The leader of California’s first-in-the-nation reparations taskforce on Wednesday said it would not take a stance on how much the state should compensate Black residents whom economists estimate may be owed more than $800bn for decades of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration and housing discrimination.
The $800bn is more than 2.5 times California’s $300bn annual budget and does not include a recommended $1m per older Black resident for health disparities that have shortened their average lifespan. Nor does the figure count compensating people for property unjustly taken by the government or devaluing Black businesses, two other harms the taskforce says the state perpetuated.
“All forms of discrimination should be considered in reparations,” Thomas Craemer, a public policy professor at the University of Connecticut, told the panel on Wednesday. “The taskforce should feel free to go beyond our loss estimates, and determine what the right amount would be.”
Black residents may not receive cash payments anytime soon, if ever, because the state legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom will ultimately decide whether any reparations are to be paid. The taskforce faces a 1 July deadline to recommend the forms of compensation to be awarded and who should receive it, along with other remedies.