The report also highlights that historical injustices have helped fuel modern-day disparities, noting that California’s
stagnant rates of Black homeownership, racial
disparities in police arrests and use of force, a
large gap in the average wealth of Black and white families and
unequal discipline of Black students compared to their white peers are least in part the results of decades of social engineering designed to exclude Black Californians from gaining access to the same political, financial, employment and educational opportunities as their white counterparts.
Such exclusion also had support at the federal level, which the report takes care to document, highlighting that in the years before enslavement and in the decades after its collapse, all levels of government worked with private actors to preserve and deeply entrench racial discrimination.
“Reparations is a federal responsibility first and foremost,” Moore said. “The report has nationwide breakdowns for each chapter to constantly remind people that even with the current California effort, this is primarily a federal responsibility.”