As similar commissions across California have faded away or await legislative action to enact their proposals, Alameda County renewed its commitment to its Reparations Commission this week by giving it a two-year extension.
That doesn’t mean the commission’s work has gotten any easier. In fact, it will face greater pressure to lay out a path to offering Black residents reparations for slavery and other racial injustices by July 1, 2026 — with just a fraction of its requested budget.
“This is not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” said Supervisor Nate Miley, author of the resolution that created the commission. “The work that Alameda County has done has kept momentum. While some momentum has slowed — there are obstacles and challenges — but at the end of the day, we are seeing progress.”
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors created the Reparations Commission in June 2023 at the same time as other government bodies from San Francisco City Hall to Berkeley Unified School District and the State of California formed their own task forces focused on reparations for slavery in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement.
Reparations commissions have found middling success in their work so far. San Francisco’s commission produced more than 150 recommendations, but most were rebuffed by Mayor London Breed, who cited the city’s budget deficit. BUSD’s task force published a report in June that the district has committed to explore. And California’s Reparations Task Force released its final report and recommendations on June 29, leading to an apology for advancing slavery but stalling on the most far-reaching proposals.
California Reparations Task Force member and Oakland-based Equal Justice Society President Lisa Holder said the commissions are important even if reparation proposals are not adopted entirely. The scholarly research on anti-Black racism must be thorough because it will be used to support remedies targeting the Black community — a high bar in America’s “colorblind” legal system, she said.
“They are they are critical for public education. They are critical for future legal defense purposes, and they are a critical underpinning for legislation,” Holder said. “Your legislative proposals that you outline have to be evidence-based, so that is why you need these reports.”
Alameda’s Reparations Commission is the only remaining reparations commission in California that has not issued a final report, partly because of county supervisors’ three-month delay in appointing the full 15-member commission due to the death of two board members.
Supervisors approved an additional $92,340 on Sept.17 for the commission’s ongoing work — less than 2% of the $5 million requested by commissioners — to deliver an action plan that could be used by the county to address anti-Black racism. That isn’t enough to finish the job, reparations commissioner Shadrick Small said.
“The weight of the task that’s before us demands resources,” said Small, a researcher at the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. “If we don’t have those resources, we won’t be able to do the thorough job that you have nominated us to do.”
While members of the commission say they are discouraged by a significantly reduced budget, Miley wants the commission to produce policies that can make a lasting impact on the county. He would like to see proposals to support specific marginalized communities as well as broader initiatives that address disparities in education, housing and employment.
“I would like to see something about the injustice done to Russell City,” Miley said, referring to the majority Black and Latino community in the East Bay that was forced out by racist policies in the 1960s when it was annexed by Hayward. “I hope that the county makes this part of our institutional structure that is part of our vision for the county in 2036 that establishes goals for the next 10 years”
Though Alameda’s commission has faced delays, Holder believes the public is ready to make a long-term investment in finding the truth of California’s history of racism and bringing it to light.
“Anti-Black racism is 400 years old in this country. I would like to think that people’s interest does not have a two-year shelf life,” Holder said. “I have confidence … there’s tremendous momentum around reparations that’s going to last for more than two years. I believe it’s going to last decades, frankly.”
