‘Racial wealth gap, racial terror, racial trauma, race-based traumatic stress – they are creating new categories of grievances
Katy Grimes
Katy Grimes, the Editor in Chief of the California Globe, is a long-time Investigative Journalist covering the California State Capitol, and the co-author of California’s War Against Donald Trump: Who Wins? Who Loses?
The $297.9 billion budget plan California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrat leaders announced Saturday appropriates $12 million to fund a series of reparations-related bills lawmakers undoubtedly will pass later this year.
While crime escalates, California public schools fail students, homeless drug addicts live on city streets, already high energy costs are climbing higher, gas prices are highest in the nation, grocery and food costs are horrendous, California’s Democrat lawmakers – responsible for all of this – are teasing out reparations – for blacks in a state that supported the Union during the Civil War.
In May, Democrats passed a bill to create a new reparations state agency called the “California American Freedman Affairs Agency,” to assist Californians with any approved reparations programs. The bill was passed in the Senate in a split 30-7 vote, with 3 abstentions. SB 1403 is currently in the Assembly judiciary committee.
Senate Bill 1403, authored by Senator Steven Bradford (D-Gardena), would establish the California American Freedmen Affairs Agency in state government, under the control of a secretary, who would be appointed by the Governor.
“This is a commonsense measure, something that’s long overdue for California and the nation,” said Senator Steven Bradford.
There is nothing common sense about the plan or proposed state agency.
“It seems to me like they’re putting, number one, the cart before the horse,” Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R-Corona) said. “They’re setting up these agencies and frameworks to dispense reparations without actually passing any reparations.”
Democrats continue with this diversionary, dangerous vanity project despite that 59% of all Californians oppose cash reparations payments, with only 28% in favor of them, a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) poll found in September.
Early on in the Reparations Task Force, members made clear they were seeking social justice state payments for being black. Task force member Jovan Scott Lewis said: “Spoiler-alert: We don’t yet know the racial wealth gap in the state of California. This is the preliminary conversation to figure out what we know and what we don’t know.”
Another task force member Dr. Cheryl Grills said: “Racial terror leads to racial trauma … also known as race-based traumatic stress,” the Globe reported in December 2022.
Remember this: “Racial wealth gap. Racial terror. Racial trauma. Race-based traumatic stress,” – they are creating new categories of grievances.
The Task Force recommended a plan that would have cost the state up to $800 billion. This received widespread backlash from across the political spectrum, the Globe reported.
As the Globe said, the state Reparations Task Force is pulling a bait-and-switch on Californians – with talk of a “racial wealth gap,” “racial terror,” “race-based traumatic stress,” and “guaranteed income for dependents of slaves.” But what they are really promoting is social justice reparations.
Reparations talk is a distraction from the failures of the governance of California. But distractions are the best failing politicians can come up with.
As the Globe reported last August, “reparations of any type are likely violations of Proposition 209, recently reinforced by a second statewide vote.
A local historian friend shared this with the Globe:
“Before and during the Civil War militia companies were ethnic, generally social groups with others from the ‘old country’ such as German, Irish, and Italian companies all over northern California. This was not then considered segregation, it was a place to socialize with those of similar backgrounds. Sacramento had a black militia company in that era. Many from those units joined the California Volunteers and fought in the eastern battles.
In the [Sacramento] Land Park area (there is a monument marker in the park) that was Camp Union Sutterville where seven regiments of infantry, two regiments of cavalry, and smaller specialized units were trained and participated primarily in two Union moves. One was to replace regular army troops in the west and they garrisoned posts all the way to Salt Lake City, founding an army base in that area that is still active. The other went to southern California and joined units raised in that area. Confederates had occupied what is now Arizona and New Mexico up to the California border. Camp Union troops were involved with pushing them back into Texas and when the war ended Sacramento troops were well established in that state.”
“That is a win,” Democratic Assemblywoman Lori Wilson, the chair of the Legislative Black Caucus, said in an interview, the Sacramento Bee reported. Lori Wilson is the Assemblywoman who authored a bill last year to require judges adjudicating disputes over transgender-identifying children to favor the parent who “affirms” the child’s preferred identity – meaning a parent could lose custody for not “affirming” or agreeing to a child’s claims about gender identity.
Wilson’s statement demonstrates that the state’s Democrats aren’t listening, and certainly are not on the right side of history. This diversionary plan of theirs is nothing more than a redistribution of taxpayers hard-earned income, and allows them to focus on anything other than the disaster their policies have created in California.
“This looks like the kind of bill Governor Newsom is going to want to veto,” Gail Heriot, Professor of Law at University of San Diego told the Globe in April. “If California creates a bureaucracy to administer reparations, the pressure to implement the Task Force’s extravagant recommendations will get stronger and stronger—like a train rolling downhill. Even if those recommendations were a good idea (which they aren’t), California cannot come close to affording them. The whole thing is irresponsible.”
Because of vehement opposition to giving any kind of monetary compensation coming from both California residents and lawmakers alike, all cash reparations proposals were dropped. Instead, lawmakers focused on general improvement reparations bills, which they claimed would come at no or little cost to the taxpayer…
Except it is going to cost taxpayers $12 million in this budget and a new state agency, and that’s just the start. See where this is going?
