In January, Black lawmakers in Sacramento released the nation’s first statewide reparations package, a slew of bills intended to compensate the descendants of enslaved Black people.
Though nascent, the policies — each now progressing through the Legislature at different stages — heralds California’s multi-year plan to make amends for its past wrongs.
If all passed, their impact would be far-reaching. One bill would create new grants to increase Black enrollment in STEM programs. Another would address racial disparities in homeownership. A third requests a formal apology from the governor for the state’s past “human rights violations and crimes.”
Notably missing are any bills promising direct cash payments to Black Californians, a move that many state legislators and residents have called essential.
But as California draws headlines as the first state to tackle reparations, local governments in San Diego are following suit.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors expects to vote soon on whether to endorse the state’s reparations package. And last week, the San Diego City Council voted unanimously to back it.
There was no shortage of public support, either, with the meeting drawing impassioned elected leaders and residents alike — including the former San Diego lawmaker who initiated the statewide effort.
“When you look at the depth of the harm, when you look at the long history of what’s taken place, it is more than just a check,” Secretary of State Shirley Weber told the council. “It’s a changing of attitude, it’s a changing of policy, it’s how we address issues and how we see them, and that’s what makes a difference.”
A long list of attendees lined up patiently in the queue to share their stories and cases. Councilmember Henry Foster III shed tears as he spoke on the item, which he had originally proposed be added to the agenda.
In one instance, Ellen Nash, who chairs both the San Diego chapter of the Black American Policy Association and also the county’s Human Relations Commission, approached the podium and said twice, “I am a descendant of slavery.”
Kamilah Moore, chair of the state’s first reparations task force, pointed to a UC Berkeley poll last year that found that 60 percent of Californians “acknowledge the deep and continuing human damage caused by centuries of slavery and the segregation and persecution of Black people that continued long after slavery legally ended in 1865.”
To her, that’s indicative of broad support for reparations programs.
“Supporting this resolution is crucial not only for the City of San Diego to align with the Task Force’s recommendations but also to reflect the sentiments of the majority of Californians,” she said.
The push for reparations in California gained steam in 2020, when the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer prompted protests for police reform and racial justice nationwide. A swath of policy changes would be later introduced, and in that same year, Weber had enough support to propose and pass legislation to establish the state’s task force.
The nine-member group — including Monica Montgomery Steppe, now San Diego County’s first Black female supervisor — was tasked with researching and developing recommendations to the state.
About three years later, the effort culminated in a more than 1,100-page document issuing close to 150 recommendations based on evidence collected about the legacy of slavery, from housing discrimination and health harms to mass incarceration and over-policing.
The recommendations also owed largely to the public input received during public meetings, task force members said.
“We really listened to people’s stories of the type of discrimination, harm and injustice that they and their families had gone through,” Montgomery Steppe told The San Diego Union-Tribune. “A lot of those stories are written in the 1,100-page task force report.”
She hopes two bills in particular will have a direct impact on the county.
Assembly Bill 1975, she says, can greatly improve medical services by making food and nutrition intervention a permanent part of Medi-Cal benefits.
And Assembly Bill 2064 aims to fund solutions to reduce violence in Black communities by establishing a state-funded grant program. A 2022 study found that Black people represented just 5 percent of the county’s population but 14 percent of violent crime victims.
“It would give us a better footing for funding those programs,” she said, referring to the prospect of both bills. “The county is often the funnel for a lot of the funding.”
She also says financial compensation, which was among the recommendations from the task force, should still be considered for the state’s reparations laws.
For now, she is trying to secure her fellow supervisors’ backing for the state legislative package.
At a July 16 board meeting, Montgomery Steppe had proposed a resolution to signal the county’s support but later pulled it off the agenda. Her office said she intends to bring it back.
Eventually, the District 4 supervisor hopes the U.S. might one day have its own reparations task force.
“We still have hearts and minds to change; this thing doesn’t happen overnight,” Montgomery Steppe said. “But the fact there’s now a package, and we are at a point where we can call it a reparations package, and the bills are getting through the Legislature — I’m happy to be a part of it and will keep on pushing.”
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