Checking in on California’s Reparations Effort
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Guy Marzarate in for Mina Kim. Coming up on Forum, nearly two years after California's landmark report on reparations for Black residents came out, where does the effort stand? Reparations have faced headwinds from the start. On the same day the state released its findings and recommendations in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions,

a clear blow to race-conscious policymaking. We look at what progress has been made since the report's release and whether the political will of California lawmakers to act on reparations has changed. That's next, after this news.

This is Forum. I'm Guy Marzarati in for Mina Kim. As the nation today celebrates Juneteenth, when news of freedom reached enslaved people in Texas 160 years ago, we're checking in on a groundbreaking effort in California to make reparations for slavery and the harms committed by the state against black residents here.

It's been nearly two years since the state's reparations task force released its final report, and we'll talk today about the progress in implementing its recommendations and the politics around racial justice surrounding this effort and the push for reparations nationwide. Joining me are Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter, professor of sociology and African-American studies at UCLA and the author of Radical Reparations, Healing the Soul of a Nation. Dr. Hunter, thanks for joining us.

Peace and happy Juneteenth. Happy Juneteenth to you as well. And to Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, who represents the 55th Assembly District in Los Angeles and is the Vice Chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Incredibly happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Of course. Dr. Hunter, I'll start with you. You know, for people who maybe haven't followed this process, how did this reparations effort, this report come about in California?

Yeah, it's important that folks understand that the work of former and now late Congressman John Conyers, when he first introduced the bill that became known as H.R. 40 in 1989, really set the legislative foundation for a lot of what we're seeing locally and in the state like California, where there was a first in the nation reparations task force and commission.

In the case of California, part of what we see is Dr. Shirley Weber, when she was in the assembly, introducing the bill. And I'll leave it to my friend and colleague, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, to run more specifically over that with expertise.

But just to say that it was built as, in many ways, a carbon copy of H.R. 40, which at the time was a study bill that was set up to study the history of slavery and the consequences of it in its afterlife for systemic racism and to develop proposals and remedies from there. And so we see California picking up that mantle of being the first in the nation to do so. And that report came with a lot of history behind.

about the state. I think people learn in school that California came into the nation as a free state, but it turns out that the state's history with slavery is a bit more complicated than that.

Yeah, absolutely. So, for example, because the state became a state in 1850, and then we think of slavery as ending in 1865 legally, part of it goes, well, it was only 15 years, you know. And when we see the task force report, many people would be probably shocked or astonished to find out not only in 15 years was there the presence of slavery, but there's a way in which the state of California is complicit in the practice of slavery in the United States.

And the report that the task force released also outlined harms that continued well after slavery ended. What are some of the policies you can point to or that the report maybe highlighted that have and perhaps continue to impact black Californians into the 20th century and beyond?

Yeah, one of them is around the issue of education. So, for example, thanks to Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, who also is my representative in the California state government, is around the issue of education and the way in which especially post-Prop 209 be enacted education.

being enacted, we see a decrease and a decline in representation of Black students across the California higher education system. That was the ban on affirmative action here.

Absolutely. That then traveled east, as most things do out of California. And so part of what one of the remedies that Assemblymember Bryan has put forward is AB7, which is providing for higher education institutions, colleges and universities to make special considerations for descendants of enslaved Africans in America. That's one of the examples where it isn't really just about

cutting a check or people getting direct compensation, which is important, but also thinking about other institutions that create the California experience like education where there is systemic racism present that can be traced back to all sorts of segregation around education for Black kids and Black students. Yeah, and we're going to dive deeper into Assembly Bill 7-1.

later in this show. But Assemblymember, maybe I can just ask you for kind of a broad strokes, what's happened in the legislature since this task force wrote this report, they presented the report to the legislature? What's kind of happened since then in the last couple years?

Yeah, no, and thank you for the question. You know, I've been a part of this conversation since the very beginning. A lot of folks forget, but I was actually the expert witness who testified for Dr. Shirley Weber on the task force bill when she was going through the Judiciary Committee. I wasn't an elected official. I was a scholar at UCLA that she called in to give some context and help her fight for that original legislation. But since then, you know, I can tell you that all members of the Legislative Black Caucus, a repair focus has been

of our lives work it's it's what brings us to policy work it's it's what brings us to a lot of the things that we're doing- specific pieces of legislation that come from. Task force recommendations or that are deeply aligned with them that have tangible repair of benefits including. AB twenty nine oh six which was a bill I took millions of dollars that was being siphoned away- from foster youth who had their parents.

whose parents had passed away, they were due survivor benefits. Those benefits were being taken by the county. That money is now being directly given to those youth. We know that those youth are disproportionately descendants of folks who were enslaved and black youth. Another bill, AB 2716, is a bill that set to close down the Inglewood oil field. Remember, there's a whole chapter in the Reparations Task Force report on environmental harms.

