California Moves to Create Genealogy Office for Reparations Eligibility

The California Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would create a new state agency for implementing the state’s reparations task force recommendations and determine which individuals qualify as descendants of American slaves.

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After passing the Judiciary Committee, the bill kept its provision defining descendant as including “descendants of a free Black person living in the United States prior to the end of the 19th century,” but amended its section that had included “African American descendants of a chattel enslaved person [living in the United States]” to now more widely include “descendants of an African American chattel enslaved person in the United States.”

According to analysis shared by the National African American Reparations Commission, lineage-based reparations programs such as these could result in white Americans becoming the majority of those qualified for reparations.

“{snip} A large-scale DNA study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics concluded that, nationwide, about 3.5 percent of people who identify as white—including around 5 percent of white Californians—have at least one percent African ancestry,” wrote Michael Harriot. {snip}

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