Speaker 1: We have done so much with so little from so few.
Speaker 1: We made a way out of no way. But for
Speaker 1: that to persist in a nation that claims to be
Speaker 1: about equal protection on the law, that claims to be
Speaker 1: about fulfilling the problems of the decoration of independence, life, liberty,
Speaker 1: and the pursuit of happiness, It's not been for us.
Speaker 1: For us, it has been hardship, power, and hellless moments continuously.
Speaker 2: I'm wes Kosova today on the Big Take. California seriously
Speaker 2: explorers reparations for African Americans. For decades, African American activists
Speaker 2: and politicians have made the case for reparations to provide
Speaker 2: some measure of compensation for the legacy of slavery, racism,
Speaker 2: and discrimination in the US, but these efforts haven't gone anywhere.
Speaker 2: Now California is taking the argument for reparations to the
Speaker 2: next level. A state task force of economists, public policy experts,
Speaker 2: and elected officials has written a detailed draft report that
Speaker 2: attempts to quantify the costs of historical injustice. They calculate
Speaker 2: it to be as much as eight hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 2: The goal of the task force is to recommend to
Speaker 2: state lawmakers who should be eligible to receive compensation of
Speaker 2: one kind or another. That big top line number and
Speaker 2: the potential for payments to some individual jewels of up
Speaker 2: to a million dollars or more have gotten a lot
Speaker 2: of attention, positive and negative. And we'll get into what
Speaker 2: those numbers mean, because there's more to it than that
Speaker 2: part of a reparations plan, and the cost wouldn't be
Speaker 2: for individuals, but to address ongoing inequality in things like
Speaker 2: education and healthcare. Camilla Moore is an attorney and reparatory
Speaker 2: justice scholar in the chair of the task force. I'll
Speaker 2: talk with her about the challenges of trying to put
Speaker 2: a dollar figure on injustice.
Speaker 3: It's been a romant of emotions.
Speaker 4: It's been very cathartic to hear from those who would
Speaker 4: be eligible. You know, descendants of slaves, for instance, who
Speaker 4: are pretty much sharing their stories to us every time
Speaker 4: we meet, pouring their hearts out about the harms and
Speaker 4: atrocity they've endured.
Speaker 2: I also speak with Bloomberg's California bureau chief, Karen Breslau.
Speaker 5: Some of this defies numbers, and it really speaks to
Speaker 5: something of a collective atonement.
Speaker 2: She's written a deeply reported peace about the Task Force,
Speaker 2: and she's here to tell us how reparations would actually work.
Speaker 2: Jare a person more. Let me just start with the
Speaker 2: most basic question, what is the case for reparations? Why
Speaker 2: should California pay them?
Speaker 4: So, the case for reparations in the state of California
Speaker 4: particularly is about the state taking account stability for its
Speaker 4: role in perpetuating what we've called the badges and incidents
Speaker 4: of slavery that still linger on and disproportionately negatively affect
Speaker 4: African Americans, primarily those who are descendants of slaves. And
Speaker 4: so we have spelled out in our final report various
Speaker 4: different instances of California a perpetuating exclusionary public policy or
Speaker 4: widespread private discrimination as well. And that's what the crux
Speaker 4: of the justification for reparations in the state of California lives.
Speaker 2: And so how do you decide who should be eligible
Speaker 2: to receive compensation?
Speaker 4: So the task Force we debated around the issue of
Speaker 4: eligibility for over ten months and February of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: In March twenty twenty two, we finally came to a
Speaker 4: decision around who should be eligible, particularly for monetary cash payments.
Speaker 4: In various other forms of reparations, and we decided to
Speaker 4: base eligibility on lineage, that being, if you're a descendant
Speaker 4: of a free or enslaved black person living in the
Speaker 4: United States prior to nineteen hundred, then you would be eligible,
Speaker 4: rather than a race based standard.
