Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a formal apology for California’s role in slavery and the legacy of anti-Black racism as part of a series of reparations bills he approved Thursday.
“The State of California accepts responsibility for the role we played in promoting, facilitating and enabling the institution of slavery, as well as its lasting legacy of persistent racial disparities,” Newsom said in a press release. “Building on decades of work, California today takes another important step in recognizing the grave injustices of the past and repairing the harms caused. »
Although California banned slavery in its 1849 Constitution, the state had no laws that made it a crime to keep someone in slavery or required their release, allowing the slavery to continue. A disproportionate representation of white Southerners with pro-slavery views also held positions in the Legislature, the state’s judiciary, and its congressional delegation.
Assembly Bill 3089, which requires the state to issue a formal apology, also requires California to install a plaque commemorating the apology in the state Capitol. Rep. Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles), who introduced the bill, called it a “monumental achievement.”
“Healing can only begin with an apology,” Jones-Sawyer said in a statement. “The State of California recognizes its past actions and is taking this bold step to correct them, recognizing its role in hindering the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness of Black individuals through punitively motivated laws racist. »
Despite signing the bill, reparations supporters criticized the governor and Democratic lawmakers for making little progress in their “first-in-nation” effort to study, propose and adopt remedies to atone for slavery that started in 2020.
After a state task force spent two years developing recommendations for the Legislature, the California Legislative Black Caucus in January announced a set of priority bills focused largely on enacting changes policies in education, health care, and criminal justice, while omitting cash payments in light of state policies. financial problems.
Reparations advocates have criticized Newsom and Democratic lawmakers for making meager progress on the issue.
(Laurel Rosenhall/Los Angeles Times)
Newsom also signed bills to provide new oversight of book bans in California prisons, require grocery stores and pharmacies to provide at least 45 days’ written notice before closing, expand a state law State banning discrimination based on hairstyle to include youth sports and to attempt to increase and track participation in job training among black and low-income students, among other laws.
But the governor was criticized when the Legislature refused to pass other bills for a vote that would have created a California American Freedmen Affairs Agency and established a Reparations and Restorative Justice Fund to finance and implement the reparation policies approved by lawmakers.
A day before signing the formal apology bill, Newsom vetoed two other reparations bills. One sought to begin the process of overturning racially motivated land and property seizures under the Freedman Affairs agency, which lawmakers have refused to approve. The other would have expanded health coverage, pending federal approval, to include benefits for medically covered food and nutrition.
“This bill would result in significant and ongoing costs to the Medi-Cal program general fund that are not included in the budget,” Newsom wrote in his veto statement.
