California to officially apologize for being complicit in slavery

California will issue a formal apology for being complicit in slavery during the 19th century and enforcing segregationist policies against black residents, among several new laws that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Thursday to atone for past discriminatory treatment of the state towards African-Americans.

Last year, California became the first state in the nation to explore the possibility of concrete redress for historic racism after a social justice movement was spurred by the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. A state reparations task force determined last year, among other actions, that California courts enforced fugitive slave laws and that more than 2,000 slaves were brought to California even after that it was admitted as a free state in 1850.

The formal request for forgiveness “for the commission of gross violations of human rights and crimes against humanity against enslaved Africans and their descendants” was one of dozens of recommendations made by the reparations committee last year last.

But the committee’s central suggestion – financial reparations for descendants of slaves – had little success.

The costs of a widespread payment plan, which no state has yet adopted, are estimated to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and California has faced budget shortfalls over the past two years.

Led by the California Legislative Black Caucus, state lawmakers this session introduced more than a dozen initiatives aimed at compensating Black Americans harmed by ancestral slavery. At the time, the response was hailed as an early national model for other states.