Speaker 2: And so it's for people who lived anywhere in the
Speaker 2: United States, not just California, which of course was not
Speaker 2: a state that sanctioned slavery.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's for any person who's a descendant of an
Speaker 4: enslaved or free black person living in the United States
Speaker 4: more broadly prior to nineteen hundred, because a lot of
Speaker 4: Black American Californians, you know, our grandparents, great grandparents, they
Speaker 4: migrated from the South to California. The only part I
Speaker 4: wanted to note is around California's role in slavery. You know,
Speaker 4: a lot of people ask why California. You know, we
Speaker 4: have argued as a task force, if we made the
Speaker 4: claim that California was only free and name there were
Speaker 4: over you know, two thousand black people who were enslaved
Speaker 4: in the state. Not only that, California implemented or enacted
Speaker 4: a fugitive slave law that was actually much more aggressive
Speaker 4: than the federal Fugitive Slave Law that was in eighteen
Speaker 4: fifty two, so that deputized ordinary white citizens to essentially
Speaker 4: round up free black people to re enslave them in
Speaker 4: the South or in some instances in the state of
Speaker 4: California as well.
Speaker 2: And so it's one thing to make the argument for reparations,
Speaker 2: which has been made over the years in any number
Speaker 2: of places, and quite another thing to try to figure
Speaker 2: out how you decide who gets what, How did you
Speaker 2: go about doing that? To put a dollar figure on
Speaker 2: centuries of injustice.
Speaker 4: We hired five economists and public policy experts who are
Speaker 4: at the top of their field to just with this
Speaker 4: question in terms of how do you calculate potential compensation,
Speaker 4: particularly for these decades, generations longs of human rights violations?
Speaker 3: Quite frankly, and so.
Speaker 4: In our final report, you'll most likely see language acknowledging
Speaker 4: how it's nearly impossible to put a dollar amount on
Speaker 4: these human rights violations. But what we decided to do
Speaker 4: was to utilize these economists and public policy experts to
Speaker 4: essentially calculate the pure losses of the black community across
Speaker 4: five different state sanctioned atrocity areas. The global figure that
Speaker 4: the task force arrived at meaning the five economists and
Speaker 4: public policy experts we hired were able to calculate almost
Speaker 4: eight hundred billion dollars in the total losses in five
Speaker 4: particular harm areas, so housing segregation. So part of that
Speaker 4: eight hundred billion dollars represents the loss of home ownership
Speaker 4: value because there was state sanctioned redlining in the state
Speaker 4: that you know, relegated black folks to certain neighborhoods, to
Speaker 4: certain homes, health harms. There's an eight year life expectancy
Speaker 4: gap between white Americans and Black Americans, so some of
Speaker 4: that eight hundred billion dollar value of loss is an
Speaker 4: attempt to quantify that life expectancy gap. They were able
Speaker 4: to gather some evidence to quantify the losses the black
Speaker 4: community has faced over you know, disproportionate uses of imminent
Speaker 4: domain in black communities, over policing and mass incarcerations. Took
Speaker 4: into account for instance, loss of earning potentials and things
Speaker 4: like that. And then the fifth form, which was devaluation
Speaker 4: of black businesses. So taking in that eight hundred billion
Speaker 4: dollar amount also takes into account the losses that black businesses.
Speaker 3: Have taken over time.
Speaker 4: The state Taskforce has not recommended the state payout eight
Speaker 4: hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 3: In some new outlets have.
Speaker 4: Said we've recommended every black person get paid one point
Speaker 4: two million dollars. Now that's misinformation. The monetary figures again
Speaker 4: just represent supure loss economically speaking of the black community
Speaker 4: because of us being targeted via exclusionary public policy and
Speaker 4: why spread private discrimination. And so now it's going to
Speaker 4: be up to the state legislature to read that methodology,
Speaker 4: hopefully endorse it. But then it'll be up to them
Speaker 4: to actually prescribe the actual amount. So it could be
Speaker 4: less than what we arrived at in terms of the loss,
Speaker 4: it could be more, it could be the same. It's
Speaker 4: that's a political conversation that's best left to the legislators
Speaker 4: at this point.
Speaker 2: And so have you assigned dollar amounts for individuals to
Speaker 2: claim if they have suffered losses under one or more
Speaker 2: of these five areas?
Speaker 4: So we haven't assigned dollar amounts, but we have recommended
Speaker 4: that there be two types of forms of compensation cumulative
Speaker 4: reparation repertory compensation and individual compensations. So we have recommended
Speaker 4: that all folks who are eligible receive reparations in the
Speaker 4: form of compensation. But in addition to that, those within
Speaker 4: the eligible class, if they can prove, so to speak,
Speaker 4: direct proof of harm in those five areas, then they
Speaker 4: should be entitled to additional compensation as well.
Speaker 2: But the dollar amounts assigned to each of those forms
Speaker 2: of discrimination are not set out in the report.
