Below is my column in The Hill on the recommendations for reparations by two appointed bodies in California. After years of declaring this a moral imperative, the bill has come due for leaders like Gov. Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed. The collective demand is for trillions in California alone with additional trillions demanded from Congress in a national reparations program. California Democrats will now have to render a decision on committing real money on reparations to show that this was not mere virtue signaling. That decision could be coming soon.
Here is the column:
A long-awaited meeting of San Francisco’s board of supervisors was set this week to discuss the recommendation of its African American Reparations Advisory Committee to give $5 million to each eligible Black resident as reparations. The meeting was postponed, but the city and the state soon must make a decision on a bill that has come due for Democratic politicians.
The city council voted unanimously to create the reparations committee in 2020. Even though California was a free state without slavery before the Civil War, the committee’s “particular focus has been the era of urban renewal, perhaps the most significant example of how the City and County of San Francisco as an institution played a role in undermining Black wealth and actively displacing the city’s Black population.” That could be viewed as only a partial payment for race-related injuries.
In the meantime, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) created his own Reparations Task Force, which just reached its own recommendations for $223,000 per person. Others have insisted the figure should be $350,000 for individuals and another $250,000 for Black-owned businesses. One California politician insisted the figure needs to be $800,000 per person, reflecting the average cost of a home in the state.
As these numbers rise, so do the calls for payments in both politics and the media. Even Disney has gotten into the act with a controversial children’s episode in which cartoon children demand reparations.
Notably, California’s law expressly states that this money should not be treated as compensation for federal reparations. That raises the question of whether a resident could receive $5 million from San Francisco, $223,000 from the state, and additional payments from the federal government.
Some congressional Democrats have pushed for similar federal reparations and passed a bill out of the House Judiciary Committee in 2021 that failed to receive a floor vote. BET founder Robert Johnson has called for $14 trillion in federal reparations.
These reparations measures have a remarkable range of focus, from slavery to housing discrimination to wealth inequities. In California, there was a sharp disagreement on the purpose, with many advocates arguing that it was wrong to limit the money to descendants of slaves. Task force member Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D–Los Angeles) insisted that, “at the end of the day, people who are prejudiced against us are prejudiced against all of us.”
Ultimately, advocates like Jones-Sawyer lost a close vote on extending state reparations to all Black Americans. The state task force voted to limit it to descendants of slaves; there are almost 3 million potentially eligible Californians.
The two reparation bodies were tasked with calculating reparation awards — and both the city and the state will now be pressed to make good on their commitments.
The costs of such policies — condemned by critics as virtue-signaling — are being faced by some other jurisdictions as well. For example, New York and numerous other cities have declared themselves to be “sanctuaries” for undocumented immigrants yet, in recent months, have protested increasing transfers of such immigrants to their jurisdiction.
The cost of California’s statewide reparations is estimated to be $569 billion. The state’s annual budget is roughly half that amount, at $268 billion. Making things even more difficult, the state faces a $22.5 billion deficit and is seeking spending cuts to cover the shortfall.
This may not be a bill that can be politically postponed, given past statements by the governor and other Democratic politicians.
That leads to the question of such programs’ constitutionality. Even after the political approval of payments, it is not clear that this money will ever be paid.
Under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, race-based classifications trigger strict scrutiny requiring a showing of both a “compelling state interest” and “narrowly tailored” means. In City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989), the Supreme Court struck down a set-aside for minority businesses due to a lack of evidence of specific injuries. The court ruled that general past discrimination was not enough and added that “the dream of a Nation of equal citizens in a society where race is irrelevant to personal opportunity and achievement would be lost in a mosaic of shifting preferences based on inherently unmeasurable claims of past wrongs.”
Then-Justice John Paul Stevens added his liberal voice against such programs, noting that Richmond’s law “encompasses persons who have never been in business in Richmond as well as minority contractors who may have been guilty of discriminating against members of other minority groups.”
The reparations given in 1988 to Japanese Americans who survived World War II internment camps posed an easier issue, since the recipients were directly injured by the government and the money was meant to compensate them for their injuries.
The decision to narrow programs like focusing on the descendants of slaves or on housing deprivations will certainly be better for constitutional review than a general reparations measure. However, even liberal scholars like Erwin Chemerinsky seem to concede that these reparation measures would face series legal headwinds in the courts. The likely legal challenges are not often considered in discussions of reparations — but they could create a highly combustible situation, if large reparations guarantees were suddenly negated.
