California has rolled a 500-page report detailing the long-lasting effect slavery has had on Black Americans and the numerous misdeeds of the state and federal government that warrant recourse.
The report released on June 1 was published by the civil rights division of the California Department of Justice with input from California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans. It was commissioned by the General Assembly in September 2020. The nine-member task force includes a diverse group of Californians.
The task force said the report is the most comprehensive look at the structural barriers Black Americans face since the 1968 Kerner Commission report.
It finds that slavery has had an undying effect “on the political, economic, social, physical, mental and cultural well-being of Black people, particularly those descended from the formerly enslaved.”
The task force is proposing that the state compensate direct descendants of the enslaved residing in California and those living outside of the state who were harmed by its polices. Reports show there were 1,500 enslaved Africans in California in 1852.
“Without a remedy specifically targeted to dismantle our country’s racist foundations and heal the injuries inflicted by colonial and American governments, the ‘badges and incidents of slavery’ will continue to harm African Americans in almost all aspects of life,” the authors of the report said.
Here are the 12 areas of systemic discrimination the report says the government needs to address to rectify the harm.
Enslavement
America profited off the free labor of enslaved Africans, the report says, noting that the enslavers made $159 million between 1820 and 1860 just by trafficking Africans. It also cites the violence by slave drivers used to increase production and “deplorable living conditions.” The last Census before the Civil War (1860) shows that four million people were enslaved, according to the report.
Racial Terror
Authors of the report say white Americans “maintained the badges of slavery by carrying out violence and intimidation against African Americans for decades.” Racial terror was carried out through Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and in California through the presence of the Ku Klux Klan. It defines racial terror as direct forms of violence, destruction of property and psychological trauma.
Political Disenfranchisement
The federal and state government also passed laws to block Black Americans from obtaining political power and suppressing their votes, the reports say. It cites literacy tests and poll taxes that created obstacles for some African-Americans to vote. Congress also wrote laws that excluded Black people from benefits, such as the New Deal and the G.I. Bill.
Housing Segregation
After the Jim Crow era, when laws mandated segregation in the South, federal, state and local governments passed zoning ordinances and slum clearance policies that expanded racism, according to the report. Governments also built highways and parks in Black neighborhoods and blocked Black people from homeownership through redlining.
“The average urban Black person in 1890 lived in a neighborhood that was only 27 percent Black. In 2019, America is as segregated as it was in the 1940s, with the average urban Black person living in a neighborhood that is 44 percent Black,” the report says.
Separate and Unequal Education
Enslaved people were prohibited from obtaining an education, but even after emancipation, students were subjected to segregation in schools with fewer resources. The segregation continues through zoning. According to the report, nonwhite school districts get $23 billion less in education than predominately white school districts.
Racism in Environment and Infrastructure
Segregation forced Black people to live in less appealing homes and subjected them, in some cases, to lead and other chemical toxins. The authors of the report cite two California Black neighborhoods that had lacked proper water and sewer systems while adjacent white neighborhoods were fully functioning.
“Segregated Black neighborhoods have more exposure to hazardous waste, oil and gas production, automobile and diesel fumes, and are more likely to have inadequate public services like sewage lines and drinking water pipes,” the report says.
Pathologizing the Black Family
The report states that the state and federal government based decisions on the welfare system on racist beliefs. Black single mothers were excluded from support payments in the 1990s, although they needed it more. Black families are more likely to lose their children when allegations of abuse are made. While Black children make up only 14 percent of American children, 23 percent of the children foster care are African-American. The report also points to a disproportionate rate in the incarceration of Black juveniles.
Control Over Creative Cultural and Intellectual Life
The report says that state and federal government also failed to protect Black creatives from copyright infringement and patent protections. In addition, the government did not provide the same access to leisure sites and lifestyle activities offered to white people. It also states that Confederate figures have been displayed as monuments while the nation’s racist past has been shielded and cinematic depictions of segregation have been censored.
Stolen Labor and Hindered Opportunity
Even after slavery, American federal laws protected white workers but excluded Black people, the reports says. Black workers continue to face employment discrimination, including wage gaps today, it says.
“Approximately 85 percent of all Black workers in the United States at the time were excluded from the protections passed the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938—protections such as a federal minimum wage, the maximum number of working hours, required overtime pay, and limits on child labor,” the report’s authors said.
An Unjust Legal System
Black Americans were criminalized the demands of convict leasing programs and later on through harsh drug laws. The authors also point to the school-to-prison pipeline and the mass incarceration of Black people. The criminal justice system also fails to see Black Americans as victims and abuses and kills more Black people than any other group.
Mental and Physical Harm and Neglect
The effects of systemic racism manifest in greater rates of chronic and mental illnesses among Black people and shorter life spans, the report says.
“In addition to physical harm, African Americans experience anger, anxiety, paranoia, helplessness, hopelessness, frustration, resentment, fear, lowered self-esteem, and lower levels of psychological functioning as a result of racism,” the report says. “These feelings can profoundly undermine Black children’s emotional and physical well-being and their academic success.”
The Wealth Gap
The barriers instilled through systemic racism have blocked Black Americans from accumulating wealth. White households had nine times more assets in 2019 than Black households, according to the report. In addition, homestead and first-time homeowner programs that Black Americans were historically left out of gave away hundreds of millions of acres of land nearly for free, mostly to white families, the report says.
