What could reparations look like in California?

ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST: In 2020, California’s legislature did something no state has ever done. It created a task force to look at the legacy of slavery in the U.S. and at the history of racism in California and how those histories have harmed the state’s Black residents and to suggest possible ways the state could atone for that harm. The California Reparations Task Force laid it all out in an 1,100-page final report. And it made a blockbuster recommendation that California should pay the descendants of enslaved people who today live in the state cash reparations. So a year later, where does this effort stand? Earlier this month, California lawmakers set aside $12 million in the state budget for reparations – not for cash payments, though, for other things. Although cash payments have been the reparations movement’s central goal, both in California and nationally, politically, it’s been tough. For more, we called on NPR race and identity correspondent Sandhya Dirks, and when we spoke, she began by explaining how California got to this point. SANDHYA DIRKS, BYLINE: So reparations for slavery is something Black people have been fighting for since even before slavery was abolished. But at the national level,...