Reparations matter to Black people voting this year

Hey fam, 

The topic of reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans as well as the nation’s longstanding anti-Black policies has been largely absent in the news cycle during this election season. Over the past few years, we’ve seen stories on this issue from URL Media partners, but this recent piece from Capital B elevates the conversation as the countdown to November 5 continues. It explores the fight for reparations in California, a lone state in the country taking active measures to advance reparations legislation for African Americans. 

In June of last year, The Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans released a 1,062-page report examining reparations and California’s involvement in slavery, anti-Black racism, discrimination and the ongoing harms affecting Black Californians. Earlier this month, the state also conducted its largest reparations survey of Black Californians to gauge voters’ sentiments on the issue and how it might impact their vote this year. The survey shows that Black Californians — across political affiliations — overwhelmingly support reparations, with eight in ten people saying a political candidate’s stance matching their own would increase their likelihood of supporting that candidate. 

This newsletter aims to unpack the fight for reparations and looks at examples of redress in other states, including Chicago, as reported by Prism.

What is reparations?

First, it’s worth noting that reparations are a system of redress for egregious injustices, as scholar and director of the University of Maryland’s Social Justice Alliance Rayshawn Ray explains in this 2020 report “Why We Need Reparations for Black Americans,” published by the Brookings Institution. Ray, who more recently spoke with Capital B, shared that reparations aren’t a foreign concept and that other groups have received restitution, adding, “It’s just that Black people have been excluded from it.”

Redress for other groups who have been historically harmed

While making a case for reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans, the report highlights that Native Americans have been compensated with land and billions of dollars through various programs as redress for being forcibly removed from their ancestral lands. Similarly, the U.S. supported reparations for Jewish people after the Holocaust, contributing to investments over time, in addition to West Germany’s 1952 agreement to pay $845 million to Holocaust survivors.

Collectively, Black Americans have yet to receive reparations for state-sanctioned racial discrimination and violence, despite slavery having enabled some white families to amass significant wealth. Today, the average white family has roughly 10 times the wealth as the average Black family.

The fight for reparations continues

Ray notes that despite previous support for Black reparations from the Biden Administration and momentum from groups of Black, Indigenous and Latino activists — including a coalition of activists outside the Democratic convention last week who called on Black voters to withhold their vote without a serious commitment to reparations from the Harris-Walz campaign — national leaders don’t currently view the issue as an electoral priority. 

“It feels like Democrats think that by focusing on reparations, it will be political suicide for the party,” he said. 

In Los Angeles, a city known for its sunny weather, palm trees and classic ’90s films like Boyz n the Hood, Friday and Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, Capital B notes that the city’s share of Black residents has dropped from nearly 20% to less than 8% in recent years. This population decline is something researchers and residents tell the outlet isn’t accidental.

“Black people are keenly aware,” one LA resident told the news organization. “There’s a sense of feeling that people are being moved out. Black people know when we are being abused.”

A report supporting reparations released by the city this week emphasized how several policy decisions, such as redlining, building highways through Black neighborhoods, voter suppression, the war on drugs, rising living costs and other factors, have made life unsustainable for Black Angelenos. 

The report also includes summaries of 12 areas of harm, which provide historical, economic and other evidence of harm inflicted upon African Americans, including sections on racial terror, stolen labor, political disenfranchisement, and the wealth gap. Highlighting results from its ethnographic reparations survey that uncover how the city has impacted its Black residents and ways to repair harm, over 75% of respondents noted that the city’s policies and law enforcement practices negatively impacted them, and about 67% recalled being impacted by food deserts.

Other cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, have also released their reparations reports.

Remembering historical wrongs: The campaign for reparations in Chicago

Redress for America’s treatment of enslaved Africans is not just about addressing historical injustices but also about confronting present-day harms and policies that continue to negatively impact Black communities. This includes issues related to policing and incarceration. Recently, Prism spoke with Jennifer Ash, the executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Foundation, which honors survivors of torture by former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, a ruthless law enforcement officer whose unit terrorized more than 120 people, particularly Black men, across the city from 1972-1991.

For context: In 2015, Chicago organizers secured the first reparations package for victims of racially motivated violence, which included $5.5 million in financial compensation to the survivors, a formal apology from the Chicago City Council, free tuition to Chicago City Colleges for survivors and their families and a memorial. 

The public memorial is the only component of the reparations package that has yet to be realized.

When asked about the role of memorials in preserving histories, Ash replied, “I think this memorial is particularly important because it… inscribes what happened onto the landscape of Chicago. It doesn’t allow our city to forget what happened, and it’s also a place where organizing can take place for the present and the future.”

More: A reparations plan for Black residents faces its first legal test in Chicago suburb (Prism)

In January, the California Legislative Black Caucus introduced its 2024 Reparations Priority Bill Package, a strong effort to address a broad spectrum of issues ranging from criminal justice reforms to property rights and education. The package includes 14 measures currently sitting in the state legislature.

One of them, ACA 7, aims to amend the California Constitution to fund programs that increase life expectancy, improve educational outcomes or lift specific groups out of poverty. AB 1815 seeks to extend the CROWN Act to prohibit discrimination based on natural and protective hairstyles in competitive sports within the state, while SB 1050 focuses on restoring property taken through racially motivated eminent domain or providing restitution where appropriate. Additionally, AB 1975 proposes to make medically supportive food and nutrition interventions a permanent part of Medi-Cal benefits in California.  As California makes legislative efforts to be a model for healing, repair and progress for the rest of the country, the fight for reparations remains a key issue. With about 70 days left in the election cycle, we’ll be following conversations in the news and from URL Media partners about legislative developments and their potential impact on reparations and justice for Black communities.