And it calls for eliminating environmental hazards in descendant communities. The Inglewood oil field is the largest urban oil field in the country, and it's directly in the heart of South Los Angeles. There's been legislation passed to shut it down by 2030 and require that oil company to pay into a community fund.

about $20 million a year annually as it's shut down, and that that community fund can only be appropriated within the surrounding communities within two miles of the oil field. I can't think of any greater environmental reparations work that's ever happened in the country. Both of those pieces of legislation, and there are many others, come from ideas that are also inspired in direct collaboration with the work of the task force. And there was actually an official state apology issued too last year, is that right?

There's an official state apology. I think it's something like nearly two dozen of the recommendations were either on their pathway to becoming law while the task force report was being written and became law before the final report even came out.

Like some of those recommendations were laws before the report even came out. There's another dozen that have become laws since. There are hundreds of recommendations in that task force report. And I think members of the Black Caucus and even allies are going through recommendation by recommendation as we build the broader framework to justify other forms of direct compensation and recompense for the harms that were done to

to descendants of enslaved people across the country, but specifically California's role in it. And what's the picture kind of inside the Capitol? Have you found it difficult to raise support or even awareness for this issue? I think anytime you're fighting a fight for marginalized people, you know that you need allies to come to the table. We're seeing that

in the undocumented community right now that's under terror and under siege by federal enforcement. No group that's been historically boxed out of opportunity in this country has ever been strong enough to win their liberation single-handedly. And I think that's the case in this work too. We've got a

a very strong and committed legislative black caucus of 12 members, but it takes 41 votes to get something out of the assembly and 21 votes to get something out of the Senate. So we have to build meaningful cross-allied relationships. But I do know that folks recognize or are growing in the recognition that harm has been done and that harm requires specific and direct repair.

And I know, you know, there's been a lot of, I guess, misunderstanding, maybe debate about the role here of cash reparations in this process. For either of you, like, how have you kind of seen that play out, both what the task force actually laid out and then maybe, you know, some of the conversation that ensued about to what extent the Legislative Black Caucus is going to focus on cash reparations versus many of the policies that you just laid out, Assemblymember?

Well, I'll speak from the caucus perspective. One, I think it's important to recognize that there's never been any legal clarity on whether lineage-based resource allocation or prioritization is constitutional given Prop 209. We believe it is. We've got many scholars and lawyers and constitutional litigators who believe that it is as well. It's part of why we're putting legislation like AB7 and other pieces of legislation to

to really push that line and affirm that in the same way that undocumented status has not been treated as a proxy for race

on its face as well and so we've got to do that necessary work as well and then we've got to grapple with the fact that the task force did not specifically determine lineage on its own did not develop a methodology or a genealogical framework and so that has to be created at a verifiable state level the task force also didn't suggest a specific

compensation you know values are metrics it only- allocated or calculated the in quantified the harm that had been done.

as a result of California policy. So I guess a simple framing of that would be like, OK, repair the harm that has been done into today's value. But I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Yeah, I'll read just directly from the report. It said, quote, even limited to the relatively few categories of harms that the task force found to be calculable, the immense nature of the loss is significant. This loss must be compensated with monetary payments to those who suffered the loss. How have you seen this conversation play out, Dr. Hunter?

Yeah. Unfortunately, there's a steady diet of misinformation that has folks afraid of Black people receiving what they've earned. I often like to reframe the conversation from just deserving and owing around reparations to earned.

For example, when any person gets a check, when it gets deposited or comes as a live check, it says earnings. And so when we're thinking about what Dr. Martin Luther King said about a check that has been due, we're talking about people earning things. So very importantly, I think it's important for all listeners and folks educating themselves around reparations is that it is a monetary sum that has already been earned and been being waited for very patiently.

At the same time, what I also think is when I hear resistance to it, whether it be internally among black people or in other groups that are not black, what I hear is fear. And my mother always said that fear is false evidence appearing real. When in our nation's history have black people just been given a check?

So when all of these fears emerge, it's not based on prior information or prior experience. It's based on a steady diet that has, you believe, dysfunction and pathology. And lastly, I'll say when you're in a car accident and you receive a settlement, that happens a lot in this state of California. People do not think... Sorry to cut you off. We are heading into a break. We're going to continue this conversation about the effort for reparations in California. Stay with us.

