This week, something called the California Reparations Task Force formally adopted a proposal that would compel the Golden State to fork over reparations to its qualifying black residents, a recommendation the organization’s name suggests was inevitable.

“Reparations are not only morally justifiable,” said Democratic California congresswoman Barbara Lee in the wake of the task force’s announcement, “but they have the potential to address long-standing racial disparities and inequalities.” Given the taxpayer-funded sum the task force wants to see allocated to individual beneficiaries — potentially up to $1.2 million per eligible resident — it’s reasonable to expect that this policy would create as many inequities as it might resolve.

The task force’s final report recommends allocating disbursements to qualified residents based on a subjective assessment of their relative exposure to a racially hostile experience — both those that involve indisputable bigotry and those that are dubious or fabricated.

The program the task force envisions is billed as compensation for the descendants of enslaved Americans, but it has defined eligibility in far broader terms than that. For example, black residents who resided in the state from the early 1930s until the late 1970s and were subjected to the Roosevelt-era policy of “redlining” certain districts to create or establish racially homogenous neighborhoods might receive as much as $148,099. Newer black residents don’t have to fret, however. Locals who lived in the state from 1971 to 2020 are eligible for compensation addressing the impact of “over-policing and mass incarceration,” to the tune of up to $115,260. The biggest lump sum is reserved for black Californians who can demonstrate experiencing “health disparities” presumably attributable to racist policies. For them, up to $966,921 will be on the table.

A black senior citizen who has lived her whole life in the state and can claim to have been exposed to all the various harms raised in the report might be eligible for compensation in the seven-figure range. Determining who can stake a legitimate claim to having endured state-sponsored racism among California’s roughly 2.5 million black residents would be left to a newly established state agency, which would also process and disburse payments. But the task force doesn’t envision an agency that applies much scrutiny to applicants. “The State of California created laws and policies discriminating against and subjugating free and enslaved African Americans and their descendants,” its report reads. “In doing so, these discriminatory policies made no distinctions between these individuals; the compensatory remedy must do the same.”

And, if the task force’s recommendations are followed to the letter, these sums will not take the form of credits or grants. Cash payments only, please — preferably via direct deposit.

By the admission of advocates for a policy that pursues reparatory justice via cash payments, this policy would not remedy racial injustice or prevent future similar injustices. Rather, it is “a step,” said Tulane University economics professor Gary Hoover, toward “closing the income and racial wealth gap.” Generational wealth “is sticky,” he said, and reparations “can close that stickiness.” But if racial abuses in America are as prevalent as a certain class of activist claims, and almost every institution in America has racial injustice embedded in its DNA, the psychological trauma and material deficits black Americans experience will endure. No one-time payment will or even could repair the damage, much less prevent future abuses.

“The initial down payment is the beginning of a process of addressing historical injustices, not the end of it,” the task force’s report declared. We believe them.

Recipients of these funds will find that their good fortune has not erased the stain of historic racial injustice nor cleansed human nature of its flaws and frailties. Those who paid the taxes for these sums — almost all of whom had nothing to do with the wrongs in question, which may have occurred before they were born or when they were living in another country — will awake the morning after to find that this gesture has had no meaningful effect on the public debate around America’s racist legacy or their supposed collective responsibility for restitution. A program of monetary reparations could in short order exacerbate the racial grievances it was meant to resolve.

Then there is the distasteful but nevertheless relevant question of where these astronomical amounts are supposed to come from. Sacramento entered 2022 operating under the impression that it had a $45 billion budget surplus, so the Democrats in command of the state’s purse-strings went on a spending spree. Governor Gavin Newsom promised to guarantee “universal access to health care,” delay a gas-tax hike, sink tens of millions of dollars into programs designed to promote an “oil-free future,” revitalize forestry and drought management, improve mental-health housing services, clean up the streets, and, finally, get that high-speed rail service up and running. But it was all an illusion. California didn’t have a budget surplus at all but, rather, a $25 billion deficit.

So far this year, the state is generating revenues that are $4.7 billion below even the governor’s January forecast. All told, the task force’s recommendations are estimated to cost between $500 billion and $800 billion — well beyond California’s roughly $300 billion total annual operating budget.

Little things like the deep unpopularity of monetary reparations proposals, where this money comes from, and weeding out the victims of “mass incarceration” from the justly incarcerated may seem like grubby practical considerations from the perspective of an ideological activist. But weighing practical concerns is what lawmakers are elected to do. Even Newsom has subordinated his sympathy for the cause to the impracticality of implementing its recommendations, and it’s not hard to see why. Though he cloaked his rejection of the panel’s report in the notion that America’s racist legacy “is about more than cash payments,” the governor’s refusal to be saddled with this liability is explained by elementary political horse sense.

Repairing America’s racial divide once and for all would be a wonderful development. But in lieu of a grand racial rapprochement forged on the basis of ready cash, California should consider instead trying to foster a business environment that is at least as friendly as North Africa’s. Orienting the state toward policies that generate wealth for everyone would do more to help Californians, including the state’s African-American population, than a one-time payoff ever could.