Speaker 4: There are monetary figures in the report, but they aren't
Speaker 4: dollar amounts that we're recommending per se.
Speaker 3: They represent the loss.
Speaker 4: Of the black community over time based on those particular areas.
Speaker 2: And so those dollar figures, you then think, will be
Speaker 2: used by the legislator to try to come up with
Speaker 2: compensation amounts that correspond with the different form terms of
Speaker 2: injustice that people suffered, Yes, exactly, and is this something
Speaker 2: that individuals will have to apply for to say I
Speaker 2: was discriminated against in these areas and therefore I am
Speaker 2: making an application for compensation.
Speaker 4: So one of the recommendations from the task force were
Speaker 4: to create a new state agency tentatively called the California
Speaker 4: American Freeman Affairs Agency, and that would be the agency
Speaker 4: where people would essentially sign up to receive direct repertory
Speaker 4: justice services, including showing their eligibility for the programs in general,
Speaker 4: but also cash payments. We invited expert witnesses around what
Speaker 4: this agency could look like, like administrative law professors, for example,
Speaker 4: and we recommended that the agency have a genealogy branch
Speaker 4: to assist people in showing their eligibility, and also it's
Speaker 4: a general eligibility branch for those cash payments.
Speaker 2: And so that each person would come forward and make
Speaker 2: a claim and then it would be looked into and
Speaker 2: sort of investigated to see whether or not the claim
Speaker 2: was valid.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, So.
Speaker 2: You've been working on this for quite some time. What's
Speaker 2: this been like. You've been going around the state, You've
Speaker 2: been listening to people's stories. You've heard people saying that's
Speaker 2: a great idea, You've heard vocal opposition. What is it
Speaker 2: like to head this task forse.
Speaker 4: First, I'd say an honor and a privilege. You know,
Speaker 4: I went to law school with an express purpose into
Speaker 4: studying repertory justice on a domestic and international level.
Speaker 3: So I went to Columbia for my JD.
Speaker 4: And then I received a Master of Laws an international
Speaker 4: criminal law from the University of Amsterdam. So this was
Speaker 4: just perfect timing for me in terms of me being
Speaker 4: able to transfer my wealth of knowledge that I have
Speaker 4: into this historic process.
Speaker 3: It's been a romant of emotion.
Speaker 4: It's been very cathartic to hear from those who would
Speaker 4: be eligible. You know, descendants of slaves, for instance, who
Speaker 4: are pretty much sharing their stories to us every time
Speaker 4: we meet, pouring their hearts out about the harms and
Speaker 4: atrocities they've endured over time living in the city of California.
Speaker 3: You know, it's been interesting getting.
Speaker 4: Hate mail as well from folks who aren't very enthusiastic
Speaker 4: about it, but you know, it all comes with the territory.
Speaker 4: So I've been having a great experience overall.
Speaker 2: And so where does it go from here? You've written
Speaker 2: this report, You're going to deliver it, and then what
Speaker 2: happens next.
Speaker 4: So the task for us, as you mentioned, we have
Speaker 4: finalized the report. It will be officially released at our
Speaker 4: last hearing, which will be on June twenty ninth in Sacramento.
Speaker 4: After that, the report will be delivered to the legislators,
Speaker 4: and it'll be up to the state legislator, the State Assembly,
Speaker 4: and the State Senate to you know, study the report
Speaker 4: in good faith, meaningfully consult with us if needed, and
Speaker 4: implement our proposals and turn them into actual legislation, and
Speaker 4: then it will be up to Governor Newsom to sign
Speaker 4: any reparations legislation into law. Some activists are saying that
Speaker 4: legislators can introduce reparations legislation as early as fall winter
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three or early twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: And do you think this is going to be successful?
Speaker 2: Do you think California will approve reparations in one form
Speaker 2: or another?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 4: I already see some conversations online from state legislators who
Speaker 4: are enthusiastic about even some of the more controversial aspects
Speaker 4: of the report. So there are legislators who literally just
Speaker 4: got elected so they have some time to be in
Speaker 4: the legislator, which is a good thing. That are you know,
Speaker 4: enthusiastic about introducing legislation for cash payments for dissentance of
Speaker 4: slaves And so I think that's a good science to
Speaker 4: see very early on, even before or the report is finalized,
Speaker 4: legislators willing to be bold and you know, taking aspects
Speaker 4: of the report that some deemed to be the hardest
Speaker 4: to accomplish, They're already looking into ways to partner with
Speaker 4: their other elected officials to make it a reality.