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Guy Marzarati in for Mina Kim, and we're talking about the pursuit of reparations for Black Californians nearly two years after the release of a first-in-the-nation report from a state reparations task force. We're with Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, represents the 55th Assembly District in Los Angeles and is Vice Chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, and Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter, Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at

at UCLA. And we want to hear from you. What questions do you have about California's plan for reparations for Black residents? What kind of reparations would you like to see? Or what are your thoughts of the proposals that we've heard so far from Assemblymember Bryan? And do you have concerns about reparations in this effort? We want to hear your thoughts. Email your comments and questions to forum at kqed.org. You can find us on social media channels at kqedforum.

or give us a call now, 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. And Dr. Hunter, I'm sorry I had to cut you off as we headed into a break. I want to give you a chance to let you finish your thought.

Oh, yeah, no problem. Just on the direct compensation point and where I see ideas of pathology and dysfunction come up is when folks are in a car accident, which happens a lot in California, when you receive your settlement, there's no discussion about how you're going to spend that settlement because you've earned it. It is some harm that

came upon you, whether or not you decide after that settlement to take that money and flush it down the toilet, it's your business. And so we have to be very mindful and have guardrails around how far we allow the conversation to go when it starts to get into evaluations of what Black people will do with the money, which ends with the last point being it's important for people to also think about direct monetary compensation and reparations generally as stimulus that has real consequences that are positive for the entirety of the American economy.

Assemblymember, I want to ask about some of the reparation-related bills that have been introduced this year. The Legislative Black Caucus put out a road to repair bill package. Can you kind of talk about what's the goal with these bills this year and how you're balancing, I guess, ambition with what you think could actually get signed into law in September?

Yeah, you know, it's important to recognize that many folks would like to cause fractures and divisions in the Black community because we have been a historically resilient and tight-knit and strong community.

not just voter block in this country, but catalyst for any kind of mass mobilization towards justice. And so we've definitely seen something like I've never seen in my life when it comes to this issue, folks trying to pit folks against each other around the idea of direct compensation. This was never going to be easy.

the reason I it's been put forward in the reason we continue to do this work is because it is hard- the legislation that's been suggested this year. It gives the pathway to establishing lineage based harm prioritization- and or resource allocation.

in state law for the first time. There's never been a piece of legislation anywhere in this country at the state level that defines a group of descendants of enslaved people, chattel-y enslaved people in this country, by their harm. And so that's something that's really important that we're working on this year. And there's a number of ways we're trying to do that, both from a structural setting up a bureau conversation to legislation that

starts to direct or prioritize those resources like AB7 that would allow universities to prioritize descendants of slavery in the college application process, or AB57 by McKenna that would add descendants to an existing home loan program in California. By name, all of these efforts, I think, are designed to give us a stronger legal footing to begin the righteous conversations of

of even greater tangible resources. Yeah, I want to get into kind of the legal issues that I think you all are working and navigating with. But on the politics, I mean, how do you see how have the politics kind of evolved in the legislature? I noticed that when you announced these bills this year, it was called the road to repair package. It didn't necessarily come out as reparations or it wasn't branded as that. What should we make of that?

As I said at the beginning, colloquially, I think when folks hear the terms reparations, they think of cash payments, which is an important and necessary part of this. But that –

sentiment is then used to draw wedges and division within the community. And there is no scenario in which Black legislators are not going to continue to drive the conversation that we started when Dr. Weber was chair of the Legislative Black Caucus. And so we've decided to go with the road to repair because we know reparative justice is

And harm-based repair work is rooted in reparations and ultimately will lead to the things that everyday folks hear in those terms, but allowing ourselves the broader framework to navigate as we build the structures necessary to reach the outcomes that we deserve.

We have some discussion about this on our Discord channel. Steve writes,

Steve asks, might this be a way to sidestep federal anti-woke and anti-DEI laws? And Professor Hunter, I'll put this to you. It was a wild split screen moment back in 2023, the day this task force report came out, the Supreme Court striking down affirmative action in higher education. As you mentioned, California has its own ban on affirmative action. So to Steve's point, like

How have these limits and kind of the backlash that we've seen to race conscious policymaking affected this work around reparations? Yeah, absolutely. Great question. Thank you, Steve, for your question and for listening in today. First thing on reparations.