That legal fight, however, must await a moment of truth for California legislators.
Democratic politicians have insisted for years that reparations are essential to address systemic racism. But politicians like Gov. Newsom now face demands to put their money where their mouths have been. The years of calls for reparations have created a greater expectation, even an urgency. One well-known California activist declared: “It’s a debt that’s owed, we worked for free. We’re not asking; we’re telling you.”
That expectation is reflected in recent polling, showing a massive shift in the Black community on the question: 77 percent of Black Americans now support reparations — but, overall, nearly seven-in-ten (68 percent) of all respondents oppose such payments.
Thus, after defining reparations as a moral obligation, politicians may find it difficult to say this is an inopportune moment.
For Newsom and for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, the bill is now due.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
When are reparations coming for woman who were the last to be able to vote, own land, treated like 2nd class citizens, and literally gave birth to this great nation? It’s a slippery slope when when we open this flood gate. The past is the past, we must move on and look to the future. That is the American way.
I think it’s a great idea……….right after China reimburses the world for Covid and my sister pays back 35 cents from a childhood loan.
If governments are going to pay reparations, the reason for the payments should be the massive and ongoing harm done to low-income Americans of all races as a result of the various Great Society programs and their ilk.
Does California have a history of slavery?
“Does California have a history of slavery?”
No, but it is starting to develop it.
What a ——- idiot!
Seriously!
What are you trying to say, George? Do you understand sarcasm? What do you think happens to people when they are taxed to the limit and told what to think? Are they free?
The descendents of slave owners should pay reparations to the descendents of slaves. Leave the rest of us out of it.
If you murder someone , should your great grandchildren be executed for the crime?
Same deference here my friend.
What wrongs did your ancestors do that we should hold you responsible for?
I can’t be held responsible for the sins of my father
That is a wonderful exercise in logic. The problem is that it is irredeemably and mortally flawed.
In California? Those descendant slaves would have moved from the states wherein the slavery occurred, many times over.
That would be a civil case – class or mass action.
But even that is so far beyond the pale of anything rational and coherent as to be egregiously frivolous and utterly without merit.
Do the descendants of English llairds in Ireland and Scottland owe reparations to the descendants of the serfs they “enslaved” ?
Jonathan: Boy, wasn’t that an exciting Super Bowl 57? Are the Chiefs destined for a new football dynasty? And what about all the ads? Ben Affleck pitching for Dunkin’ Donuts with Jennifer Lopez making a cameo appearance. I can only imagine what they were paid. Big advertisers paid upwards of $7 million for a 30 second spot. Fox was raking in the money.
Speaking of Fox Rupert Murdock was their in his box–hanging out with his new BF Elon Musk. That’s because they now share control of the right-wing media. James Murdock, one of Rupert’s sons, is on the Tesla Board so they have a lot of shared interests. Musk was probably not happy that Murdock permitted an ad by a critic of Tesla’s self-driving technology. Dan O’Dowd, a California tech entrepreneur, is on a campaign against it–saying it is dangerous. To prove the point, O’Dowd paid for a Super Bowl ad that showed a self-driving Tesla3 mowing down a child mannequin, ignoring a school bus’s warning lights, hitting a stroller and sweeping past no-entry signs. Not a good night for one of Musk’s products.
Finally, did you see the great half-time performance by a pregnant Rihanna? She practically stole the show. The Trumpster was watching the show because he got on Truth Social to say: “EPIC FAIL: Rihanna gave, without question, the single worst Halftime Show in Super Bowl history…Also, so much for her Stylist!” You would think the former president has better things to do–like trying to get his 2024 campaign out of the cellar. Nope. He is consumed by personal grudges. This goes back to 2020 when the singer spray painted “F***Trump” on a car at the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo. Rihanna mocked the Trumpster throughout his presidency. A gal I can identify with!
Well. that’s my recap of Super Bowl 57. Oh, and by the way, I support reparations for the descendants of slavery. It’s a debt we owe and it should be paid ASAP.
DennisMcIntyre, should reparations be paid by Latino immigrants in California?
