By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff Writer

While the fate of reparations for African Americans in California awaits decisions from the governor and other lawmakers, the state already is setting the stage for progress with new disaggregated data collection.

As of Jan. 1, a questionnaire that asks all new state employees to list their racial/ethnic background has been expanded to further identify whether a person is a descendant of U.S. chattel slavery.

The 1070 form reads, “All new/rehired employees are requested to voluntarily self-identify their race/ethnicity and gender in order to monitor and evaluate the provision of equal employment opportunity and non-discriminatory employment practices within the state civil service.”

The revised form allows respondents who identify as “Black or African American” to check off if they are “A descendant of a person or persons who were enslaved in the United States (Y)”; “Not a descendant of a person or persons who were enslaved in the United States, including, but not limited to, African Black, Caribbean Black, or other Black (N)”; or “Descendant status is unknown or choose not to identify.” Previous changes allowed for more diversity by those listed under Asian and Pacific Islander.

“The update to the State Employee Race/Ethnicity Questionnaire (CalHR 1070 form) to include three additional ethnicity categories for Black or African American groups is consistent with the governor’s Executive Order N-16-22 to embed explicit analysis of equity considerations in policies and practices,” said Camille Travis, the California Department of Human Resources’ (CalHR) deputy director of communications.

According to Travis, as of June 30, 18,624 civil service employees identified as Black or African American.

The recent change is the result of years of efforts by reparations champions. The landmark Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans submitted its comprehensive final report to the governor in June. Among its recommendations are monetary compensation and reform that addresses historical disparities in health care access, education, housing and criminal justice.

Chris Lodgson, a lead organizer with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California (CJEC), said data collection is a key start to meeting those objectives.

“First, it will help us correct a mistake that we’ve been making for the past 400 years, not to count the people whose ancestors built this country as people,” Lodgson said. “The second thing that collecting this data would do will be to help us design better policy and better benefits and programs and solutions for this particular group. It will help us design and direct those things to this particular group and then the third thing that it does is help us with knowing who is eligible for reparations.”

It’s a step in the right direction, Lodgson said.

“We’ve been in this country for hundreds of years,” he continued. “It’s 2024 and we’re just now starting to count us as a specific group of people. While we’re very happy, we were also very mad before this. We’re less mad now.”

California Takes The Lead

Lodgson and other CJEC partners wrote the language for the bill that led to this data collection back in 2020, before the reparations task force was created. The cause was taken up by Assemblymember Chris Holden and added to his Assembly Bill 105, also known as the Upward Mobility Act of 2021. The bill was vetoed, but revisited a year later as AB 1604 and then Section 14 of Senate Bill 189 in the 2022 budget, where it was passed into law. California is the first to collect this information and stands to become a model for other states to follow suit.

“As California goes, so does everybody else,” said area activist and education champion Lorreen Pryor-Trowell. “We’re setting the precedent that makes it OK to disaggregate data. Just like you have different communities that represent the underpinning of Latinos, Latinx or whatever, there are multiple groups and there are multiple groups of Blacks in the ‘Black/African American’ category. It’s important that we identify who it is and where they are so we can actually see kind of who’s at a disadvantage.”

While not technically a state employee, Pryor-Trowell worked for the Legislature for nearly 20 years.

“Everybody talked about the need to collect data,” she said. “But it was data overall, regarding who was being given access to state contracts, who was representative in state offices in terms of their employees. We even wanted them to identify who was in the Capitol. So I think that this is a great mechanism that we now have at our disposal. We should take full advantage of making sure everybody is identified. It’s not to separate, it’s to disaggregate so that we know who’s where.”

Several entities and representatives from other states have reached out to the CJEC, in hopes of replicating their efforts. Among them, Lodgsdon says, is the national Office of Management and Budget, which controls the U.S. census.

“The Office of Management and Budget has been holding listening sessions and public comment on how it should or could change the 2030 census,” Lodgson said. “Nobody knew this, but we gave a presentation last year, showing them our law here in California and urging them to update the census in 2030 with the same thing. They were really happy to hear our presentation and then they asked us to send them the form when it came out so they could look at it.”

The goal, Lodgson said, is to expand this data collection to include existing and retired state employees, those applying for public assistance and students at colleges and universities throughout the state.

“There has to be a will to want to do that,” said Pryor-Trowell, who leads the Black Youth Leadership Project. “The fact of the matter is, there has not been a will to do anything specifically for Black people, period. So there would have to be a will and an understanding of why the data is important in the first place to be able to get it to expand and/or get people to understand why it needs to expand to other areas.

“Interesting to me, though: they can collect data on, for instance, school discipline. And nobody has a problem, but when we talk about identifying groups, in different areas, there seems to be a problem. When we stop making excuses, maybe we can get something done.”

Lodgson points to the “for us, by us” progress that has been made in advancing the reparations cause in California.

“This is an example of what you can accomplish in the political [arena] without having to be a real political person. Everyday people can make real change,” he said.

“I really can’t underscore how important this is morally for us. This is a form of repair, not a form of reparations, but a form of repair for us. When we came to this country, when we were taken and brought to this country, a lot of our history was broken. A lot of us were broken. And that was on purpose, so now we’re making our government repair and fix what it broke. And this is one of the most important first steps in a long time.”