The kind of idea of how do you go about it? One of the things that happens in that Harvard affirmative action case is the concurring opinion provided by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He writes that were it designated for freed men or formerly enslaved people, it would have been a race neutral case.

And so part of what's happening in the atmosphere is to test that theory out, you know, because one thing that we haven't really seen on an issue like reparations or reparative justice in general is, uh, the judiciary or the judicial branch being involved directly. And so there's a lot of fear about what they're going to accept or not accept, but they haven't yet been made to come into the waters and to actually see if we can, uh,

have it survive strict scrutiny, as they say in the law. At the same time, I also think it's important for folks to know that what has come before the Supreme Court thus far has not always been federal legislation or debates or arguments about federal legislation, but instead about individual agencies, corporations, or institutions enacting some kind of policy in order to achieve some notion of inclusion or equity and/or diversity.

So also, we need to know that when we're hearing about the Supreme Court, we're not always hearing them striking down federal law because we still have not seen federal law do this work. So you talk about Justice Thomas floating this idea. Well, if admissions were based in someone being a descendant of an enslaved person, that would be different than race based admissions and kind of testing that out. Assembly member, you are testing this idea out. Currently, you wrote Assembly Bill 7. Tell us a little bit more about that.

That is exactly the thinking. I agree for the first time in my life with Justice Clarence Thomas that, you know, a harm based approach on its face value is race neutral. And to the question that was submitted to us, that's that kind of race neutral language is how we've been crafting policy for decades.

whether it's based on your geography and your zip code or terms like disadvantaged or most impacted or overrepresented or underrepresented, to try to get around these kind of race-based limitations. It's kind of sad, not kind of sad, it's tremendously sad that we can't target policy interventions to groups of people that we know policy advocates

harms were directed towards. But that's a much longer conversation I'm happy to come back on KQED and have with you all. But I think AB7 is a direct response to the words of the Supreme Court and to our understanding of Proposition 209. The words black, there's no race,

in AB7 at all. It's a specific harm-based intervention for a group of people who were previously excluded or harmed by our institutions of higher learning. It's also important to note that while our bill is a piece of California legislation, it could impact

students across the country who applied to California universities. And we should say ancestry has been used in admissions for a long time. It's called legacy admissions. It's just usually legacies of privilege. Right. So how would AB7 work? Like take us through, you know, if this gets through the legislature, is signed, how...

How would this process play out of students, applicants to the UCs and the CSUs, you know, apply and improve their lineage?

I think if AB7 is signed and written into law, I think individual campuses and the university system as a whole, both the regents and the board of governors of the CSU, kind of have the autonomy to decide for themselves what a lineage-based kind of process would be for their applications. We weren't overly prescriptive at the state level. I think the universities know better than us how their admission processes work and how they could tweak it to

to be in compliance with this additional flexibility that the state has provided. I also expect, quite frankly, to be sued kind of immediately as soon as it's signed into law because the architects of the affirmative action ban at the federal level have already put

put their focus on AB7 and told us that they will sue right away. And so I think while the university is developing its structures, we will likely be fighting a battle in court should this become law. And I think that's a necessary battle in court in the same way Brown versus Board of Education was incredibly necessary and so many other

foundational Supreme Court cases have led to the advancements of our understanding of what justice looks like. And so we're ready for all of those fights. Yeah. Casey on Discord writes, on AB7, what are the potential court challenges? Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard seems like it would preclude special treatment. The whole idea behind affirmative action was initially held up in court based on some of the same ideas that justify reparations.

My understanding is that more recent decisions have basically precluded consideration of race at all, whether or not it's legitimately repairing past harms. And maybe, Assemblymember, I'll have you respond to some of the criticisms I've heard in hearings on the bill that it's basically using ancestry, the fact that someone is a descendant of an enslaved person, as a proxy for race. How would you respond to that?

Yeah, you know, I'm sorry that our socially constructed ideas of what race is and lineage to direct harm don't fit neatly, right? In fact, we have Black people walking today who are descendants of Holocaust survivors. We have, you know, many, many different folks who trace their lineage and history back to harms of the world. We have descendants of

Japanese internment camps who may be white passing or white presenting to other folks. Direct lineage to enslavement being seen as a proxy for our modern day conceptualization of what it means to be black in this country, I don't think is a perfect overlap, which is why this bill is in fact race neutral. It also

is recognizing that the Black diaspora is more than folks who have been impacted by the legacy of slavery. We have Black immigrants in this country and descendants

of true black migration that were never descendants of enslaved people. I would think of Barack Obama and some others kind of immediately when you think of that lens. And so it is not a nice and neat overlap or proxy for our racial categorizations, which is why we think it's important. And it's important to zero in this kind of a policy intervention on a specific group of people, a specific group of Americans who have been harmed by specific actions taken by Americans.