Good. I agree, but only after I see YOUR checkbook and savings account zeroed out, debit to your local NAACP/Rainbow Coalition/BLM chapter. Oh, and please publicly post the names and familial connection of those in your ancestry that owned slaves that are living today.
Idiot.
Dennis – people who believe what you say you believe are not prevented from forming reparation societies and then doling out money to as many black people as you like for as long as you like.
I like the part where she fingers her crotch and butt and then smells it.. good wholesome family entertainment
DennisMcIntyre, at 1:31 I asked you if reparations should be paid by illegal immigrants who entered our country from Mexico. I’m just trying to pin down who you think should pay or who should be exempt. As an example should reparations be paid by immigrants from Asia who entered the nation long after slavery existed in the U.S. What you really are saying is that if Professor Turley is against it you will be for it regardless of the issue. I have asked you about specific groups that would be required to pay but as usual when your logic is brought into question you never give a specific answer to a question. You just continue your hate Turley little dance.
Thinkitthrough: The reparation proposals in California have not be finalized but I think everyone in the state who pays taxes would be obligated–that includes undocumented immigrants. Believe it or not but they pay a lot of taxes–$3 billion a year in California. If they own property they pay real estate taxes. Every time they shop they pay taxes. And they also are legally obligated to file US tax returns and pay any tax owed.
As to Asian immigrants should they get a pass just because their ancestors did not own slaves? Should I get a pass because my ancestors did not own slaves? If I no longer drive should I get a pass on the taxes I pay for the maintenance of roads and highways? Should you not have to pay FICA taxes because you are not a senior? If you have your kids in private schools do you get to avoid the taxes you pay for public education? What about war taxes? Back during the Vietnam War I filed my federal tax returns and deducted what I estimated were the taxes used for the War. I wrote a letter with my returns explaining my position. You can imagine the response from the IRS. It was a demand letter saying if I did not pay the tax penalties would be added. I paid the tax.
Your argument is as bizarre as other arguments by your brethren on the blog. We all pay taxes–some of which we object to for various reasons. It’s part of the “social contract”. If you live here and enjoy all the benefits you have an obligation to contribute to the “general welfare”. But you have a choice. You can tell your elected representatives to vote against reparations for the descendants of slavery or you can move to a country where slavery did not exist and reparations are not an issue. Good luck on that one!
California is a place where slavery did not exist.
“I support reparations . . .”
Nobody will stop you from paying them as much as you wish.
DennisMcIntyre, I liked the Ram commercial a lot more than the Anti-Musk commercial. https://www.autoblog.com/2023/02/12/ram-1500-rev-super-bowl-commercial-premature-electrification/. It was hilarious. However, Ram did leave out the higher use of natural resources that is mined in slave nations to build a bigger battery. They did make it understandable that power if their electric truck was better than all the rest and they didn’t present a political position in doing so. Do you remember when you loved Elon Musk because he was your electric vehicle god?
TiT,
Most of the cobalt comes from China and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
in the DRC, they use child labor (aka slave labor) to extract the cobalt.
So, yes, you are correct, by supporting EVs, those people support child slavery.
They drive around in their EVs, casting virtue signaling aspirations, that they are better than you fossil fuel burners, all the while enslaving children.
I think I am going to trade in my F150 for a F250 with a diesel engine. If you have not noticed, no one is addressing the idea of replacing diesel farm tractors with a EV tractor.
Why?
So far it is not feasible to produce a EV tractor. Can you imagine how big/weight of that battery? How long to charge? How long is a charge good for? What would that cost me to charge?
You better believe I would be passing on that cost to the end consumer.
Upstate…good comment. And what about cruise ships, which are HUGE polluters! Incidentally, it’s funny, but every one we know who loves cruises are Democrats. Are they going to protest and demand that cruise lines change to battery-operated??
Stroke the check buttercup. Why are you waiting for government? Empty your bank accounts, your investments and sell your house. Put your money where your mouth is.
It’s a debt we owe and it should be paid ASAP.
The state of California owes no reparations for slavery, because it never had slavery.
In California, if anybody is owed, it is the surviving indigenes, called American Indians, who were enslaved by the Franciscans to build the missions and the Camino Real. Come to think of it, only Catholics owe that bill?
Were there military campaigns against indians in California?
Weren’t indian affairs a federal issue?
