California panel OKs reparations limit for slave descendants

By JANIE HAR
Associated Press

California’s first-in-the-nation task force on reparations has voted to limit state compensation to the descendants of free and enslaved Black people who were in the U.S. in the 19th century, narrowly rejecting a proposal to include all Black people. Tuesday’s vote was 5-4. The group said that a compensation and restitution plan based on lineage as opposed to race has the best change of surviving a legal challenge. They also said that Black immigrants who chose to migrate to the U.S. in the 20th and 21st centuries did not share the trauma of people who were kidnapped and enslaved.