And Dr. Hunter, I know you've been working with the assembly member on AB7 and involving some of your students. What's that experience been like?

Yeah, it was very powerful. Assemblymember Bryant spoke to the class beforehand, gave his time there, and then also encouraged us all to join him in Sacramento, where the students got to also be in the room to hear Senator Akilah Weber's bills around reparations.

And they were moved to the point where they did what they call Me Too's. So for folks who have a different orientation around a Me Too, in this context, a Me Too means that you say your name, say what your position is or your affiliation, and if you support the legislation. And so multiple students went up of their own volition, moved by what they were hearing as the policy, and spoke in favor as a proponent of those bills.

And they felt like it was a really powerful experience to not only experience how their government works at the state level, but also to be in the Capitol building for the first time in their lives, to hear a policy that they thought sounded very straightforward, receive resistance from people who are inside the Black community and also outside of it.

So it was very eye-opening for them. And I will tell you, to a person, when they actually heard the language, because you hear the bill being restated, they were kind of confused about where all of the pushback is, because it's sounding very practical. Like, they weren't hearing something that was forming a new government, you know, taking the South of California, making it its own state. It was sounding like very pragmatic, practical policies that would have a very net benefit to all.

that they were having a hard time understanding where is all of the drama coming from.

Yeah, I remember seeing them in that hearing and thinking, wow, you know, spring break, they could be in Cancun, but they've chosen Sacramento. So, you know, props to those students for getting involved. Can you speak to, though, you know, mention the frustrations by some supporters of reparations with some of this legislation? What's kind of going on there? Can you speak to this dynamic? Because we have seen as some of these bills have moved through the legislature, some of the opposition have come from folks who support the idea of reparations.

Yeah, there's a tension I think could probably be as

as a vector for folks who are familiar with Governor Westmore in Maryland and how the Maryland state legislature put forward a reparations commission bill and then he vetoed it to the shock of not only the legislature in Maryland, but to Black voters everywhere, reparationists everywhere, because he says that he's focused on direct action. This is a thing that does not need to be studied anymore.

And so just sitting in the room, some of the opposition was around, oh, well, this just sounds like an extension of delaying the outcome. Like these just all sound like policies that will take years and years. And so we need stuff now. And so one of the sources of tension is around what does now mean?

is now right now is now having a process that allows for whatever comes from it to actually be legitimate and safe, you know, going forward, uh, because you could implement something right now that may not actually have standing and not survive the point of, uh, of, uh,

of it being distributed. So there's that tension around you can create a policy, but ultimately you would like to distribute the benefit of that policy. And if it won't have any standing or be defeated before distribution happens, then you have to visit with that. And so ultimately what I see though, is that a topic that when Queen Mother Audley Moore was going around the country and the world, trying to elevate people's awareness about the importance of reparation as a missing piece,

of getting America to a healing, forward-moving momentum, that she was treated like an outcast. And to hear so many people have opinions, even if they're disagreeing, we're talking about it. And that, for me, is a part of social repair, where we're at least having the conversation, even if we're all are not on the same page, we're talking about the same content. Right. Assemblymember, we have about a minute until our next break, but can you speak to this

dynamic at all? And are leaders of the Black Legislative Caucus talking to these opponents of these bills? You know, I think there's never been forward movement or forward progress for any people, and especially for Black people that haven't

comment with deep family conversations. And I think there are deep family conversations that are always happening between folks who agree and disagree. But I've never seen more Black people and more Black support in Sacramento for any piece of policy than I've ever seen for AB7 earlier this year when Dr. Hunter, students, organizers, reparationists, scholars, folks from across the

The state, Northern California, Southern California came up to give their voice to this legislation. And so our community is a diaspora of thought. But, you know, we are all still folks who deeply care and that work is still happening.

That's Assemblymember Isaac Bryan. We're talking about the effort for reparations for black Californians. We have a couple comments about indigenous reparations. V writes, this isn't Indigenous American People's Day, but there should also be acknowledgement of the land and or money owed to indigenous people in California. And Mark writes, why are Native Americans not included in the discussions of reparations? Reservations are not required.

reparations. We appreciate all the comments. Keep them coming at our social media channels at KQED Forum or give us a call 866-733-6786. We're going to take a break. When we come back, more on the politics of reparations in California and beyond.

