California’s political leaders recently signed a lengthy, well-written proclamation listing the many ways state government has supported and endorsed slavery, and upheld and perpetuated racial segregation and discrimination. They’re poised to memorialize that apology on a plaque in the Capitol.
That politicians are willing to tell the truth about California’s less than noble history is significant. California joins other states acknowledging an unjust past, including Florida, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Alabama, New Jersey and Iowa.
What’s also notable is Gov. Gavin Newsom signing into law several other measures that the California Legislative Black Caucus deemed reparations bills. Now people of color can get advanced notice when their grocery or drug stores close, better protections against hair discrimination at work or school, and better access to reading materials should they ever become incarcerated.
Don’t be surprised, though, if many of us with an extra dose of melanin aren’t flashing grateful grins or sighing with relief. These bills don’t come anywhere close to reversing or repairing the present day or historical effects of racism. Nor can an apology calm my disquiet over the fraught state of today’s politics — statewide or national — which, as a Black woman, I often see in racial terms.
In a broader sense, the newly signed reparations measures and apology have failed to quell conflicts roiling many of California’s reparations activists, its Black legislators and some of its civic-minded Black residents.
They’re on edge, fighting among themselves and presenting a fractured front to an outside world that often is hostile and only sometimes pays attention to their demands for justice. At its heart this is a crisis of trust, a struggle between opposing groups of reparations supporters and the people they helped elect, the Black caucus members.
It centers on three reparations bills that Newsom did not sign.
Dropping the ball on reparations
State Sen. Steven Bradford, one of the caucus members, authored three measures that initially the caucus did not embrace. Yet these contested bills, had they been approved, could have had more impact on — and strengthened the case for — reparations than most of the other bills that got Newsom’s imprimatur. They certainly could have made California’s foray into reparations mean more than just an apology.
Two of the bills never made it to the governor’s desk, though both had sufficient support to easily pass both houses, according to Bradford. One, Senate Bill 1403, would have established a California American Freedmen Affairs Agency to help families research and bring reparations cases. The other, SB 1331, would have established and seeded a reparations fund which could gather public and private donations.
The bills made it through committees and even through the suspense file, where numerous bills quietly die each year, before winning Senate approval. But the morning the Assembly was set to vote on them, without much warning, the Black caucus members pulled both bills off the floor.
A few lawmakers — some of them Republicans not known for championing civil rights causes — objected to the last-minute retraction.
State Sen. Steven Bradford, right, speaks during a Reparations Task Force Meeting at San Diego State on Jan. 28, 2023. Photo by Ariana Drehsler for CalMatters
Bradford said he was blindsided by the caucus.
“People across the nation were watching us, holding out hope, and we dropped the ball,” Bradford told me later. “At the end of the day, we disappointed millions of people.”
A third Bradford bill, SB 1050, did make it through both houses of the Legislature, only it was vetoed by Newsom. That bill would have helped restore ownership or compensated people when property or homes were taken for racist reasons. Newsom said he couldn’t approve it because there is no agency — read, no Freedmen’s agency — to administer it.
A deal on the table
Advocates were hopping mad at members of the Black caucus.
There were calls for opposition candidates and for campaigns against Black lawmakers up for reelection. A few people phoned into radio talk shows or spoke emotionally at public gatherings about feeling betrayed and angry, sometimes directing comments at the people they had voted or volunteered for.
“You all had a deal on the table; all you had to do was bring it down for a vote,” said Khansa Jones-Muhammad, who goes by Friday Jones and is the president of the National Assembly of American Slavery Descendants and a member of the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California.
There were allegations of doxxing and threats against lawmakers. Newsom chided such complainers in the press, saying they owed lawmakers an apology, but he was silent on his role in the controversy and his opinions of the bills.
At a recent State of Black California forum in Sacramento — normally a staid affair featuring demographic discussions and statistics — a public Q&A session devolved into a loud, cross examination of elected officials and nonprofit leaders.
Audience members wanted to know why Bradford’s two reparations bills were pulled and what is going to happen now to the $12 million Newsom put in the state budget for reparations next year. Many in the audience made it clear they want that money directed toward reparations, but they were surprised to learn that the Black caucus, in a letter to Newsom, recommended half the money go to the California Black Freedom Fund, a statewide outreach and empowerment nonprofit.
Left to right, Assemblymembers Mia Bonta, Kevin McCarty and Corey Jackson sit on stage during a heated Q&A at the “State of Black California” event at the California Museum in Sacramento on Sept. 14, 2024. Photo by Jungho Kim for CalMatters
The freedom fund is not a reparations organization and did not ask for the money, said Marc Philpart, its executive director, seeking to reassure the crowd. Nevertheless some voiced skepticism. Organizers threatened to end the meeting early if people didn’t behave with decorum.
Actions behind the scenes
It’s understandable that community members are unsure how much credence to give to what some leaders say. But they should be aiming equal portions of ire at Newsom, who has manipulated this situation from behind the scenes.
Not only did Newsom veto the reparations bill that would have created a way for people to regain land taken from them, he also tried amending away Bradford’s Freedmen’s bureau bill. His office proposed a change that would have gutted the bill and instead required two more years of studying the issue, rather than forming a bureau.
Bradford said he rejected Newsom’s amendment outright, without consulting the rest of the caucus, who later were angry with him for not consulting them about it.
On Thursday, a half dozen advocates held a press conference in Los Angeles, accusing Black caucus members of conspiring with Newsom and disrespecting the voters who put them in office. They urged the Legislature to override Newsom’s veto of the property reclamation bill.
Various members of the caucus gave varying reasons for holding back Bradford’s bills. Some said the bills weren’t ready and were lacking some details; others said the governor planned to veto them and potentially kill other reparations measures in the future. Still, others disagreed with the Freedmen bureau idea and believed nonprofits currently exist that can handle reparations services without needing government oversight.
Of course, getting the government involved can invite years of excess red tape, delay and inefficiency, but government involvement also carries a legal obligation of transparency that is valuable and much harder to impose on private entities using public dollars. There are already too many cases of private agencies misusing public money.
Fighting for crumbs
Newsom, on the other hand, has had too easy a time with reparations. He has gotten mostly accolades — and some blowback mostly from Fox News viewers unlikely to vote for him — for championing the state’s Reparations Task Force in 2020. But that was when the nation cared that a Minneapolis police officer murdered a Black man as onlookers recorded it by phone.
Since then Newsom has been nearly silent on the task force’s 200-plus recommendations. He created a distance likely to avoid harming his own ambitions and that of other Democratic candidates worried about how reparations would play to voters in an election year. Even in California, polls show majorities frowning on Black people getting paid for the enslavement and discrimination of their now deceased family members.
Newsom has signed only six of the 14 reparations bills the caucus put forward. Most of them were easy-to-digest measures that target present day racial discrimination, leaving untouched the ramifications of historic injustices, which still hold back generations of African Americans.
Yet when Newsom allocated only $12 million in reparations funding, he got credit for being the first governor to do so, even though no one believes that will be enough.
In fact, that money is so little compared to the state’s $300 billion budget, it’s like a crumb compared to a cake. It makes this controversy look petty, like Black activists and caucus members are fighting over a crumb that Newsom left them.
As long as they fight, Newsom stays out of the fray and doesn’t have to do much on reparations.