CRAZY DAY IN SACRAMENTO: Today, the California Legislature plans to hold several hearings on so-called “reparations” bills.
*Assembly Bill 7 would allow state colleges and universities to give preferential treatment in admissions to the descendants of American slavery.
*Assembly Bill 57 would make possible “home purchase assistance” for the descendants of American slaves (if at some point a Bureau for the Descendants of American Slavery is established (see Senate Bill 518), which will identify who is and who isn’t a descendant of American slavery).
*Senate Bill 437 would provide funding for California State University to further research slavery reparations and especially to figure out how to determine who is descended from American slaves and who isn’t.
*Assembly Bill 742 would provide preferential treatment in licensing for descendants of slaves (if at some point a Bureau for the Descendants of American Slavery is established (see Senate Bill 518), which will identify who is and who isn’t a descendant of American slavery).
And there are more such bills.
Note that California was not even a slave state.
Oh … and there’s a new effort to repeal (partially) Proposition 209. It never ends. We whipped their butts when they tried to repeal Proposition 209 back in 2020, despite being outspent by MORE than 14 to 1. We managed to derail last year’s effort to repeal it by trickery through Assembly Constitutional Amendment 7 (ACA7) (which passed the Assembly, and which looked like it would pass in the Senate, but mercifully did not). That effort would have allowed the governor to make virtually unlimited exceptions to Proposition 209.
This year’s effort is also called ACA7, but I believe that is just a coincidence. The new ACA7 exempts education from Proposition 209’s prohibition of preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. For K-12, the exemption would be total. For higher education, the exemption would exclude admissions (since that is already prohibited by the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (2023)). But discrimination in financial aid and everything else would no longer be prohibited by Prop 209.
None of these bills has passed either the Assembly or the Senate and with luck they never will. It’s hard to tell at this point whether they should be taken seriously. I can’t imagine that Governor Gavin Newsom, who is desperately trying to position himself as a “Not Crazy” Presidential candidate, would be happy to have to take a stand on them. Still, we at the American Civil Rights Project don’t like to take chances. We’ve filed opposition letters to several of the bills.
But with all the problems California has—fires, crime, water shortages, transportation messes, homeless encampments, drug abuse, immigration—it’s incredible the Legislature thinks it has time for this.
By the way, there are so many bills they can’t handle them all in one day. Tomorrow, Assembly Bill 1071, a criminal procedure bill to combat white supremacy and systemic racism, will be heard.