In the post-World War II era, German bureaucrats tallied billions in reparations owed to Holocaust survivors. Every Deutsche Mark and carefully handwritten ledger was a confession in numbers, a recognition that words alone could never undo the crimes of the past. Germany sought not only to compensate victims but also to educate a nation and integrate moral accountability into the very fabric of its institutions. The horrors of the Holocaust could not be erased, but the state made itself a living custodian of responsibility.
Meanwhile, half a world away, the U.S. government has never issued direct reparations to enslaved Africans or their descendants. The empty promise of “forty acres and a mule,” made during the Reconstruction Era, was quickly revoked after President Andrew Johnson’s 1865 order returned confiscated land to former slaveholders. Since then, many hollow congressional efforts have only attempted to explore the question of reparations, never fully implementing them. One of the most notable endeavors, H.R. 40, was presented by Rep. John Conyers in 1989 and reintroduced annually for over three decades. Yet this proposal merely establishes a process to examine reparations in theory and recommend policies, lacking material restitution or structural remedy for the centuries of exploitation and racial injustice that followed slavery.
A cotton sharecropper plows a landowner’s farm in 1937 | Image Source: Library of Congress
Even as national leaders debate reparations, California’s actions reveal how far acknowledgement remains from policy change. Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 7, a measure that would have allowed public universities to give admissions preference to descendants of enslaved Americans. “Unnecessary,” he called it. Universities “already have the authority” to provide admissions preference to descendants of slavery or other minorities. But that authority has no basis in current law. Critics quickly pointed out that Proposition 209 prohibits public universities from factoring race or ancestry into admissions decisions, leaving many wondering what power Newsom was referring to. His veto unveiled tension in California’s self-image: a state eager to acknowledge both current and historical injustices, but incapable of taking the steps that real repair demands.
A practical attempt to address centuries of systematic injustice, A.B. 7 aimed to create a tangible pathway for descendants of enslaved Americans to access higher education opportunities long denied to their ancestors. Empirical studies reveal that modern education inequality is rooted in the history of American slavery. Economists Graziella Bertocchi and Arcangelo Dimico found that the racial education gap observed in 1940, nearly eighty years after emancipation, was strongly correlated with the density of enslaved populations in 1860. In states where slavery was most entrenched, Black Americans were far less likely to attain high school or college degrees. Emancipation promised freedom, yet it fell painfully short in delivering equality.
In the ashes of slavery emerged new, subtler structures of exclusion whose legacy persists in shaping schools and other institutions across the nation. Decades of redlining and housing discrimination meant that non-white families were funneled into neighborhoods deemed “high-risk” or undervalued. By the mid-20th century, school districts in formerly redlined areas were left underfunded and underresourced, and the inequalities they inherited have not vanished. According to the U.S. Department of Education, predominantly white school districts collectively receive about $23 billion more in annual funding than majority-nonwhite districts.
Despite California’s progressive reputation, its flagship universities remain strikingly unequal. Take the University of California system, which had roughly 236,000 students in Fall 2024, of whom about 84.2 percent were California residents. Examining race and ethnicity further reveals this underrepresentation, as Black students continue to make up only a small share of the undergraduate population. In Fall 2024, Black students comprised just 4 percent of UC Berkeley’s undergraduate population — 1,351 out of 330,070 — falling far below their 5.5 percent share of California’s population and reflecting only a modest increase in UC system-wide enrollment over the past two decades.
Meanwhile, a 2024 report from the UCLA Civil Rights Project reveals a hard truth in K-12 education: American schools are now more structurally segregated than ever before. Gary Orfield warns that “there has been no significant effort to support integration for nearly 50 years, and we are betting our educational and social future on inaction.” The consequences of systematic failure are far-reaching, as schools that are intensely segregated by race and poverty produce lower academic outcomes and fewer college-ready graduates. Over the past three decades, the proportion of intensely segregated schools — those with fewer than 10 percent white students — has nearly tripled, leaving millions of students in classrooms that reflect the racial divides of their communities.
What California and the nation lack now is a commitment to directly address inequalities and create policies that expand access to opportunity. The case of Germany after World War II offers a model of advancement. From 1948 to 2018, the German government paid roughly $86.8 billion in compensation and restitution to Holocaust victims and their heirs. Research from the Bank of Israel discovered that these reparations correlated with children of Holocaust survivor families becoming 1.4 to 8.2 percentage points more likely to pursue tertiary education, leading them to earn up to 13.5 percent more in wages.
California’s efforts have stopped tremendously short of the same kind of transformation. While the state’s Reparations Task Force, the first of its kind in the nation, has spent years examining racial inequalities and proposing remedies, its most ambitious recommendations, such as cash restitution and educational preference programs, have yet to be enacted. Newsom’s vetoes landed like a cold slap against years of advocacy, terminating the momentum that had finally begun to transition research into impact. In a state that prides itself on progressive leadership, the governor’s poor justifications stand unconvincing and insincere, a reminder that symbolic gestures remain the cheapest form of politics when structural change is what’s truly essential.
Featured Image Source: Black Students Of California United