Spanish Catholics, to be exact.
Spain would owe the bill.
Ok, reparations are one thing, who pays them? This is another, good article and excellent nuance. My ancestors here were not slave or plantation owners but frontier’s people, with little more than the clothing on their backs. My great, great grandfather was basically a UPS man, delivering packages in a wagon when Wells Fargo was still a stagecoach company. We did not have wealth, we did not own slaves, and we were not wealthy enough to own property in the beginning. That perks another point: not all states were slave states back then, it wasn’t universal. They simply weren’t, and that is a fact.
Are they going to make me pay? I would bet that if we traced the lineage, the majority of the ones needing to pay would be the likes of Al Gore and his family’s south’un tobacco plantation endeavors, et. al, and he will never give up a dime. If this were federalized, it would basically be the marginalization of a great many people that suffered equally during those times (assuming a knowledge of history here, and I understand that it’s a biiiiiig stretch for some, if not most in our phone-addled, 21st century brains). It’s bull ****, and I have just about had it with the globalist proxy that used to be known as the American Democratic Party. It really is *just* them. Exclusively. Period. The American Dems are doing this to our country, our daily lives, and ultimately our children’s minds with fierce intention, and they will never, ever relent. JUST them.
I have had enough. This is a joke that should have very literally never come to pass in an enlightened society.
I very seriously doubt something like this will get through the higher courts, but the fallout is what they are after, not the decision, and it is sheer insanity to the minds of the self-preserving and legitimately compassionate, and it will be utterly lost on the ignorant and confused why that is. That may sound like a dismissal, but consider: that is where we are. to a great many, our laws mean absolutely zero when they do not get what they want, and these are the future congresspeople, judges, and presidents, let alone doctors, accountants, or lenders. in the future, and indoctrinated person might very well just cancel your bank account, and no one left in society will bother to intervene. That goes for the wealthy, too. For people eating paycheck to paycheck with a mortgage who do nor have the benefit of their parents’ privilege – it’s cataclysmic. 2008 all over again, but endemically worse.
Our country hangs by a very slender thread.
James,
“. . . but the fallout is what they are after, . . . ”
That is what I fear.
They are and have been conflating this thing to the point the only outcome they will accept will be reparations.
The 2020 Summer of Love will look like a picnic in comparison.
@Upstate
Can’t argue. It would appear at this point there are quite literally no lows the modern left will not stoop to in their quest for wealth and control. It is obvious to anyone paying attention with eyes, let us hope the shift in the House was only the beginning.
Seriously: I don’t personally believe they will ever stop as they are currently constituted, and they absolutely expect to pass the torch to our progeny, black, white, brown – doesn’t matter.
“It’s a debt that’s owed, we worked for free.”
This is a self-contradictory statement. If you worked for free, you are not owed anything.
Who now living worked for free ?
I’m all for reparations in California under one condition. The reparations must be paid only by California residents who are registered Democrats. No ID will be required and even though they had nothing to do with slavery the illegal immigrants from south of the border will not be exempted from paying their fair share. Bring on the Bill.
TiT,
Now there is a good idea.
Reparations for the descendants of slaves might be just if paid by the descendants of slave owners. Provided it is recognized that because such respective descendants do not all start from the same place that adjustments to imbalances must be made.
Read Lincoln’s second inaugural address. The civil war, through its cost in blood and treasure, wiped out much of the wealth accumulated through slavery, which in any event did nothing to promote the economic development of the country, and more likely held it back.
Daniel – it is true that the economy grew faster after slavery ended than it did before. Slavery was probably retarding growth.
Since Democrats are the party of slavery shouldn’t Democrats be the ones paying reparations?
I struggled with a same sex attraction and was bullied, beaten, and ostracized by straight people. By the same logic used for black reparations, I deserve at least a half a million dollars. If this is approved, I’m sending an invoice to ALL of my “liberal” “friends.”
I’ve got it all .. . pluse I’m not afraid to wear jewelry.
*get in line.
Reparations are like amnesty. Either is political death for Democrats. This is nothing more than Democrats using manipulation to keep blacks on their plantation.
Orlandocajun…..Exactly!
There were thousands of white slaves taken by blacks along the Barbary Coast. If blacks get their reparations, then so should whites.
Equality and equity, right?
