Good morning, Inequality Insights readers. I’m Wendy Fry.
On the heels of a crushing loss for California’s reparations advocates, I got to speak last week with author and professor Joel Edward Goza about his latest book “Rebirth of a Nation: Reparations and Remaking America,” which is out on Sept. 24.
During our conversation, Goza and I spoke about the painful split developing between reparations advocates and the California Legislative Black Caucus, after the caucus declined to help advance two ambitious reparations bills last month and they were not enacted. “Every setback is not just an attack on the mind or a disappointment, but it’s a trauma for the soul,” he said, while cautioning advocates against viewing the legislative setback as defeat. “I think that we have to be really careful about when we frame California as a disappointment to the nation. The work that people are doing in California is literally the work of the impossible.”
Arguing for reparations, Goza’s book walks us through American history, starting with the racial lies we told to allow slavery to become our initial way of life. He then moves on through the era of lynchings, segregation in the Jim Crow era, and then onto mass incarceration and today’s lasting, widespread poverty and inequality. He shows us how, in each era of history, we used the exact same lies to justify our “new normal;” which he describes as an unbroken chain of deception that damaged our country’s soul. Goza gives readers an alternate version that does not place the culpability for Black suffering on the backs of Black Americans.
Goza, a professor of ethics at the historically Black Simmons College, teaches in Kentucky prisons. Before that, he worked in urban redevelopment and community activism in Houston’s Fifth Ward. His book dedicates chapters to exploring the public policies of former California Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan. Goza contrasts Reagan’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and federal anti-poverty programs with his insistence that he was not anti-Black or anti-poor. Reagan gave white people the opportunity to feel innocent while devastating Black communities under the guise of racial colorblindness, according to Goza.
“I believe we are in the midst of a racial transformation within America – that somewhere between the chants of ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Make America Great Again’ – the Colorblind Age came to an end,” Goza told me. Having studied historic racial transitions, such as after the fall of slavery and after the era of segregation, he said there’s typically a 15-year window where “a new racial age begins emerging.”
“And within this window, what California is doing is the work of reparations, so that our future can be different than what our past was,” said Goza.
Goza did not initially support reparations. Opponents of the idea, which polling indicates are a majority of Americans, have argued that it’s too costly, that it won’t address the societal problems, or that people today should not be held accountable for what happened in the past. Goza said he wrote Rebirth of a Nation about why and how he was wrong. The last part of his book offers a practical blueprint for closing the racial wealth gap and how individuals can get involved in reparative work.
“Many pages in this book hurt,” Goza warns in the introduction for Rebirth of a Nation. Many of the past few days have been difficult for Californians involved in discussions about reparations. The author said he hopes for “California to realize they are the Kansas of the Civil War. They are the Mississippi and Alabama of the Civil Rights movement.”
Goza will be talking about his book and reparations in Oakland at Allen Temple Baptist Church at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 5.
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- Sewage controversy. The County of San Diego pushed back against San Diego State University researchers who said they found evidence of toxic or lethal gasses spreading through South Bay communities, sparking widespread panic. The county says instruments used by university researchers likely delivered falsely high positive results for the presence of the toxic gas hydrogen cyanide, a byproduct of plastics, nylon and fumigants manufacturing, around the Tijuana River Valley, the Voice of San Diego reported.
- Poverty spikes. California’s expense-adjusted poverty rate increased to 18.9% in 2023, up from 16.4% in 2022 and 11.0% in 2021, according to new Census data. The rate was particularly high among Black and Latino Californians. Unlike the official poverty rate, the adjusted rate, based on the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, accounts for government benefits and expenses, including housing costs. This rate is higher in California than in any other state, the California Budget & Policy Center found.
- Affirmative action. The proportion of Black first-year students enrolled at Harvard this fall dropped to 14 percent from 18 percent last year, according to data released by the institution and first reported by the New York Times. The drop, while significant, was smaller than the school had predicted. It followed a Supreme Court decision that effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions.
- Vehicle emissions. Californians are breathing significantly less vehicle pollution, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances and first reported by KQED. State policies focused on reducing vehicle emissions have caused a 65% drop in fine particle matter between 2000 and 2019. But the research also shows disparities are widening between the communities most exposed to harmful pollutants and those most protected from them.
- Child poverty. Recent Census Bureau data reveals that child poverty in the U.S. increased to 13.7% in 2023 from 12.2% in 2022, following the expiration of the expanded child tax credit. Despite bipartisan support for some form of the credit, the issue received minimal attention during the recent presidential debate, the New Republic reported.
- Maternal health event. California Black Women’s Health Project, the University of California San Francisco’s Milk Research Lab and the UC Davis Office of Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion are hosting an event at 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 27 on antiracist birth equity research. The discussion will be led by Monica McLemore, Ph.D, a professor at the University of Washington, who is an expert on reproductive health and justice. The event will be held at the Betty Irene Moore Hall in Sacramento. More details can be found here.
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Wendy and the California Divide Team
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Wendy Fry is an Emmy-winning multimedia investigative journalist who reports on poverty and inequality for the California Divide team. Based in San Diego and Mexico, Wendy has been covering the California… More by Wendy Fry