Speaker 2: And then looking further down the road. Do you see
Speaker 2: your effort as a model for other states and maybe
Speaker 2: even the federal government for national reparations.
Speaker 4: I definitely see to the extent that states and localities
Speaker 4: would like to also atone for any state or local atrocities.
Speaker 4: I definitely see what the state has done as a model.
Speaker 4: Also in our final report, there will be the final
Speaker 4: recommendation to transmit our final report to Congress and to
Speaker 4: the Biden administration, and that was in our introim report,
Speaker 4: but we've kind of beefed up the recommendation to say, Okay,
Speaker 4: here's our final report. You know, you can implement full
Speaker 4: reparations without a comprehensive study because California has done that
Speaker 4: work for you already. And also to the An administration,
Speaker 4: you can create a commission for reparations by executive order
Speaker 4: committing to full effective reparations with a truncated study period
Speaker 4: because California.
Speaker 3: Has done so much work on this already.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I'm optimistic that our state has done the
Speaker 4: work to set precedent for what reparations could look like
Speaker 4: on state level and then nationally as well. And then
Speaker 4: I'll just lastly say there have been many different people
Speaker 4: around the world from marginalized communities that have been inspired
Speaker 4: by the work of our task force and has personally reached.
Speaker 3: Out to me.
Speaker 4: People from Namibia and Africa, Surinam in South America and
Speaker 4: so many other places who are inspired and looking to
Speaker 4: California for this.
Speaker 3: Work as well.
Speaker 2: Share a person coming Alamore. Thanks so much. I appreciate
Speaker 2: your time.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: After the break, we dig into the details of the
Speaker 2: task forces recommendations. Now let's bring in my colleague, Karen Breslaw.
Speaker 2: She's Bloomberg's California a bureau chief and she's been covering
Speaker 2: the reparation's task forse Karen. Over the years, there have
Speaker 2: been any number of reparations efforts, but Californias is different.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about why that is so?
Speaker 1: Wes.
Speaker 5: There were policies, there were practices, there were laws that
Speaker 5: codified discrimination that contributed really since the day California became
Speaker 5: a state in eighteen fifty, really up until the current day,
Speaker 5: we're very familiar with some of those having to do
Speaker 5: with discriminatory application of federal law and federal programs.
Speaker 6: Going back to the.
Speaker 5: New Deal, the GI Bill, Urban renewal projects in the
Speaker 5: nineteen seventies in which black homes and businesses were taken
Speaker 5: through eminent domain or devalued or unjustly seized, and so
Speaker 5: there are definitely ways to track and to assign value
Speaker 5: value to the wealth gap. They looked not only at
Speaker 5: wealth gaps, but also health gaps. They looked at educational gaps.
Speaker 5: They looked at harms affecting Black communities in California that
Speaker 5: go well beyond numbers, that don't really lend themselves to
Speaker 5: monetary compensation, and some of those have to do with
Speaker 5: intergenerational traumas.
Speaker 2: Tell us more about this task force, How did it
Speaker 2: come to be and who's in it, how does it operate?
Speaker 5: So in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder in twenty twenty,
Speaker 5: a then Assembly member named Shirley Weber introduced a bill
Speaker 5: to establish a Reparations task Force to look at not
Speaker 5: only the health, wealth, educational gaps, but also the police
Speaker 5: practices and differences that led to George Floyd's murder. Shirley
Speaker 5: Weber has since been elevated to Secretary of State of California,
Speaker 5: and the task Force is made up of a variety
Speaker 5: of experts. They tend to be civil rights advocates, attorneys,
Speaker 5: not surprisingly economists, a couple of members of the current
Speaker 5: legislature appointed by the governor and the Speaker pro tem
Speaker 5: of the Senate, and they were given a mandate to
Speaker 5: study this issue for two years and to deliver a
Speaker 5: report to the Legislature by June of this year.
Speaker 2: Karen, and you're reporting you talked to several people who
Speaker 2: are on the task force and are involved in this effort.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us about them?
Speaker 6: Yes, two in particular.
