Re: OBESE LAZY California black agitator group votes to limit reparations to slave descendants

[KoOks of San Francisco]

In article <t1srv3$38e9t$2...@news.freedyn.de>
<governo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Modern day lazy unaffected niggers do not deserve any fucking reparations.
> They didn't give one flying fuck about any possible slave shit until money was waved.
>

California's first-in-the-nation task force on reparations voted
Tuesday to limit state compensation to the descendants of free
and enslaved Black people who were in the U.S. in the 19th
century, narrowly rejecting a proposal to include all Black
people regardless of lineage.

The vote was split 5-4, and the hours-long debate was at times
testy and emotional. Near the end, the Rev. Amos Brown,
president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP and vice
chair of the task force, pleaded with the commission to move
ahead with a clear definition of who would be eligible for
restitution.

"Please, please, please I beg us tonight, take the first step,"
he said. "We've got to give emergency treatment to where it is
needed."

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation creating the two-year
reparations task force in 2020, making California the only state
to move ahead with a study and plan, with a mission to study the
institution of slavery and its harms and to educate the public
about its findings.

Reparations at the federal level has not gone anywhere, but
cities and universities are taking up the issue. The mayor of
Providence, Rhode Island, announced a city commission in
February while the city of Boston is considering a proposal to
form its own reparations commission.

The Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, became the first U.S.
city to make reparations available to Black residents last year,
although there are some who say the program has done nothing to
right a wrong.

California's task force members — nearly all of whom can trace
their families back to enslaved ancestors in the U.S. — were
aware that their deliberations over a pivotal question will
shape reparations discussions across the country. The members
were appointed by the governor and the leaders of the two
legislative chambers.

Those favoring a lineage approach said that a compensation and
restitution plan based on genealogy as opposed to race has the
best change of surviving a legal challenge. They also opened
eligibility to free Black people who migrated to the country
before the 20th century, given possible difficulties in
documenting family history and the risk at the time of becoming
enslaved.

Others on the task force argued that reparations should include
all Black people in the U.S. who suffer from systemic racism in
housing, education and employment and said they were defining
eligibility too soon in the process.

Civil rights attorney and task force member Lisa Holder proposed
directing economists working with the task force to use
California's estimated 2.6 million Black residents to calculate
compensation while they continue hearing from the public.

"We need to galvanize the base and that is Black people," she
said. "We can't go into this reparations proposal without having
all African Americans in California behind us."

But Kamilah Moore, a lawyer and chair of the task force, said
expanding eligibility would create its own fissures and was
beyond the purpose of the committee.

"That is going to aggrieve the victims of the institution of
slavery, which are the direct descendants of the enslaved people
in the United States," she said. "It goes against the spirit of
the law as written."

The committee is not even a year into its two-year process and
there is no compensation plan of any kind on the table. Longtime
advocates have spoken of the need for multifaceted remedies for
related yet separate harms, such as slavery, Jim Crow laws, mass
incarceration and redevelopment that resulted in the
displacement of Black communities.

Compensation could include free college, assistance buying homes
and launching businesses, and grants to churches and community
organizations, advocates say.

The eligibility question has dogged the task force since its
inaugural meeting in June, when viewers called in pleading with
the nine-member group to devise targeted proposals and cash
payments to make whole the descendants of enslaved people in the
U.S.

Chicago resident Arthur Ward called in to Tuesday's virtual
meeting, saying that he was a descendant of enslaved people and
has family in California. He supports reparations based only on
lineage and expressed frustration with the panel's concerns over
Black immigrants who experience racism.

"When it comes to some sort of justice, some kind of recompense,
we are supposed to step to the back of the line and allow
Carribeans and Africans to be prioritized," Ward said. "Taking
this long to decide something that should not even be a question
in the first place is an insult."

California Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, who voted against
limiting eligibility, said there is no question that descendants
of slaves are the priority, but he said the task force also
needs to stop ongoing harm and prevent future harm from racism.
He said he wished the panel would stop "bickering" over money
they don't have yet and start discussing how to close a severe
wealth gap.

"We're arguing over cash payments, which I firmly don't believe
are the be all and end all," he said.

Reparations critics say that California has no obligation to pay
up given that the state did not practice slavery and did not
enforce Jim Crow laws that segregated Black people from white
people in the southern states.

But testimony provided to the committee shows California and
local governments were complicit in stripping Black people of
their wages and property, preventing them from building wealth
to pass down to their children. Their homes were razed for
redevelopment, and they were forced to live in predominantly
minority neighborhoods and couldn't get bank loans that would
allow them to purchase property.

Today, Black residents are 5% of the state's population but over-
represented in jails, prison and homeless populations. And Black
homeowners continue to face discrimination in the form of home
appraisals that are significantly lower than if the house were
in a white neighborhood or the homeowners are white, according
to testimony.

A report is due by June with a reparations proposal due by July
2023 for the Legislature to consider turning into law.

<https://www.npr.org/2022/03/30/1089629383/california-group-
votes-to-limit-reparations-to-slave-descendants>