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The numbers are striking in their precision. The statistical value of each year of human life, accounting for racial differences in life expectancy: $13,619. Wealth missing due to lower rates of Black home ownership: $148,099. Average devaluation of Black-owned businesses: $77,000. Each year of disproportionate incarceration factored by race, combining lost wages and freedom: $159,792.
These calculations by California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, buried in the nearly 500-page draft of a report that will go to the state legislature in late June, belie the complexity and raw emotion underlying the first state-level effort to provide compensation for the legacy of slavery and discrimination in the US. By even considering reparations for harms that have compounded for centuries, California is transforming what has been a largely theoretical concept into a detailed model that may be adopted elsewhere as others also attempt to reckon with the costs of historical injustices. And at a potential cost of up to $800 billion, this would be to date the largest — and one of the most complex — reparations efforts in history.
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