Californian slave descendants could receive $200,000 in compensation, estimates suggest

Descendants of slaves in California could each receive more than $200,000 (£164,000) to compensate for the enduring economic effects of racism and slavery, according to estimates presented to the state’s reparations task force.

The nine-member panel was set up by Gavin Newsom, the state's Democrat governor' to learn about the generational effects of racist policies.

According to the panel’s economic consultant team, the State of California’s “maximum liability” for de jure homeownership discrimination is $559 billion, “if all 2,550,459 Black California residents who lived in the state in 2021 were descendants of the enslaved in the United States and had spent the entire time period from 1933 to 1977 in California (or were the legal heir of a person that did).” 

This would equate to $223,000 for each person.

The panel has also identified four other areas in its discussions for reparations: mass incarceration, unjust property seizures, devaluation of black businesses, and health care.

No final recommendations or financial reparations have yet been finalised or presented to the California Legislature and the task force is still in the development and public comment phase of its work.

The panel is also considering how reparations should be distributed. Some are in favour of ring fencing payments for tuition and housing grants, while others say it should be in the form of direct cash payments. The full report will be released next year, along with the final recommendations.

The costs are likely to be eye-watering. For comparison, last year, the state’s total expenditure, on schools, hospitals, highways, policing and prisons, was around $510 billion.

'California yet to come to terms with role in slavery'

In 2020, California became the first US state to pass a law to develop compensation proposals for the descendants of slaves and those affected by slavery, amid a reckoning on race following the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota.

“California has come to terms with many of its issues, but it has yet to come to terms with its role in slavery,” said Shirley Weber, the Democratic assemblywoman who wrote the bill.

In March this year, the task force set out the eligibility criteria as descendants of enslaved African Americans or of a “free black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century”.

Despite it being a "free" state, an estimated 1,500 enslaved African Americans lived in California in 1852, according to the report. The Ku Klux Klan flourished in California, with members holding positions in law enforcement and city government.

African American families were forced to live in segregated neighbourhoods that were more likely to be polluted.

According to the New York Times, the report details how a so-called "blight law" from 1945 paved the way for officials to seize property to destroy black communities, closing hundreds of businesses and displacing thousands of families.

The effects of these policies are still felt today.

The median wealth of black households in the United States is $24,100, compared with $188,200 for white households, according to the most recent Federal Reserve Board Survey.

US city suburb became first to make reparations

More progressive cities and universities are taking up the cause of reparations with the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, becoming the first US city to make reparations available to black residents last year.

Those who can show they are descendants of an Evanstonian who lived there between 1919 and 1969, or directly experienced housing discrimination themselves in the decades since, are eligible for $25,000 grants to go towards home repairs or a mortgage.

Elsewhere, a Los Angeles beachfront property seized from a black couple by the government during the Jim Crow era has been returned to their descendants, in the first such action by authorities in America.

The property, dubbed "Bruce’s Beach", was bought in 1912 by Charles and Willa Bruce and transformed into a resort that other black families could visit without facing racist harassment.

But in 1924, Manhattan Beach officials voted to seize the land through a power known as "eminent domain", claiming to need it for a public park.

The Bruces sued for $120,000 but received a settlement of just $14,500.

Los Angeles County voted last year to return the land to the Bruces' descendants in an effort to “right the wrongs of the past”.

CORRECTION: This article has been amended to reflect that the Task Force has not recommended a $559 billion payout to descendants of slaves in the state of California as it is still in the development and public comment phase of its work. We are happy to correct the record.