Will California Realize Reparations to Its Black Residents?

May 17, 2023

The California Reparations Task Force is readying its final report to the state legislature by July 1st. California lawmakers in 2020 passed AB 3121, establishing this first-of-its-kind task force to determine the scope of harm and potential for redress to the state’s Black residents. The group of nine spent two years conducting hearings and gathering testimony.

One member of the task force, Lisa Holder, told YES! Magazine in 2021 that the group’s goal was to make “evidence-based recommendations” drawn from two years of gathering testimony and documenting the harms arising from “the original systems of oppression, like slavery and Jim Crow segregation, and the continuing and ongoing systems of oppression that we’re seeing in institutional racism and structural racism.”

The task force is sending its interim report, which includes suggested financial compensation, to the state legislature for debate and approval.

Holder, who is President of the Equal Justice Society spoke with YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar about the report in an interview on Rising Up With Sonali.

The views expressed here and on Rising Up With Sonali do not necessarily reflect the opinion of YES! Media.

Sonali Kolhatkar is currently the racial justice editor at YES! Media and a writing fellow with Independent Media Institute. She was previously a weekly columnist for Truthdig.com. She is also the host and creator of Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. Sonali won First Place at the Los Angeles Press Club Annual Awards for Best Election Commentary in 2016. She also won numerous awards including Best TV Anchor from the LA Press Club and has also been nominated as Best Radio Anchor 4 years in a row. She is the author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence, and the co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women's Mission. Her forthcoming book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights, 2023). She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. She reflects on her professional path in her 2014 TEDx talk, “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host.” She can be reached at sonalikolhatkar.com