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Guy Marzarati in for Mina Kim. Nearly two years ago, a state task force studying reparations for African-Americans in California released its final groundbreaking report and recommendations. We're talking this morning about the progress of achieving those recommendations in the state legislature with Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, who represents the 55th Assembly District.

and Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter, professor of sociology and African-American studies at UCLA. And you are listeners. We want to hear from you what questions you have about California's plans for reparations for black residents.

Do you have concerns about the proposals? Do you like the proposals that you've heard so far? And do you have thoughts about this bill Assemblymember Isaac Bryan is pursuing to potentially give preference to the descendants of slaves for university admissions in UC and CSU? Give us a call, 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. Or you can email your comments and questions to forum at kqed.org.

Or find us on our social media channels at KQED Forum. And Dr. Hunter, I want to ask about the politics of this nationwide for you. Like, how have you seen this effort in California as compared to what's happening in other states, what's happening in Congress, you know, within within the last few years?

Yeah, there's a huge momentum, honestly, around reparative justice. And you see it taking shape in different forms. So there is a New Jersey State Reparations Commission that is about to make its report public in a matter of about a week or so.

You have New York State doing one. You have New York City doing one, Boston, Massachusetts, Illinois, Evanston. We just had an announcement on June 1st, first of its kind, from the first black mayor, Monroe Nichols of Tulsa, where I was fortunate to be present in the room for his announcement of 105 people

a million dollar reparations package for the survivors and descendants of the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921. So we see it taking shape in a lot of places. And what I want to say, firstly, because I heard the questions on the way out into this segment around Native and Indigenous brothers and sisters and the struggle in history there.

First, about eight years ago, I received a phone call from then Congresswoman, now first Black woman mayor of Oakland, shout out to Barbara Lee, who called me on the phone and said that she wanted to create a bill called Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation that would establish a concurrent commission that operates in an ecosystem alongside HR 40. And we were able to work together with

late Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Senator Cory Booker, and now keeping that momentum going forward, Representative Ayanna Pressley and Representative Summer Lee, around this idea of people needing to be more aware that when we're hearing about H.R. 40 or reparations federally, it is an ecosystem of other bills that are being championed at the same time. For example, the G.I. Restoration Act.

which is seeking to provide effectively repair and restitution for Black members, Black veterans who did not receive equitable benefits from the GI Bill. So that's a part of that same ecosystem. The third reconstruction bill out of Reverend Barber's Poor People's Campaign, which is an anti-poverty bill.

Lastly, just on the point about Native Americans, I think it's important for us to not always follow the gaslight, which is when you hear one aggrieved group, especially African-Americans, stand on their claim, that you feel as though you're not hearing your claim being answered. And what I want to correct that with is to say, firstly, slaves are considered lower than savages. So when the colonizers came, they designated Indigenous and Native people as savages.

That's how they took their land. You can't reason with a savage, but a savage is still a person. Black people, Africans from Africa brought here were considered chattel or property, not human. So if we start to think about if you're able to bring that register from slave or property into humans,

You're creating an infrastructure that addresses everybody else's situation. And lastly, but not leastly, the Trail of Tears included not just what are considered the five civilized tribes, but also that those tribes owned

Africans, also known as slaves. And so we tend to think about those as divorce, but right now we have in Oklahoma a case against one of the five civilized tribes from survivors and descendants in the Tulsa area who have been denied their Creek membership or their acknowledgement and were slaves who were brought in the Trail of Tears. So we must think about these things as happening simultaneously. Land is being dispossessed as people are also being kidnapped and put into perpetual servitude.

I want to go to the phones. We have a couple calls coming in, and I'll start with Peter in San Rafael. Hey, Peter, good morning. Thank you. I just wanted to say I very much support these ideas of reparations, and I appreciate the show today. I wanted to comment on a couple things that I heard that I find the presentation uses some logic that is, I think, would be creating people that

encouraging people to oppose reparations. And I rather, for example, you said something in terms of calling reparations earnings. And I think this is a false presentation, a weak one, whereas what they really are is distributions.

and uh... the second one i wanted to make was there was a thought that uh... this is something that should be on impeded in terms of when the money is distributed just like insurance money when it's distributed in auto insurance and the thing that i see is that distributions of insurance companies are commonly restricted they would give me restricted for a child until he's of age they can be restricted for medical reasons

They can be restricted for all kinds of reasons. And to advocate for reparations, which I strongly support, it's very weak to start to talk about anybody can get reparations and somehow people are going to go out and buy Mercedes and Cadillacs and waste money. This is not

What generational wealth is similar to trust funds. And when I get a trust fund of $10 million, it's not just $10 million for Mercedes. It's money that is restricted. Thank you. Thank you, Peter, for taking the time to call. Assemblymember Brian, do you have a response to that?

