(Headline USA) A California task force voted to move forward with its reparations plan this week, agreeing to limit reparations to black families in the state whose ancestors were in the U.S. while slavery was still legal.
After hours of debate, the panel voted 5-4 in favor of this limitation. The group will now draft a proposal with recommendations for state officials. This proposal is expected to be released by July, 2023, when it will then go before the state legislature for a vote.
One of the task force members, Lisa Holder, argued the reparations plan doesn’t do enough for black Americans, since it is now limited to those who are direct descendants of enslaved people.
“We need to galvanize the base and that is black people,” she said, according to the New York Post. “We can’t go into this reparations proposal without having all African Americans in California behind us.”
Committee member Cheryl Grills agreed and claimed restricting reparations based on lineage would be “another win for white supremacy.”
One of the members who supported restricting the plan, however, argued that not going with a lineage-based approach would “aggrieve the victims of slavery.”
The task force has not yet decided how black Californians will prove their ancestry.
The reparations included in California’s plan could be used to buy homes, establish businesses, and pay for college, the task force said. Those eligible will receive cash payments as well as a formal apology.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a radical leftist Democrat, signed legislation creating the two-year reparations task force in 2020, making California the only state to move ahead with a study and plan, with a mission to study the institution of slavery and its harms and to educate the public about its findings. The task force members were appointed by the governor and the leaders of both legislative chambers.