Speaker 5: One is Reverend Amos Brown, who is a longtime civil
Speaker 5: rights advocate in San Francisco and leads the oldest African
Speaker 5: American congregation in San Francisco. He was born in Mississippi
Speaker 5: in nineteen forty one, the same year as Emmett Till,
Speaker 5: not far from mm Atill, and his political awakening came
Speaker 5: when Emme Attil was murdered and he saw his photos
Speaker 5: in Jet magazine, and he went to the NAACP right
Speaker 5: there in Jackson, Mississippi, and met Medgar Evers, who was
Speaker 5: the organization's field director and went on obviously to have
Speaker 5: a tremendous role in the American civil rights movement. Amos Brown,
Speaker 5: as a young man, was mentored by Edgar Evers. He
Speaker 5: comes to it from a place of history and incredible
Speaker 5: personal connection.
Speaker 6: And he is also the descendant.
Speaker 5: Of a great great grandfather who was enslaved in Mississippi.
Speaker 2: Let's listen to part of your interview with him.
Speaker 1: California, San Francisco, a loge squeaky clean. Even in nineteen
Speaker 1: o eight, Reverend Alan Allensworth tried to establish a community
Speaker 1: down there near Bakersfield that became known as Alan's were
Speaker 1: the water was Paul the politicians were able to get
Speaker 1: the railroad track re rooted to kill the town. So
Speaker 1: it looks like every time we make progress, in spite
Speaker 1: of what we have been able to achieve, there is
Speaker 1: this alliance of a movement to say, no, you're not
Speaker 1: going in further. We're gonna stop you. If it means
Speaker 1: suppressing the vote, if it means unjust police practices, if
Speaker 1: it means making sure that you don't get equality of
Speaker 1: opportunity or employment, if it means that you don't get
Speaker 1: healthcare those who are handicapped. We got measures through Congress.
Speaker 1: So wherever a particular group our population has been wronged,
Speaker 1: we made efforts, you know, through the land and tears
Speaker 1: up the community, we make funls available to have businesses.
Speaker 1: We'll all received there none of us lives by bull
Speaker 1: lamb steps up whole bootstraps.
Speaker 2: And so you've described the various ways that the task
Speaker 2: Force has tried to quantify all the various legacies of racism.
Speaker 2: How do they go about doing that?
Speaker 6: Well, let's take an example, home ownership.
Speaker 5: They can track rates of homeownership through a variety of
Speaker 5: federal and state data over time. They can look at
Speaker 5: lending practices, they can look at the actual mechanism of redlining.
Speaker 5: And so another thing the task Force did was to
Speaker 5: look into historical examples of reparations on very large scales,
Speaker 5: Germany's reparations to Israel after the Holocaust, more recently, the
Speaker 5: nine to eleven Victims Compensation Fund, and they looked at,
Speaker 5: if you want, examples of wrongdoing by the US government,
Speaker 5: the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two.
Speaker 6: The US government.
Speaker 5: Compensated the survivors of the Tuskegee Syphilist Study on black
Speaker 5: men by the US Public Health Service, and that continued,
Speaker 5: if you can believe it, until nineteen seventy two. So
Speaker 5: there are definitely historical frameworks here there's also an entire
Speaker 5: body of international law and standards set forth by the
Speaker 5: United Nations, and all of that factored into their report.
Speaker 2: In your story, you write that after the task force
Speaker 2: started doing all of this work, they did come up
Speaker 2: with hard numbers for any number of things. Can you
Speaker 2: just run through what some of these numbers are that
Speaker 2: spell out what people are owed.
Speaker 5: One calculation looked at the statistical value for a year
Speaker 5: of human life, and they looked at the differences in
Speaker 5: life expectance affecting Black Californians and came up with a
Speaker 5: value of thirteen thousand, six hundred and nineteen dollars per
Speaker 5: statistical year of missing life expectancy. Another was wealth missing
Speaker 5: due to lower rates of black home ownership one hundred
Speaker 5: and forty eight thousand, ninety nine dollars, the average devaluation
Speaker 5: of a black owned business seventy seven thousand dollars for
Speaker 5: each year of disproportionate incarceration factored by race, combining lost
Speaker 5: wages and freedom one hundred and fifty nine thousand, seven
Speaker 5: hundred and ninety two dollars. What they're doing here is
Speaker 5: preparing recommendations that are going to go to the legislature
Speaker 5: so that the lawmakers can have a frame of reference,
Speaker 5: can have some data to set up a reparations framework.
Speaker 2: And so where would that revenue come from, would they
Speaker 2: raise taxes, would it come from specific places.