I appreciate the comments and appreciate the thought. I think it's always hard to tell people what they can and can't do with the things that they have long been deserved and earned over time.

In this case, you know, several centuries of bondage, enslavement, torture and and property status. And so I think it's a bit more complicated, but definitely, you know, understand and appreciate the sentiment. And good to know that we have allies who are all in. Yes. Thank you, Peter, for taking the time to call. Let's go back to the phones. And Annie, Annie, thanks so much for calling in. Good morning.

Hi. Yeah. Thank you for taking my call. I think something that I had issue with is just how do I get over my internal cheapness? Like,

Like, I just, I imagine like a little bill coming and like, I tell myself, Annie, like, obviously slavery is a million times worse than you having to pay a single penny toward reparations. But just how do I get over that cheapness? I guess that's my question. Get over cheapness. Well, Assemblymember O'Brien, maybe you can speak to some of the finances behind this or, you know, proposals, how that would work for the average taxpayer. I imagine many of this stuff is like the general fund. You don't get a separate bill for the, for things the state spends through the general fund.

Right. Yeah, I think we all have an aversion to paying taxes in general. And so I hear you, Annie. And I think...

Knowing that your tax dollars are going to the things that you truly care about, including righting the wrongs and harms of this state and of this country, I think it's about the most powerful feeling I could have as a taxpayer. I have deep questions about the way different dollars are spent on different expenditures of the federal and state government.

But I think the ones that bring me the most satisfaction or joy are the ones that improve the conditions of life for struggling people today and right the wrongs of struggling people in the past. I think that's a worthwhile endeavor for me to be a part of.

There certainly seems to be. I mean, I think it's look, we can safely say this has been a lightning rod issue for the right. I was struck just a couple of years ago. There was a survey just in among Californians done by Berkeley that found a greater share of Republicans here were aware of the reparations task force and its work than Democrats. Dr. Hunter, what do you make of that? And is this all really just about the way this is being messaged or is there something deeper to this resistance that we're seeing?

Yeah, I think it's the way it's being messaged and what opportunities do we have to have this conversation and also be edified by others working in the area. Much appreciation to Peter and Annie for their comments. And I think rather than having a direct response to them, I will offer that those are the comments that we want to hear. We want to hear where people are standing on these things. Where are the fault lines?

And because there isn't enough public education about it, the fault lines are emerging in real time in this one limited time where we're talking about it versus if we had a continued amount of time to hear and be educated about it and hear all of the different ways people are working around it so that it isn't just all,

in this one context. The other thing that I would say, just because we're in the Juneteenth conversation, is that former Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee, she was the primary on the bill that became the Juneteenth holiday. She has said on many occasions that H.R. 40 was a companion bill to Juneteenth. She meant for them to happen at the same time. And so I

I appreciate what KQED and Forum are doing today by joining those conversations. But I think people should also understand that until we're in a Juneteenth where reparations has happened, we're not fully in Juneteenth. It was meant to be joined in a conversation about reparative justice. We have a question from Alex on Discord.

Alex writes, if certain people are owed reparations, how do we determine who owes it to them? Three of my four grandparents came from outside of the U.S. They came from countries with no involvement in the slave trade and they brought no wealth with them. Do I owe as much as a wealthy family that profited directly from trading or holding slaves? And if so, why?

Yeah, this is not an individual or family-based conversation. And I think part of what I see around this is that there is a real fear strategy that has been out there about direct compensation or reparations as money. It starts to go, where is it coming from? When PPP loans were distributed, there wasn't really a lot of conversation, one. But two, that conversation wasn't about whether or not my tax bill was going to be increased. It just, all of a sudden, there were billions of dollars being distributed.

