By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

Federal and state governments, including California, failed to protect Black artists, culture-makers, and media-makers from discrimination and simultaneously promoted discriminatory narratives.

Further, state governments memorialized the Confederacy as just and heroic through monument building while suppressing the nation’s history of racism and slavery.
Government actions at every level across the country, including California, have directly segregated, and discriminated against African Americans at work.

After intensive research, the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans reached those conclusions and made concrete recommendations to compensate those affected.

The group issued its interim report to state legislators on June 1.
Separate from the federal proposal pushed by Texas Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, the report surveyed ongoing, and compounding harms experienced by African Americans because of slavery.

It also studied the lingering effects the slave trade had on America.
The report includes a set of preliminary recommendations for policies that legislatures in the Golden State could adopt to remedy the harms.
Officials plan to release a final report next year.

“Federal and state policies like affirmative action produced mixed results and were short-lived,” Task Force members wrote in the report.
“African Americans continue to face employment discrimination today in the country and California,” members wrote.

They determined that the American government at all levels, including in California, has historically criminalized African Americans for social control and maintaining an economy based on exploited…