California’s reparations movement reached a new milestone after state lawmakers recently set aside $12 million in its next budget to provide recompense to Black residents.
The allocation potentially represents the largest investment yet in the fledging campaign for reparations.
The budget deal is “historic,” said Chris Lodgson, a reparations activist who lobbied lawmakers on the issue.
“Obviously, it’s not enough,” Lodgson said. “But this is the first time ever that reparations for Black people will be a line item in a state budget.”
California is pursuing what could become the country’s largest, and most expensive, government-funded effort to offer reparations to Black residents for decades of racial discrimination.
But the $12 million included in California’s $300 billion budget is a fraction of what reparations activists wanted. Last year, a reparations task force established by the state legislature recommended billions in reparations, including $1.2 million in payments for lifelong Black California residents older than 50 years old.
Given the state’s financial condition, supporters say they’re encouraged that any money was allocated at all. In addition to a nearly $50 billion budget shortfall in the coming fiscal year, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has declared a statewide fiscal emergency.
“In this tough economic climate,” state senator Steven Bradford (D) said, “for us to find this money for reparations sends a signal not only to the state but to the nation that California is committed to addressing the harms that are the result of slavery in this country.”
California is seen by many activists as a potential benchmark for the national reparations movements, which has spread to cities and states across the country since the death of George Floyd in 2020 and the months of protests that followed. Earlier this month, Chicago issued a formal apology to Black residents for the harms caused by slavery, Jim Crow laws and present-day policies, and Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) signed an executive order creating a city reparations task force.
The District of Columbia’s 2025 budget proposal includes $1.5 million to establish a commission to study reparations for Black Washingtonians descended from enslaved people or affected by Jim Crow-era institutional racism. The measure still must be approved by the D.C. Council.
But the movement has also seen setbacks. Recently, Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group, filed a lawsuit to stop the country’s first government-funded reparations program in Evanston, Ill., which had already paid nearly $5 million to 193 of the town’s Black residents. And the Oklahoma Supreme Court recently dismissed a lawsuit by survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre seeking reparations.
“In the wake of the Tulsa decision and the Evanston lawsuit, folks have been asking: ‘Is the reparations movement really going anywhere?’” said Trevor Smith, executive director of the BLIS Collective, a nonprofit focused on restitution for Black and Native Americans. “So the fact that California continues to lead the way is really important.”
The state’s reparations effort is still facing resistance from state Republicans and some Latino and Asian lawmakers, who have argued that it’s unfair to make current residents, a majority of whom are people of color, pay for the sins of the state’s White founders.
“Most every Californian, regardless of race or background, comes from a lineage involving immense pain and struggle,” assemblywoman Kate Sanchez (R) said in a statement. “Singling out just one demographic is extremely problematic and likely unconstitutional. The problems of the past cannot be paid for by the people of today.”
The California budget legislation doesn’t spell out how the $12 million would be spent. Instead, it calls for the money to applied to reparations-related bills still working their way through the legislature.
Lawmakers are considering more than a dozen reparations initiatives. One bill would establish the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency to oversee reparations programs. Another would create a grant program to fund community-driven efforts to tackle violence in neighborhoods and schools.
None of the pending legislation call for direct cash payments to the descendants of enslaved people, despite the state task force’s recommendations.
“We’re never going to take cash payments off the table,” said Bradford, the state lawmaker. “But we’re trying to level set to let folks know that cash payments are probably a long ways off.”
