California’s reparations task force approved a proposal to pay up to $1.2 million black residents, and residents are threatening President Joe Biden’s 2024 election bid if he doesn’t sign an executive order to make it happen.
The Oakland based nine-member panel, which was formed in the wake of 2020’s nationwide George Floyd protests, voted to advance a plan that would cost the state $800 billion for “systemic repression.”
“Apologies alone are inadequate to provide justice to victims or redress wrongs,” a May 6 draft of the task force’s “Recommendation for California to Apologize reads.
“But when combined with material forms of reparations, apologies provide an opportunity for communal reckoning with the past and repair for moral, physical, and dignitary harms.”
Though California outlawed slavery when it joined the union in 1850, the draft highlights that by enforcing the federal Fugitive Slave Act though 1865, the state did not guarantee thee freedom of Black people.
The breakdown of annual payouts per person includes payouts based on specified kinds of racial discrimination, including $2,352 for mass incarceration, $13,619 for “injustices and discrimination in health,” and $3,366 for “discriminatory lending and zoning” for residents of the state between 1933 and 1977.
The maximum package for a native-born 71-year-old resident could cost over $1.2 million, which would cost the state two and a half times their annual $300 billion budget.
Despite the sky-high price tag, some residents who spoke at Saturday’s meeting demanded hundreds of millions of dollars per person.
California residents threaten Biden to sign an executive order for reparations or they will not re-elect him. They forgot he was installed pic.twitter.com/RZ7tBplePN
— • ᗰISᑕᕼIᗴᖴ ™ • (@4Mischief) May 6, 2023
“You know that the numbers should be equivocal to what an acre was back then. We were given 40, OK? We were given 40 acres,” said Reverend Tony Pierce.
“You know what that number is. You keep trying to talk about now, yet you research back to slavery and you say nothing about slavery, nothing.”
“So, the equivocal number from the 1860s for 40 acres to today is $200 million for each and every African-American,” he concluded.
Another resident complained that the $1.2 million payouts were racial “injustice.”
“This million dollars we’re hearing on the news is just inadequate and a further injustice,” they complained.
“If that’s what this task force is going to recommend for Black Americans for 400-plus years and continuing of slavery and injustice that we have been forced to endure. To even throw a million dollars at us is just an injustice.”
During Saturday’s meeting, some residents threatened Biden’s shot at a second term if he refuses to hold the state accountable for the task force’s findings.
“Pay the debt, cut the check,” one person said. “Or no reparations, no vote 2024.”
“If you are running for office, do not think you’re going to win your election if you don’t have a concrete plan for reparations,” another warned.
“Biden, do not seek a second term unless it’s accompanied by an executive order for reparations for descendants of American chattel slavery.”
Conservative presidential candidate Larry Elder torched the woke state for the proposed payouts.
Elder posted a CNN article about former NAACP leader and race faker Rachel Dolezal claiming she identified as black.
“If a non-black person in California identifies as African-American can he/she/they receive the state’s proposed reparations of up to $1.2 million? Asking for a friend,” he posted on Sunday.
Conservative commentator, Robert W. Malone, MD, said that “every person not of color living in California needs to get out now.”
If a non-black person in California identifies as African-American can he/she/they receive the state's proposed reparations of up to $1.2 million? Asking for a friend…#Reparations pic.twitter.com/SnLxAMiD0L
— Larry Elder (@larryelder) May 8, 2023
“This will not only bankrupt the state but will force homeowners to sell their property to pay the huge tax increases that may be coming,” he cautioned.
While another Twitter user wondered why California was even considering paying reparations in the first place.
“Reparations for what? None of these people were slaves,” wrote Tracy May. “And they all own iPhones made by slaves.”