(TheRedAlertNews.com) – California may decide to pay over $800 billion in so-called “slavery reparations” to its black residents, according to an estimate presented by economists to the state panel exploring the topic.
While the state of California never had slavery, the reparations will be compensating black Californians for “generations of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration, and housing discrimination,” The Associated Press reported.
The report stress that the preliminary estimate for the recommended total slavery reparations in the state is over 2.5 times California’s annual budget, which is around $300 billion.
However, the $800 billion figure doesn’t include an additional recommended reparation.
These include an extra compensation of $1 million per older black resident whose average life span is allegedly shortened by health disparities.
It also excludes compensating black residents for property the state took unjustly or devaluing black businesses.
“Black residents may not receive cash payments anytime soon, if ever, because the state may never adopt the calculations,” the AP report commented.
Its report comes after California’s reparations task force met on Wednesday for further discussions of the proposed figures by a group of five economics and policy experts.
“We’ve got to go in with an open mind and come up with some creative ways to deal with this,” said state Assembly member Reggie Jones-Sawyer, one of the two lawmakers on the reparations task force.
Even though the $800 billion figure was first presented in September, the task force is approaching the July 1 deadline for issuing a reparations recommendation to California’s government.
“My family came from the South because they were running for their lives, they were fearful of being lynched, just for voting. Cash payments are necessary. Money talks,” commented Charlton Curry of Sacramento, California, on his Big C Sports podcast.
He argued that whites benefited from free federal government land through the 1862 Homestead Act, while Japanese Americans mistreated during World War II and Jewish Holocaust survivors received reparations.
The report points out that critics of the reparations push stress that California was never a slave state, and current taxpayers cannot be responsible for past events.
“No amount of money could ever ‘make right’ the evil of slavery, and it is insulting to suggest that it could,” commented Bob Woodson, a prominent black conservative.
He argued that black Americans relied on their faith and families to establish thriving communities after slavery.
“Some of these communities only began coming apart after we lost sight of these values, which also hold the key to these communities’ restoration,” Woodson said.
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