Reparations Alone Won’t Achieve Racial Justice
California has embarked on a necessary reckoning over slavery and oppression that will inevitably be incomplete.
Anthony Bruce holds the official Bruce's Beach property deed after receiving it at a ceremony to return ownership of Bruce's Beach in Manhattan Beach, California, to the descendants of a Black family who had the land stripped from them nearly a century ago.
Photographer: David McNew/Getty Images
California is attempting to reckon with its history of racial oppression and violence and produce justice, in the form of reparations, from the bitter fruit. If the state succeeds in its reckoning it will be an enormous public service. If it should actually succeed in dispensing justice it might be something more like a miracle.
The Task Force to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans was created by an act of the California legislature in 2020. Though a final report to the legislature isn’t due until July, the task force, which functions with assistance from the state Department of Justice, has produced more than 100 preliminary recommendations for “future deliberation.” The suggestions range from making official apologies to implementing a “detailed program of reparations for African Americans.”