Reparations for the descendants of enslaved African-Americans continues to be a hot political topic.
In California, reparations for the descendants of enslaved African-Americans recently cleared a state Senate hurdle.
If the “Golden State” passes reparations legislation, the state would put in place a plan to make amends for the enslavement of African-Americans, address systemic racism and address discriminatory eminent domain practices that displaced countless African-Americans.
State Sen. Steven Bradford of Gardena, Calif. called the bill “overdue,” stating, “This is not a handout or charity of any sort. It’s what’s owed, what is promised, what is 160 years overdue.”
California has recently been in the national news as it tries to atone for taking valuable land from African-Americans and other people of color, like lucrative beach land, via racially discriminatory eminent domain practices.
Bradford said, “The power of eminent domain has been repeatedly used to move Black and Brown people off their land, to destroy homes and to devastate the opportunity for families to build generational wealth.”
Nahlah Abdur-Rahman of Black Enterprise reported, “Cities from San Francisco to Los Angeles used eminent domain to take away minorities’ ability to build wealth through homeownership. Bradford intends for the bill to establish a path of restitution or returning of land to their former owners.
“Bradford is also the vice chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus. The caucus proposed the bills as part of its 2024 Reparations Priority Bill Package. Bradford also serves on the first-ever Reparations task force in the state and nation.”
Bradford added, “This is a debt that is owed to the people who helped build this country.”
Supporters of reparations for the descendants of enslaved African-Americans have praised California’s progressive attitude towards the movement, specifically Senate Bill 1403, which would create the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency to oversee the payment and allocation of reparati0ns to those who qualify for the money.
Bradford said, “This agency will be the necessary foundation for the implementation and success of reparations. The most important responsibility of this agency will be determining which individuals are eligible for reparations programs and services—the descendants of chattel slavery.”
Many opponents of descendants of enslaved African-Americans receiving reparations often cite hard work as the only thing stopping African-Americans from closing the wealth gap between them and White Americans.
However, a new book might shatter that line of thinking as it reports that the United States stole $600 billion from African-Americans via unfair taxes and other forms of discrimination.
The book entitled The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America by University of Virginia professor Andrew W. Kahr reports that African-Americans had 11 million acres of land seized, which accounts for $326 billion in modern dollars.
Furthermore, with unfair taxes that African-Americans had to endure, the community was cheated out of $250 billion in taxes in 2023 dollars.
Jeroslyn JoVonn Black Enterprise reported, “Starting in the late 19th and early 20thcenturies, unfair tactics were used to doubly disadvantage Black landowners by artificially inflating property value estimates for tax calculation, overcharging them for the land, and exploiting their inability to pay as a means to seize their properties.
“Examples include Anthony Fleming and J.R. Rooks, two Black men forced off their farmland by White supremacist mobs, who went on to establish a town with the goal of enabling Black Americans to own land. By 1911, Edmonson, Arkansas, encompassed 30 square miles of stores, a bank, a hotel, and a post office for local Black homeowners.
“However, 2o years later, the town was no more after White plantation owners plotted to seize the land by imposing taxes on lots the Edmonson residents were unaware of. Once the residents failed to pay the taxes they had no clue about, the plantation owners seized the land. It was deeded over to one of the plantation owners who had concocted the scheme and demolished all the buildings.”
The late George Floyd’s great-great grandfather Hillery Thomas Stewart, Sr. lost 24 acres of land “under dubious circumstances” in the 1920s because he failed to pay $18.83 in taxes.
Losing the land, led the family into a life of poverty.
Infamously, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed Floyd after Chauvin arrested him for passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenient store approximately a century later in 2020.
Chauvin took a knee to Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes after the Houston native pleaded that he could not breathe, as bystanders filming the innocent begged for Chauvin to relieve the pressure on Floyd’s neck.
Floyd had moved to Minneapolis in search of jobs and a better way of life after growing up in the Cuney Homes housing projects in Houston’s Third Ward neighborhood.
Additionally, many know of the story of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Okla.
The African-American community boasted of successful businesses, land ownership and affluent and professional residents.
All of that disappeared after a lie by White residents on a young Black male led to one of the biggest race massacres in 1921.
In the blink of an eye, much of the Black wealth in the Black Wall Street community was decimated.
Recent years has seen discrimination in bank lending lead to the racial wealth gap between African-Americans and White Americans.
Furthermore, the undervaluing of African-American homes has led to lost wealth.
Many African-American homeowners have mysteriously seen the value of their homes balloon after they allow their friends from the White community pose as the actual homeowners.
The wealth that African-Americans lose when their homes are undervalued cheat them out of generational wealth because of the color of their skin, while this discrimination is gifting White families generational wealth because of the color of their skin.
As a result of this reality and others like redlining, many proponents of African-Americans receiving reparations like State Rep. Gene Wu (D-Texas) wonder what should African-Americans get reparations for because an argument can be made that African-Americans should receive reparations for slavery, redlining, the stealing of their property by racist White Americans and for housing and banking discrimination.
