Calif reparations committee demands formal apology for term made popular by Ronald Reagan

California’s reparations task force not only wants billions in reparations, it is also demanding a formal apology for former President Ronald Reagan coining the term “welfare queen” and for the low number of black doctors and lawyers in the state as partial penance for slavery and racism.

(Video Credit: Fox News)

Governor Gavin Newsom instituted the task force in 2020. The committee formally approved its final recommendations over the weekend to go to the California legislature. It will have to, in turn, decide whether to implement the measures and send them to the governor’s desk to be signed into law. Newsom has already ostensibly declined to back reparations checks, claiming that slavery’s legacy is about “more than cash.”

Among the recommendations issued by the task force is that the state gives a formal apology enacted by the legislature and signed by the governor for slavery and anti-black racism.

“The legislature must apologize on behalf of the state of California and the people of California for the perpetration of gross human rights violations and genocide of Africans who were enslaved and their descendants through public apology, requests for forgiveness, censure of state perpetrators, and tributes to victims,” the committee asserted in its proposal.

The demands for reparations in California are odd considering the state never allowed slavery, according to Fox News. Tip-toeing around that fact, advocates accuse the state of still upholding the institution and discriminating in other ways against black Americans.

(Video Credit: KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco)

“In issuing its apology, the legislature must formally apologize on its own behalf, and on behalf of the state of California, for all of the harms delineated in the [task force’s final] report, and for the atrocities committed by California state actors who promoted, facilitated, enforced, and permitted the institution of chattel slavery and its legacy of ongoing badges and incidents of slavery that form the systemic structures of discrimination,” the committee wrote.

“California — its executive branch, courts, and legislature — denied African Americans their fundamental liberties and denied their humanity throughout the state’s history, from before the Civil War to the present. By participating in these horrors, California further perpetuated the harms African Americans faced, imbuing racial prejudice throughout society through segregation, public and private discrimination, and unequal disbursal of state and federal funding,” the members ridiculously railed.

The task force went on with its trumped-up charges, demanding the apology include a “censure of the gravest barbarities carried out on behalf of the state by its representative officers, governing bodies, and the people,” noting a number of examples in a “non-exhaustive list.” On that contrived list was Reagan using the term “welfare queen,” which the task force called “racist coding to promote his philosophy preferring a limited government.”

The accusation is in reference to Reagan’s time as governor of the state. He served from January 1967 to January 1975. The term “welfare queen” became popular when Reagan used it during the 1976 presidential campaign. The term “welfare queen” referred to a mixed-race woman named Linda Taylor, according to a 2019 biography that portrayed her as a con artist and criminal.

She was prosecuted for welfare fraud but critics contend she wasn’t a good example of someone who abused the system, calling the term stereotypical. The task force insists that “welfare queen” is a racist term that is used to smear primarily single black women who live on government benefits.

“This terminology conjures stereotypes of single black women as hypersexualized, aggressive, and dependent on government income with frivolous spending habits,” the report claims. “Despite that the majority of welfare recipients are white, this racist label blamed African American women for shortfalls in the United States’ social safety net and suggested they were more responsible for their poverty than others.”

The task force also wants the California legislature to apologize for there not being enough black doctors and lawyers.

“African American physicians are underrepresented in California’s medical field, further exacerbating the inequities in the healthcare system,” the task force charged.

“White people comprise 39% of the state’s adult population yet are 66% of California’s active licensed attorneys, while African Americans are 6% of the adult population in California and only 3% of all attorneys,” they claimed.

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