Recently, a panel in California was created to consider reparations for Black residents. The panel voted to approve recommendations for the payments of reparations to Black Californians for injustices and discrimination stemming from slavery. These recommendations are not justified for many reasons.
First, and most importantly, California was not a slave state. However, where it is proven that the government took discriminatory action, fair compensation should be paid. This is what happened recently in Manhattan Beach, California. Charles and Willa Bruce purchased beachfront property there in 1912 and operated a resort for Black residents. The property was known as Bruce’s Beach. In 1924, the city of Manhattan Beach condemned the property under a false pretense of developing a park. The city never used the property as a park. In 2022 the County Board of Supervisors in Los Angeles returned ownership of the beachfront property to the living heirs of the Bruces.
Second, California has discriminated against Jews, Native Americans and Asians, who are at least as entitled to compensation as Black Californians.
All throughout California there are thousands of restrictive covenants against Jews written into deeds for land. I purchased property near Lake Tahoe years ago that had a restrictive covenant against Jews. I had it removed. In La Jolla, California, where I now live, Jews were banned. According to the book “American Jewish History” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) “La Jolla had an unwritten understanding, a ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ regarding Jews in the 1950s. La Jollans wanted to keep Jews out their town because of class fears as well as anti-semitism.”
Roger Revelle, the scientist who championed the establishment of the University of California San Diego in La Jolla said: “You can have a university or an anti-Semitic covenant. You can’t have both.” In 1960, Dr. Jonas Salk was given 27 acres of land in La Jolla for the Salk Institute by the City of San Diego. The same year UC San Diego was formed. These two events broke down the anti-semitic walls around La Jolla.
In 1942, during World War II, 112,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up in California, as well as in a few other western states. These American citizens were sent to relocation centers (including the Manzanar War Relocation Center) in desolate eastern California.
Among the promoters of this unconstitutional internment was Earl Warren, then the Attorney General of California. Warren, who became Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, years later lamented his support for detaining Japanese-Americans. Warren said that he “deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens.”
The United States belatedly compensated Japanese-Americans who were interned and paid them each $20,000, a modest sum considering that most of them lost their homes and businesses. California did not contribute a single penny to compensate Japanese-Americans rounded up in the state.
In 1850, California passed a law called “An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.” This law did not protect Native Americans; it provided them instead with forced labor. Historian James Rawls said, “The name of this law sounds benign, but the effect was malign in the extreme degree. Any White person under this law could declare Indians who were simply strolling about, who were not gainfully employed, to be vagrants and take that charge before a justice of the peace, and a justice of the peace would then have those Indians seized and sold at public auction.”
In 1852, the California legislature passed the Foreign Miner’s Tax, a tax on the earnings of Chinese and Mexican prospectors, making it impossible for them to compete financially with the white miners. The state also imposed an alien poll tax—a tax of a fixed amount, in this case $2.50 per month—on each Chinese adult working in the country. Additionally, the Chinese were often allowed to seek gold only in mines that had already been abandoned by White prospectors.
Because of the actions taken against them by the state government, most Chinese miners during the gold rush were forced to work as cooks and launderers.
About 10,000 to 15,000 Chinese workers came to the United States to build the Central Pacific Railroad. Chinese workers found some economic opportunity, but also experienced hostility, racism, violence and legal exclusion. Many came as single men — others left families behind. Railroad companies considered Chinese migrants a source of cheap, unskilled labor. In America in the 1800s, Chinese workers were seen as racially inferior to White workers. Employers used this prejudice to justify paying Chinese workers less than other workers and to relegate Chinese workers to the most undesirable jobs.
The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a rail company chartered by US Congress in 1862 to build a railroad eastwards from Sacramento, California, to complete the western part of the “First transcontinental railroad” in North America. CPRR ceased operation in 1885 when it was acquired by Southern Pacific Railroad. Now the railroad is owned by the Union Pacific Railroad.
California has discriminated against many minorities, including Jews, Native Americans, Asians and Mexicans. We cannot afford to provide reparations for all of them. Further, current California residents should not be forced to pay for the discrimination that took place more than 50 or 100 years ago.
But we do have an obligation to attempt to right the wrongs committed by our ancestors. I propose that in lieu of reparations, we should dramatically increase school funding in inner cities, like South Central Los Angeles, Oakland, Watts, Indian reservations and other poor areas. Currently, schools in poor areas have failed to properly educate students and prepare them for careers.
We need to pay teachers significantly more to work in these areas. Education is the best way to escape poverty. It should also start with preschools. The University of Pennsylvania found that, “Public preschool improves the eventual labor productivity of young children who are enrolled. These labor productivity effects show up much later. Preschool also provides childcare and thereby increases labor force participation for certain lower-income households that show up earlier.” It would be a good start.
Joel Joseph is an attorney and chairman of the Made in the USA Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting American-made products. Email joeldjoseph@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2023
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