It would make much more sense to do this in states like Alabama or South Carolina, states that were, and still are, dominated by Christian nationalists, who are of course not all Christians. It was the ideology fermenting in those states and it took Northern states to defeat it. Just a fact,though some don’t like hearing nit
You’re an idiot to think it makes sense anywhere. How about the civilians that lost everything in the swath of Sherman’s march to the Sea? How about the persecution of private citizens by the federal government through reconstruction?
Why should present citizens pay for the sins of the past? Why do you suppose Hitler started WW2? Germany was economically depressed by reparations of WW1. If the Fed pays reparations it will be the beginning of the largest tax revolt America would ever see.
I lived in South Carolina for nearly 10 years.
I do not recall ever seen Christian nationalist anywhere. They certainly did not dominate politics.
Jerome— The worst racial incidents and riots post Civil Rights have taken place up north, and I don’t mean Dallas. 🙂
Cindy,
Would that be a reference to the 2020 Summer of Love? 😉
UpstateFarmer….LOL yes! But there are many earleir examples, such as this one
https://bostonresearchcenter.org/projects_files/eob/single-entry-busing.html
There was a race riot in Chicago in 1919.
My longtime Usenet ally, Christopher Charles Morton, once posted about how his great-uncles raided a National Guard armory to protect themselves.
What is Christian nationalism?
“These reparations measures . . .” (JT)
Guilt and penalties based on a person’s race.
Victimhood and compensation based on a person’s race.
If Leftists are trying to stoke a racial civil war, they are right on schedule.
Perhaps one could also consider that basis for any reparations claim by comparing what life is versus what life would have been had there been no Atlantic slave trade. I suspect that we will find on performing this comparison that the American descendants of the Atlantic slave trade are actually better off. We, all of us, are in fact richer for the outcome despite the immorality of the slave trade: Martin Luther King Jr, peanut foods, potato chips, music especially Jazz and Blues, American literature, sports, etc. The success of the descendants of slaves is sort of a Joseph story that we should all celebrate and leave it at that.
CA will pay them, go bankrupt, all tax paying US citizens will be paying to bail them.
The US House needs to pass a NO BAILOUT CA ACT…NOW.
@Rose
‘CA will pay them, go bankrupt’
Respectfully: This is where I must intervene (and I speak as someone whose dad was born in LA in 1938, and has lived in California myself): the sheer amount of wealth in CA is staggering. Jaw-dropping. Billionaires and millionaires upon billionaires and millionaires, and they do not live in the places other people would flee, and are fleeing. To think they give two poos about the rest of the citizens of the state is a good ha, ha, and that includes their servants – er, immigrants. Both coasts are absolutely the elite (funny that, in the age of ‘climate change’) and the people in Santa Barbara could quite literally give a toss about the people in Bakersfield, wouldn’t notice if they were eradicated from the earth.
That’s why they bought their private jets: so they could just fly over the Central Valley, where a great deal of the world’s food comes from, on their way to Cabo orJapan. CA ‘paying’ anybody has absolutely zero to do with the other millions that live in California, even the ones that are ideologically on board, ironically; look up ‘useful idiot’. I would also be willing to wager that the vast majority of chartered flights that make your ‘regular’ flight late originated on one of the elite coasts (again, funny that, given the earth is supposed to be underwater or on fire in a matter of years).
Elizabeth Warren will be stepping up to get her indigenous people share. She says “I want mine. See my high cheekbones?”
Thinkitthrough…….Oh, yes, absolutely! Elizabeth included this video with her application to Hahvahd. Undeniable proof of her heritage:
Essentially all nations have practiced slavery in the past, including the African tribes who sold the black slaves that came here in the first place. This whining for reparations is a pure sucker scam. Blacks are lucky to be here and owe a debt to America. Only in America have Blacks come to relative prosperity with many accomplishments, esp in the Performing Arts & athletics. Most black greats that we applaud could not have arisen in sub-Saharan Africa, which never developed written languages. They were possible only because of the freedoms & opportunities here.
In fact, trillions of dollars in transfer payments already have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences. And the cost to other races in blood & money due to decade after decade of hugely disproportional violent crime is astronomical. Yet this scam is shamelessly pushed. Don’t allow it. There’s no one alive in American that owes any reparations for long gone slavery.