”

Eligibility will need to address the specific harms affecting direct descendents of enslaved people while still addressing the broader effects on Black people, Nimmers said. Nimmers worries the task force made their decision without enough community input. She’s urging the task force to consider options such as a tiered or phased approach to expand eligibility while still prioritizing direct descendent of slaves.

“I think it’s the focal point because there is a distinct harm to folks [who] can trace their lineage to American slaves, and American slavery is distinct in how it was, how long it lasted, how it impacted folks," Nimmers said. "People need to think more expansively and imaginatively. Reparations is owed to all Black people because all Black people are harmed by this... We are all suffering from systemic racism, and that, itself, definitely stems from slavery."

For Lodgson, the community organizer, lineage-based eligibility is obvious. Reparations are a debt owed to the families of enslaved people for unpaid labor, he said.

"Who else would it be for?" Lodgson said. "Our people worked for 256 years and didn't get payed nothing. So obviously we gotta have some money."

Delivery

While the parameters of reparations remain disputed, the method of payment is more unanimous: cash is preferred.

The task force survey found that Black Californians prefer cash reparation payments to non-cash reparations such as investments in education, property and healthcare.

Lodgson strongly believes cash payment is the best option.

"If we give people the power and the choice over their own lives financially, I think you'll see a lot of the other things that's going wrong in our community change. I think we'll build our own businesses and grow huge businesses... I think you'll see a transformation in the unhoused situation, I think you'll see a huge transformation in the education situation," Lodgson said. "The financial compensation has to be a high priority. And let us decide what we want to do with it."

Joyce Faye Allen Hamilton, a retired LA City College professor, said cash reparations are long overdue. Hamilton attended Friday’s meeting with her two sisters, Jenell Allen and Carolyn Allen, who are also retired teachers. Their parents fought for reparations and civil rights, Joyce Faye Allen Hamilton said.

“There’s been an unfair treatment with Black Americans, so I just want to see the playing field equalized, and I think reparation is a start,” she said. “ [Young people] need jobs, they need education, learning skills, communities, they need housing. All of this is needed for our young people.”

Background

The reparations task force was formed in 2020 and includes nine members: two selected by the state assembly, two by the state senate and the rest appointed by Newsom. The task force includes Senator Steven Bradford (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblymember Reginald Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles). The task force also includes: Cheryl Grills; Lisa Holder; Jovan Scott Lewis; Kamilah Moore, Donald Tamaki and Monica Montgomery Steppe.

Many public commenters and task force members expressed frustration with a bill proposed by Sawyer.

If passed, the bill would potentially extend the task force's work into 2024 and allow legislators to replace task force members. The bill passed the legislature and is awaiting Newsom’s signature.

Critics of the bill argue it would slow the reparations process and sideline task force members.

Sawyer contends the bill would not slow down the delivery of reparations.

The task force in June released a 500-page report offering a detailed history of discrimination faced by Black Americans tied to the enslavement of their ancestors.

Task force members on Friday called the report "historic."

Task force member Lisa Holder said she can remember being a young girl, wanting to write school reports about her history and struggling to find the resources. Even with a four-volume encyclopedia Britannica, she didn't have the words or the knowledge to amplify her story, she said.

"This is the volume of the encyclopedia that I always looked for as a child and was never able to find." Holder said as she held up the report, which she called a "monument of truth."