Speaker 5: One proposal that a member of the task force made,
Speaker 5: who's Stephen Bradford, a state senator, is to set aside
Speaker 5: zero point five percent of the state's operating budget into
Speaker 5: an annuity, which would create about a billion and a
Speaker 5: half dollars in annual funding. And some of these reparations
Speaker 5: do not have monetary value attached. Some include something like
Speaker 5: an official apology by the state of California, or discounted
Speaker 5: tuition or free tuition to eligible descendants of enslaved people
Speaker 5: who want to go to the University of California or
Speaker 5: any public university, greater healthcare, greater investments in healthcare.
Speaker 2: What's the public's response been to the idea of reparations
Speaker 2: in California.
Speaker 5: It's been very divided, not only by party, with Democrats
Speaker 5: who have an overwhelming majority in the state legislature, and
Speaker 5: also among voters. I think open to the concept, but
Speaker 5: very fuzzy on the details. And then there are those
Speaker 5: who are opposed to the concept of reparations that current
Speaker 5: generations should essentially pay the tab for generations. I think
Speaker 5: we're going to see a lot of movement in public
Speaker 5: opinion as this task Force report gets studied and discussed
Speaker 5: in the legislature. Public opinion can move pretty quickly, but
Speaker 5: both the concept of reparations and the staggering totals are
Speaker 5: going to give a lot of people pause.
Speaker 2: When you say public opinion is going to move, which
Speaker 2: direction do you anticipate it with moving?
Speaker 5: I think it will move with understanding that reparations doesn't
Speaker 5: always mean a check. We saw that with the Japanese
Speaker 5: American Internment. Those survivors were compensated with twenty thousand dollars,
Speaker 5: which could not come close to the suffering and the
Speaker 5: losses and led to an apology whether US Congress and
Speaker 5: led to the funding of a number of public education initiatives.
Speaker 2: When we come back, we hear from another member of
Speaker 2: the task Force. Earlier we heard Reverend Amos Brown and
Speaker 2: other members of the task Force also told their stories.
Speaker 5: The other amazing story was Reggie Jones Sawyer, who's a
Speaker 5: member of the State Assembly from Los Angeles, and his
Speaker 5: family came from Arkansas from Hope Arkansas.
Speaker 6: He is related to one of the Little Rock Nine.
Speaker 2: Karen sat down with the assemblymen. Let's hear part of
Speaker 2: their conversation.
Speaker 7: You know, ever since I was a little boy, I
Speaker 7: used to hear stories about my uncle being one in
Speaker 7: Little Rock nine. When the nine kids integrated Central High
Speaker 7: School in nineteen fifty seven, I used to hear stories
Speaker 7: of him being beaten and kicked all sorts of disparaging
Speaker 7: names just for him to try to get into high school.
Speaker 7: There's a picture of him standing next to a fence
Speaker 7: pole and he's by himself, and across the street you
Speaker 7: can see the angry white mobs yelling at him. One day,
Speaker 7: they forgot to pick him up from school, so they
Speaker 7: all got in the car, raced down there, and he
Speaker 7: was standing next to this post and they went. When
Speaker 7: it got to him, he had to spit. Somebody urinated
Speaker 7: on him. I mean, it was pretty bad. And we
Speaker 7: asked him what happened, and he said that the kids swarmed.
Speaker 7: The white kids just went around him and just called
Speaker 7: them name Martin Luther King and Reverend Lost and had
Speaker 7: taught him non violence, not to let anybody see you panic.
Speaker 7: And he said in the middle of the crowd. This
Speaker 7: young kid came out and said, hey, leave him alone.
Speaker 7: He's not doing anything, and he said and then they dispersed.
Speaker 7: He said he saw the kid the next day thanked
Speaker 7: him and said, wow, you're really you know your parents
Speaker 7: raised your right. It was a really Christian of you.
Speaker 7: And the kid looked at him, he said, we're atheists.
Speaker 7: I just did it. It was the right thing to do.
Speaker 7: The barriers that those nine kids went through. I don't
Speaker 7: know if I could have gone through all of that,
Speaker 7: with all that I know now at my age, if
Speaker 7: I could have gone through that kind of trauma at
Speaker 7: that age, But I owe them a debt of gratitude
Speaker 7: because if it wasn't for them, I had absolutely no
Speaker 7: problem of getting into the University of Southern California, and
Speaker 7: now I'm in the doctoral program at SC. And it's
Speaker 7: because of them I was able to fulfill my academic
Speaker 7: dreams with absolutely no problem whatsoever. And so I'm standing
Speaker 7: on their shoulders. And so when this opportunity came up,
Speaker 7: I realized, it's really important that I do everything I
Speaker 7: can to reverse what institutional slavery has done to African Americans,
Speaker 7: not only in America, but let's start here in California.
