ONE CITY block in Manhattan Beach, a ritzy town just south of Los Angeles, is not like the others. On a hill above the shoreline, sitting snug between McMansions masquerading as beach houses, is a grassy area. A square monument, inscribed with “Bruce’s Beach Park”, invites visitors to read about the history of the place. In the early 1900s, this land belonged to Charles and Willa Bruce, an African-American couple who ran a beach resort for black Angelenos. Unhappy with their new neighbours, white residents of Manhattan Beach persuaded the city to seize the land. In 1924 Bruce’s Beach, as the resort was known, was condemned. Last year, nearly a century after their land was stolen, the city transferred the land to the Bruce’s great-grandsons, who then sold it back to LA County for nearly $20m.

The return of Bruce’s Beach to the Bruce family was part of a national reckoning. After George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020, sparking weeks of protests, municipalities around the country agreed to study reparations for slavery as a way to atone for America’s original sin and the legacy of segregation. “The essential component of a reparations programme”, argues William Darity, of Duke University, “is the elimination of the racial wealth gap.” In 2019 the median net worth of black families was roughly 13% that of white ones, according to the Federal Reserve’s most recent survey of consumer finances. Things look even worse in southern California. One study from 2016 suggests that black residents of Los Angeles possessed about 1% the wealth of their white neighbours.

California, which prides itself on being a laboratory for America’s most progressive policies, jumped in head first. In 2020 San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, the city council, established a task force to study reparations. Activists in Los Angeles want reparations for (mostly Mexican and Indigenous) families who were removed from their homes so that the city could eventually build Dodger Stadium. In September 2020 California’s state legislature passed a law creating its own reparations task force. It remains the only state to do so. After more than two years of meetings, the nine-member committee must present its final report to the legislature by July 1st.

California entered the union as a free state in 1850, so the report focuses largely on the effects of discriminatory policies over generations rather than recompense for slavery. Over hundreds of pages, the study lays out California’s history of discrimination and racial terror, precedents for reparations, an analysis of what black Californians who are descended from slaves may be owed, and a wish-list of policies aimed at eliminating racial disparities in health, wealth, housing and education.

The details in the report about previous reparations schemes are compelling. Jewish refugees received reparations from Germany after the Holocaust. Indigenous children forced into Canadian boarding schools were compensated for their suffering. In America, Japanese-Americans successfully lobbied for cash payments decades after their incarceration during the second world war. In 2021 California approved payments to people who were forcibly sterilised in state prisons.

Yet in each of these examples, people were compensated for specific horrors, not systemic disparities resulting from those harms. John Tateishi, a Japanese-American who was incarcerated at Manzanar, the prison camp in California, supports reparations for African-Americans, but cautions against equating the two campaigns. “You can’t even begin to compare our effort with what they’re trying to do,” he says. “We had a beginning and ending point, whereas slavery, it’s a forever thing in this country.”

To calculate the cost of health disparities, the task force started with the assumption that a human life was worth $10m, and divided that number by the average life expectancy of a white American to get the annual value of a life absent racial discrimination. That figure, multiplied by the difference between white and black life expectancy, the committee argues, equals the wealth lost. Different formulas were used to determine the cost of mass incarceration and housing discrimination. All told, the task force estimates that black Californians could be entitled to up to $1.2m per person. Never one to be outdone, San Francisco’s report suggests paying each eligible resident $5m.

It is unclear how many people would receive payments were the programme ever implemented. California has about 2.5m black residents, but eligibility is limited to those who can prove they are descended from slaves. Mr Darity, who consulted on the report, reckons that the total cost could exceed $800bn, more than double the state’s annual budget. That sum could swell. The task force says this compensation would be a “down payment” on reparations. In addition, the report urges lawmakers to fund a new government body, the California American Freedman Affairs Agency, to help applicants with their claims and disburse payments.

Last year California enjoyed a surplus of nearly $100bn thanks in large part to federal pandemic relief. This year it is staring at a $32bn deficit. San Francisco faces a $780m shortfall of its own over the next two years. Gavin Newsom, the state’s Democratic governor, set low expectations last month when he said that reparations “is about much more than cash payments”. He later walked back the comment. London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, has declined to endorse her city’s proposal.

Even task-force members seem pessimistic. Reverend Amos Brown, a member of both California’s and San Francisco’s reparations committees, was once a student of Dr Martin Luther King. “The first thing we ought to do is chill,” he says. Ever the pastor, he uses scripture to urge pragmatism. “As the book Book of Isaiah says,” he recalls, “Come, let us reason together.”

Supporters of reparations also fret about the precedent California could set if lawmakers were to take up the proposal. Mr Darity worries that federal reparations become less likely if more states and cities pursue their own schemes. Evanston, Illinois—the first municipality in America to begin paying reparations—is distributing housing vouchers. New York, where slavery was legal until 1827, may soon launch its own commission.

The push for federal reparations has stalled regardless. John Conyers, a former congressman from Detroit, first introduced a bill to study the subject in 1989. The latest version is sitting on a shelf. That is probably because reparations are deeply unpopular. A recent survey from Pew Research Centre suggests that just 30% of Americans support reparations for slavery. Democrats are evenly split on the issue. Even among reparations’ supporters, cash payments are less popular than scholarships for black students, business financing and housing assistance.

This leaves California in a tricky spot. Endorse the report, and empty the state’s coffers. Ignore it, and disappoint black Californians who were energised by the state’s well-intentioned, but impractical, study. It is relatively easy and cheap for Democrats to signal a desire to squash pervasive racial disparities by supporting the study of reparations. Eventually, though, the bill will come due.■

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