Because there was an alleged need. And so part of that is to say that, one, when we're talking about reparations, the root of the word is repair. T-I-O-N-S, which ends that word, means a state of. So when we're talking about a state of repair, we're talking about the states, the governments that sanctioned, constitutionalized, and uprooted.

allowed and authorized enslavement of other human beings. So this is not about individuals paying up, but instead the California state government, the U S federal government. And, uh, for example, cities like Philadelphia or Boston or New York city, um, who all were participants in this process, who created municipal laws and policies that allowed it to prosper and thrive. And so when we're talking about that, we're talking about, uh,

governmental accountability. And unfortunately, our government, which has it, does not want to be accountable. And so what we get instead is a steady diet of information that creates tax fears that makes it sound like individuals are going to be obligated to pay this debt that pre-exists their arrival in the United States. Yeah, and I mean, I've heard two arguments supporting reparations that, look, people whose families arrived here through Ellis Island and in the 19th century and 20th century, they're benefiting from reparations

a declaration of independence and a constitution that were written before their families came here, right? So there's benefits that precede families like my arrival in the U.S. But I'm sure, Assemblymember Bryan, you hear these questions all the time about, you know, who should actually be paying this? Who should be involved in, you know, delivering the reparations between immigrant communities and people who have been in this country for hundreds of years?

I think similar to Dr. Hunter, I think that's a false dichotomy. There are collective benefits to all people who exist in this country today that are derived from the labor, the stolen labor of enslaved Africans that lasted for 14 generations, going back to 1619 and even slightly before that. And so those benefits...

you know, are incalculable because they are so great. And they are, they're not obvious to everyday people in all the different ways that your life is impacted by the economic foundations and the gains that were made through the most violent kind of human exploitation and trafficking the world has ever seen. But I think we all have a responsibility to write that wrong. And so it's not one that you pass to specific people

people, it's when you pass to a specific actor. And in this case, that actor is the federal government.

and the civic infrastructures of our country that have been built on this labor and on the backs of these people. And Assemblymember, the process in California with the reparations task force was created when Governor Gavin Newsom signed the task force bill into law in 2020. A couple years later, he was saying it's time to level set about expectations for monetary reparations. He went on Hannity and talked about it.

Do you have a sense of whether the governor is still interested in this effort?

I think the governor cares deeply about all people in the state of California and Black Americans in California. He's one of the few white guys I know who, for a family vacation, went to see the slavery museum erected by Bryan Stevenson out in Alabama. Not go to a tropical island or not go to a foreign European country. He took his family down to Alabama because—

because he felt like that was an important place for them to vacation. And so, you know, I, I know the governor, uh, decently well, and I know where his heart is in this work. I think also grappling with the, you know, the challenging fiscal realities that are impacting California, uh,

including right now with the federal government threatening to withhold some of our own tax contributions in federal dollars. That's a very real conversation. The Los Angeles region is asking for $40 billion in wildfire emergency aid, and the president still hasn't followed through on that commitment and threatens to pull it almost daily. I believe yesterday he threatened again. He threatened to withhold aid from California,

You know, last week as well. And so all of these things are happening simultaneously and in connection with one another, which is why we also have to build the frameworks that allow for compensation to be discussed. And that includes passing a few legal hurdles. Yeah. You're listening to Forum. I'm Guy Marzarotti in for Mina Kim.

And we have a comment on a Discord. Casey writes, I don't think our current Supreme Court is going to care about a thoughtful discussion on what skin pigment ancestry and the social construct of race are all about. The academic understanding of those things have been pretty much absent in the discussion around affirmative action. It's all legal theories about fairness. I'll put this question to both of you. Do you see, you know, given, I guess, the legal hurdles that exist both at the Supreme Court level in California, do you see this, you know, focus on lineage issues?

as perhaps a new or effective strategy for advancing reparations in California? Maybe I could start with you, Assemblymember. Can you ask that question one more time? Oh, sure. So this focus on lineage instead of race, do you see that as, even beyond AB7, a strategy that could pay dividends in advancing reparations in California? I think it has to.

We owe it. We are due, if anything else, a clear and definitive constitutional ruling by whatever level of court takes this up. And if it should go up to the Supreme Court, then let it be there. But the country needs to say unequivocally that reparations and repair for slavery are

are either constitutional or unconstitutional. That's the real foundational question that black Americans are due answered in the immediate. And we want to pose that question as quickly as we can. Dr. Hunter, we have about 45 seconds until we're out of here, but I'll give you the last word on this.

Yeah.

That's Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter, professor of sociology and African-American studies at UCLA, author of Radical Reparations, Healing the Soul of a Nation. Thanks for taking the time to join us. Absolutely. And state assembly member Isaac Bryan, who represents the 55th Assembly District in Los Angeles. He is vice chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus. Assembly member, appreciate your time as always. Always good to be with you, guys.

Thank you for all the listeners who called in, wrote in on this. Thanks again to my guests. I'm Guy Marzarati, in for Mina Kim, and you've been listening to Forum. Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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