Consider This from NPR - How Do You Put A Price On America's Original Sin?

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

A task force set up by the California state legislature is studying how the legacy of slavery has harmed the state's Black residents. This summer it will submit recommendations for how the state legislature should compensate African-Americans for that harm.The task force has to answer thorny questions like who should qualify for reparations, how to measure the suffering that Black people have endured and how to attach a dollar figure to that suffering.The chair of the task force, Kamilah Moore, says she hopes the panel's work will make a real difference in the lives of millions of Black Californians and serve as a model for a national program.NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports on one big obstacle to a federal reparations package: public opinion is firmly against it. That's especially true among white Americans.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu forward. Josiah Williams has spent years fighting for a simple but profound idea that black Americans deserve compensation for the more than two centuries of forced, unpaid labor extracted from their ancestors. It's a debt. It's not just, you know, people just wanting money. It's not a handout. It's a debt being repaid for wrongdoing.

Williams lives in Oakland, California, and he's an organizer with a nonprofit coalition that wants the government to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves. For him, reparations would mean cash payments, but also government programs to help achieve the economic and social equality that for generations have eluded so many black Americans. What I would like to see is for us to be able to actually rise and thrive in the country, to actually be given proper opportunity. I want to see our people have more wealth, to have more businesses,

pretty much to be able to thrive like they would have if they had received reparations, you know, when it was first promised. Right now, Williams is closer than he's ever been to seeing at least some piece of that dream realized. For two years, a task force put together by the California State Legislature has studied how slavery's legacy has harmed Black residents of the state. This summer, the panel will propose a state reparations program. Meanwhile, they're hosting meetings throughout California.

Thank you all for coming and being a part of history. And Black Californians are showing up to keep the pressure up. At a meeting in San Diego, Lakeisha Milner, a high school teacher, wore a t-shirt that read, Reparations Now. And where are you from? I'm from Carson, California. She is encouraged by the task force's work, but she's skeptical about whether the state legislature will actually pay the reparations that the task force recommends.

That's what I see right now, that it's just, again, being talked about, but is something going to happen? Is something going to come out of it this time? Jacqueline Wilkes, a history teacher, said that she has been struck sitting in the audience by the many complicated questions the task force is sorting through. Who should qualify for reparations? How to calculate the amount of suffering black people have endured? And how to attach a dollar figure to that suffering? I think it's something that won't be figured out overnight, but I'm glad that California is leading the way,

and I think this is the right place and the right time. Reparations now. Consider this. The U.S. has never fully atoned for the atrocity of slavery. And most Black Americans think that can't happen without reparations. But if reparations can pass in California, it could be a model for a federal program. First, though, the task force has to get the details right. From NPR, I'm Adrian Florido. It's Monday, March 27th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange

rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. It was September 2020 when California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the law that kicked off his state's reparations process. On a Zoom call, this was the height of the pandemic, remember? Let me thank everybody for all of the hard work and effort. There were state legislators looking on from their squares on Zoom, activists, and at least one celebrity. An ice cube. I don't know how the hell he knew I was signing half these bills before I even told my staff. The bill, called AV-3121, was introduced by by then state legislator Shirley Weber,

and it created a panel to study not just how the legacy of slavery has harmed California's black residents, but also to draft a recommendation for how the state legislature should compensate African Americans for that harm. The first state task force of its kind. No further ado, let's just jump right in. And I got AB 3121, Dr. Weber, your bill. And we'll just start here by signing this. Done deal. Done deal. But as groundbreaking as the task force is, setting it up was actually the easy part. Now the task force has to answer a profound question.

What does the state of California owe its Black residents for the damage done by slavery in a state where slavery was never even legal? It is daunting. It's a lot of work. It's also, it's a labor of love. Camila Moore chairs the California Reparations Task Force. The group's recommendation to the state legislature is due July 1st, but it has already made some pretty big decisions on some of the thorniest issues. For example, the task force decided that reparations should be limited to descendants of slaves rather than going to all black Californians.

The idea is that reparations is a debt that's owed, and the direct descendants of slaves are standing in the shoes of their ancestors for that owed debt. The task force has also identified five areas in which black people have suffered due to slavery's legacy, things like the unjust taking of property, housing discrimination, and health. And it's working to come up with dollar figures to compensate for that harm. None of the group's recommendations will be binding. It'll be up to the state legislature to decide whether to adopt them or just put them on a shelf. I asked Camila Moore if being in charge of all this feels like a huge responsibility.

Oh yes, absolutely, and it is. It's also an emotional process as well. If people watch, for instance, the public hearings during the public comment, it's very cathartic for a lot of people. People are sharing their stories about the different harms and atrocities their ancestors and they themselves have endured, not only in the state of California, but across the United States. I want to ask a basic question that I think a lot of people might be wondering, which is this. Slavery has never been legal in California for as long as it's been a state.

