California lawmakers announced the nation’s first set of reparations bills on Wednesday, with legislation that would require the state to recognize and apologize for systemic racism against Black residents for nearly two centuries.
The 14 proposed bills tackle a wide range of areas of discrimination, from mass incarceration to housing segregation, but do not include any financial compensation for descendants of longtime Black residents affected by the legacy of slavery, the most controversial recommendation to emerge from California’s previous reparations taskforce report.
