(Headline USA) California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom refused this week to endorse a state reparations plan to provide cash payments of up to $1.2 million for black residents.
The state’s reparations task force, which was created by state legislation signed by Newsom in 2020, formally approved its final recommendations to the California legislature, which will then decide whether or not to write them into law and send them to Newsom’s desk.
Among the recommendations are hefty cash payments to black residents and a formal apology from the state legislature “for the perpetration of gross human rights violations and genocide of Africans who were enslaved and their descendants.”
California was never a slave state.
Newsom claimed reparations “is about much more than cash payments,” when asked about the task force’s recommendations.
“This has been an important process, and we should continue to work as a nation to reconcile our original sin of slavery and understand how that history has shaped our country,” Newsom said in a statement.
He added that he wants to work to reconcile the “original sin of slavery” but stopped short of endorsing specific proposals.
“Many of the recommendations put forward by the Task Force are critical action items we’ve already been hard at work addressing: breaking down barriers to vote, bolstering resources to address hate, enacting sweeping law enforcement and justice reforms to build trust and safety, strengthening economic mobility — all while investing billions to root out disparities and improve equity in housing, education, healthcare, and well beyond,” he said.
Despite the fact that California never allowed slavery in its history, the leftist task force insisted that the state “denied African Americans their fundamental liberties and denied their humanity throughout the state’s history, from before the Civil War to the present.”
The task force went on to demand an apology for the “censure of the gravest barbarities carried out on behalf of the state by its representative officers, governing bodies, and the people,” highlighting several examples in a “non-exhaustive list.”
One of the examples on its list includes a comment from former President Ronald Reagan, who used the term “welfare queen.” This term was “racist coding to promote his philosophy preferring a limited government,” the task force claimed.