So why would California, of all places, owe reparations for slavery? Well, the task force very early in our study phase invited expert witnesses to speak on this question. And we learned that although California technically entered the Union in 1850 as a free state, its early state government actually supported slavery. Also, we learned that 1,500 enslaved African-Americans were forced to labor in California, often working under dangerous conditions, in the goat mine, for instance. And then lastly, we learned that in 1852, California passed and enforced a fugitive slave law that made California a more pro-slavery state than most other free states. And so we learned that, you know, California was really free in name only. Your task force is deciding what the descendants of slaves should be paid for the harm that they've

suffered from slavery's legacy. How can you even start to quantify that harm and then beyond quantifying it, attach a dollar figure to it? Yes. So we acknowledge that it is nearly impossible to put a dollar amount to the cost of human suffering of this group of people from slavery to present. But that doesn't mean that we're not going to attempt. And so we've actually hired five economists and public policy experts to help as well as discriminatory behavior of medical personnel from which the state should shield its residents. And there is a 7.6 year life expectancy gap between white Californians and black Californians. And so essentially the economists have ascribed a number to identify what could be potential compensation to account for that life expectancy gap. You know, one of the things that has held up reparations proposals in this country in the past is the fact that a lot of Americans just don't think that African Americans should get or deserve reparations.

I recently spoke with another member of your task force, Stephen Bradford, who's a current California state senator. And I asked him whether the task force should be considering this sort of political and public perception reality as it develops its reparations proposal. Listen to what he said. Just to pass something and ask for too much and know that the legislative appetite's not there to vote for it, that would be worse than not doing anything at all. So hopefully we can throw at this needle and come up with the right proposal that has enough meat and substance to it where it will have a meaningful impact on people's lives. But again, we don't want something watered down either. I wonder, Ms. Moore, if you think that it is your job to balance what you think

might be a fair and just reparations proposal with, you know, maybe a smaller one that the state legislature is more likely to pass? You know, I totally understand his sentiment, and I tend to agree. I agree that we don't want to submit a watered-down plan, but nothing's wrong with, you know, threading the needle, being measured in our approach to ensure that these proposals actually are implemented, and so that the material conditions of descendants of slaves in California, and then hopefully across the nation, will improve via a comprehensive reparations package. Camila Moore, chair of the California Reparations Task Force. As we heard, the California Task Force sees itself as a model

for the rest of the country. But there is a big obstacle to setting up a similar nationwide program. Public opinion is firmly opposed to federal reparations for the descendants of slaves. That includes two-thirds of Americans opposed overall and an even higher share among white people. NPR's Jennifer Ludden looks at why. When he first started polling on reparations three years ago, Titesh Nteta at the University of Massachusetts Amherst expected money to be the big issue, or how to make it all work. But that's not what he found. A plurality of Americans believe that the problem with reparations,

the reason why they oppose reparations, is because they don't believe the descendants of slaves deserve reparations. So this is not a question of logistics or economics. It's a question of deservedness. Nteta plans more research to get at exactly why people think that. But on a recent sunny day, it was easy to find opinions on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. You can't take what we know now and try to superimpose yourself onto 150 years ago. Jeff Bernauer of Huntsville, Alabama, says of course slavery was wrong, and he calls racism a sin. But reparations now makes no sense. The generation that would be paying for it have nothing to do with what was done in the past, and then you're paying people that have nothing to do with it in the

past. We're all immigrants at some point, whether it was voluntary or forced. There's a lot of people who came a lot of different ways. Terry Kuhn was visiting from upstate New York. And nobody needs a handout anymore. Everybody, you know, pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps and works for a living and makes their way in this world. That idea that hard work pays off is a core narrative of the U.S., says Yale social psychologist Michael Krause. He surveyed people on the racial wealth gap and thinks his findings help explain the opposition to reparations. A majority of our sample tends to think that we've made steady progress towards greater equality in wealth between families, so between Black and white families. And they think for every $100 white families have, Black families have about $90.

That is totally inconsistent with reality. The actual racial wealth gap is far bigger. Given that, and all the recent focus on racial justice around the country, Krauss calls this disconnect a kind of collective willful ignorance. He thinks many white people are not just unaware, but somehow avoiding information on how Black people still face discrimination in the labor market, housing, and banking. In fact, the racial wealth gap just keeps growing and growing and growing. Realizing that is what made Dorothy Brown a convert on reparations. She's a Georgetown law professor who wrote a book about how even the U.S. tax system favors white families at the expense of Black ones.

She thinks reparations should be about systemic changes, not just cash. Her forthcoming book will make the case, and Brown thinks many Americans are persuadable. Part of it is an education. It's a walk through history. It's a recognition that, OK, you may not have had anything to do with slavery, but your grandfather, your white grandfather, got an FHA-insured loan. My grandfather couldn't because he was Black. What's not clear is whether local reparations might help or hurt the push for a national policy. But Detishna Teta at UMass Amherst thinks some cities are being mindful of this opposition to atoning for slavery,

like Evanston, Illinois, which is providing housing assistance for people who faced discrimination. Well, it's not about slavery. It's about the ways in which individuals who still are alive today were treated during a period of Jim Crow and institutionalized racism. So those people still exist. Maybe a national model will emerge, he says. And more young adults, along with most Black Americans, do support reparations. Then again, the Pew Research Center finds even supporters think reparations are unlikely in their lifetime. NPR's Jennifer Ludden.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adrian Flarido. Thank you.