A newly formed Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery will administer reparations in the state of California after Gavin Newsom just approved that bureau’s creation, but there’s still no word on what the reparations will look like.
The City and County of San Francisco discussed the idea of reparations for Black residents for a while in 2023, which drew negative national headlines for the fact that they discussed $5 million lump sum payments for descendants of slaves. But the entire SF reparations idea ended up being eliminated by London Breed herself thanks to budget cuts, and all that came from the effort was a measly formal apology.
Though there was a state-level effort on reparations too. That effort produced a reparations bill last year, though that bill did not make it out of committee. The California Legislative Black Caucus tried another go at it this year, and Politico reports that Newsom signed their 2025 reparations bill last week…