What to know about reparations

California policymakers are grappling with how to make amends for historic injustices. From slavery and lynchings to Jim Crow laws, exclusion from the GI bill, and slowly-fading redline policies, African Americans have suffered centuries of government-sponsored racism.

These policies denied many African Americans the opportunity for a quality education and threw obstacles in the path out of poverty into the middle class. California’s Reparations Task Force, created through legislation in 2020, is developing proposals to try to right these historic wrongs, including possible changes to public education. Draft recommendations are available now, and a final report will be issued before July 1, 2023.

What are reparations?

Reparation means making amends for a wrong. Reparations can take the form of an apology, money, or other policy changes.

Reparations are not new. The United States paid reparations to the Japanese Americans who were locked up in internment camps during World War II. It also paid Native Americans compensation for unjustly taking land. Germany recently offered reparations to elderly Jewish holocaust survivors living in Ukraine.

Reparations are controversial. A 2021 Pew Research Center survey indicates that most Americans view reparations negatively. “Three-in-ten U.S. adults say descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should be repaid in some way, such as given land or money. About seven-in-ten (68%) say these descendants should not be repaid.”

Pro and con arguments regarding reparations:

Why is California considering reparations?

The quick review below summarizes some of the discriminatory government policies that have led to consideration of reparations for African Americans. Political actors in some states are looking to suppress schools from teaching students about this history.

For hundreds of years, Americans were given free rein to enslave millions of Africans, who were denied access to education among other wrongs. In many southern states it was illegal to teach a slave to read or write.

It wasn’t until 1808 that Congress outlawed the importation of slaves. To formally address slavery required a Civil War and changes to the US Constitution.

• The 13th Amendment (1865) abolished slavery.
• The 14 Amendment (1868) gave citizenship to all people born in the US.
• The 15th Amendment (1870) gave Black Americans the right to vote.

Jim Crow laws affected California, too

The Civil War wasn’t the end of it, either. Jim Crow laws, enacted right after the war, legalized segregation. These laws denied African Americans the rights to hold jobs, to vote, and to receive a quality education.

Redlining and restrictive covenants prevented non-whites and Jews from buying real estate in restricted neighborhoods, creating segregated residential patterns that persist to this day. (See maps in Redlining California, 1936-1939.)

Nearly 100 years after the introduction of Jim Crow laws, the United States finally passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation in public places and discrimination in employment.

GI Bill of Rights discriminated

After World War ll, the GI Bill of Rights helped returning service men and women by providing college tuition, low-cost home loans, and unemployment insurance. But… it was structured to deny benefits to African Americans.

Many African Americans were unable to get mortgages, get a good education, and buy houses, and thus unable to pass on intergenerational wealth to their children.

California’s racist education history

Schools served “whites only”

For many years, “Negroes, Mongolians and Indians” were not allowed to attend public school in California. They had to go to separate schools. Starting in the 1870s, lawsuits brought by African American, Chinese American, and Mexican American parents pushed California to change education policy. The original “only whites” policy changed to separate but equal public schools. It took decades of lawsuits and then a US Supreme Court decision in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education, to ensure that all students have the right to attend integrated public schools.

Low-funded schools served African Americans

For many decades, California education funding was based primarily on local property taxes. Wealthy communities could raise more money. Students in schools that served African American and Hispanic students in poorer communities received less funding.

The California Supreme Court decided in 1982 that this system violated the state constitution because differences in taxable wealth from one school community to another generated gross inequities in funding per student. California then moved to an education system primarily funded by state income tax to eliminate these inequities.

California’s school funding for needy students

It wasn’t until the passage of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) in 2013 that California’s school finance system started to direct more money to districts for students with high needs. As explained in Ed100 Lesson 8.5, the system directs supplemental funding toward districts where students are learning English, low income, and/or in foster care. Under California’s constitution, it is illegal to base funding on race.

Because of LCFF, school districts serving larger percentages of low-income African American and Hispanic students now receive more money, or should do so. Initial research connects increased funding with improved student outcomes.

Proposals to Change California Education

The Reparations Task Force has developed preliminary recommendations to address the achievement gaps of African American students.

To avoid creating programs explicitly defined by race, some have suggested that programs be directed to the “lowest-performing subgroup”. Black students are generally regarded as the lowest-performing student subgroup, but Native Americans may disagree with this characterization.

Below are education-related policies in consideration by the Task Force. Adoption of recommendations is up to the legislature and governor.

• Create porous school district boundaries that allow students from neighboring districts to attend.
• Increase the availability of interdistrict transfers to increase the critical mass of diverse students at each school.
• Modeled on the GI bill, provide college scholarships for Black high school graduates.
• Provide free tuition to California colleges and universities.
• Fund African American/American Freedmen owned and controlled K-12 schools, colleges and universities, trade and professional schools.
• Add Black students to the existing three student groups listed in the Supplemental Grants provisions of LCFF. See pending proposals.
• Adopt a K-12 Black Studies curriculum.
• Improve funding and access for educational opportunities for all incarcerated people in both juvenile and adult correctional facilities.