California apologizes for slavery, but no reparations

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California has issued a formal apology for its role in slavery and its past discriminatory policies against black people, but the US state has no plans to offer reparations to descendants of slaves.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed into law a formal declaration Thursday that will be preserved in Western State archives.

The text states that California “accepts responsibility for the role we played in promoting, facilitating, and enabling the institution of slavery, as well as its enduring legacy of racial discrimination.”

“California is now taking another important step in recognizing the grave injustices of the past and repairing the harms caused.”

The statement was the main recommendation of a task force created in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and anti-racism protests that followed the death at the hands of police of George Floyd in 2020.

Black activists welcomed the apology, but some said the state should offer financial compensation.

“Apologies alone are not enough – they must include material reparations,” Kamilah Moore, an attorney and former chair of the task force, said on X.

If combined with money, Moore said, “an apology can lead to community reckoning and reparation.”

California never joined the Southern states that allowed slavery, but it allowed southerners to bring their slaves into the state during the California Gold Rush, and it prosecuted all slaves on the run.

After the Civil War of 1861-1865 and the nationwide abolition of slavery, the state banned interracial marriages for decades, tolerated local branches of the racist Ku Klux Klan party, and implemented policies that effectively kept black people out of certain neighborhoods.

Last year, a task force in the California city of San Francisco recommended paying $5 million in reparations to every eligible black citizen — an idea that Republican politicians denounced as “absurd” and unrealistic.

A dozen U.S. states have issued official apologies for their involvement in slavery.

In December, New York State – which did not fully abolish slavery until 1827 – established its own task force to study “the legacy of slavery and its lingering effects” and issue recommendations on how to “address these long-standing inequalities.” “.

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