Speaker 7: You know, when we talk about history and try not
Speaker 7: to repeat history, when we talk about critical race theory,
Speaker 7: which is really about telling the truth of history and
Speaker 7: what really happened, not what was whitewashed, but what really happened.
Speaker 7: And what you'll find is not only were there governors
Speaker 7: who actively worked to send slaves back to the South
Speaker 7: here from California, that there were laws that prohibited African
Speaker 7: Americans from marrying outside their race, That there were laws
Speaker 7: that were put in place so that we couldn't live
Speaker 7: in areas that we wanted to. That the GI Bill
Speaker 7: restricted us even though we went to war, fought for
Speaker 7: this country and laid our lives down, That we didn't
Speaker 7: have the same opportunities as our white counterparts to the
Speaker 7: GI Bill, and education and think of nature, and that
Speaker 7: California participated in it just as much as they did
Speaker 7: in the South. We may be the benchmark not only
Speaker 7: for California or what reparations will be or should be,
Speaker 7: but the nation in any city or state in this
Speaker 7: country will then take all this data and use it
Speaker 7: as the floor for what they will or will not
Speaker 7: do in the future. That is an unbelievable responsibility. I
Speaker 7: don't think it's about paying, it's about reversing the harms
Speaker 7: that are now placed upon every African American in California.
Speaker 7: If you can stop redlining, and you can do it
Speaker 7: without any financial responsibility, without having to implement any money,
Speaker 7: I think that works just as well. If we're talking
Speaker 7: about education, somehow we can make schools equal in the
Speaker 7: inner cities for African American kids who are performing at
Speaker 7: a lower level. If we can level that playing field
Speaker 7: in a way that is not a overly burdensome on
Speaker 7: the educational budget, then let's do that. It's more important
Speaker 7: to have success than spend money. When it comes to
Speaker 7: mass incarceration, I have a bill right now where if
Speaker 7: you close to prisons, it's a savings of two hundred
Speaker 7: and thirty million dollars a year. What if we could
Speaker 7: plow that money back into recidivism programs, mental health program
Speaker 7: We'll pour it back into trauma inform care because a
Speaker 7: lot of kids see things on the street that then
Speaker 7: get them into the school to prison pipeline. Then we
Speaker 7: save eighty thousand dollars a year to one hundred thousand
Speaker 7: dollars a year incarcerating people and that's money that we save,
Speaker 7: which means that's not an extra burden on us. We're
Speaker 7: now working on the savings and we're looking at an
Speaker 7: ROI return on our investment. What if we start looking
Speaker 7: at it that way. Yes, on the ledger, it may
Speaker 7: look like it's two hundred and thirty one million dollars
Speaker 7: that we're spending, but really not, this is the money
Speaker 7: we saved. What if that two hundred and thirty million
Speaker 7: dollars turn into we close ten prisons instead of two.
Speaker 7: How much savings is that over a long period of
Speaker 7: time that we could say was part of reparations, reducing
Speaker 7: the amount of people who are innovating going back and
Speaker 7: forth like a turnstile into prison. How much money could
Speaker 7: we save there? Now we're talking about a robust system
Speaker 7: that does look like is billions and billions of dollars,
Speaker 7: where there really is billions and billions of savings. Everybody's
Speaker 7: basing everything on money. I think changing policy is just
Speaker 7: as important as the financial remuneration. In fact, I think
Speaker 7: if we are to remove some racial disparity barriers, they
Speaker 7: will go a lot further than cash payment.
Speaker 2: Karen, do you think ultimately there will be some form
Speaker 2: of reparations at the end of this long process.
Speaker 6: I do, Wes.
Speaker 5: I think it's going to be a range of monetary
Speaker 5: and non monetary measures. I think the public apology will
Speaker 5: come rather soon. I think public education programs will come soon.
Speaker 5: I think the notion of greater investment and health access
Speaker 5: to higher education, into HOMEOWNIP programs, I think all of
Speaker 5: that is readily within reach. I think the concept of
Speaker 5: individual compensation remains distant, and I don't expect that for years.
Speaker 2: Karen, thanks so much for speaking with me today.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Wes.
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