Alameda County, California, officials approved a cashless plan for racial ‘reparations’ after the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) purportedly failed on “its own highly publicized racial equity promises,” Fox News reported Friday.
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors agreed by unanimous vote to accept a “comprehensive reparations action plan” following more than two years of research and outreach, according to the report, but the plan does not appear to include cash payouts.
“Designed to address decades of systemic discrimination against Black residents, the plan takes an institutional reform approach rather than focusing primarily on direct individual cash payouts,” according to the report.
“Our Commission was focusing on what role did the county as a government play in systemic discrimination … and then what actions could we take as a county government to redress that?” Supervisor Nate Miley, who was a prime mover on the reparations initiative, told Fox News Digital on Thursday.
Miley said officials wanted to identify the role county government played in racist discrimination that prevented African Americans from thriving.
“I do think there could potentially be some linkages between the school district and what they came up with in our plan, as we continue to move forward to operationalize our plan,” he said.
Instead of dishing out checks, the plan outlines structural overhauls for black residents like expanding affordable housing, supporting economic development and passing criminal justice reforms, the Bay Area’s NBC affiliate reported.
The board also approved establishing a permanent standing committee on reparations to oversee the implementation. While the plan prioritizes new policies over payouts, some local leaders still support direct compensation.
According to Fox:
Alameda County recently partnered with the nearby City of Hayward to establish the $1.3 million Russell City Redress Fund. The fund will provide direct payments to survivors and descendants of Russell City, an unincorporated community seized and bulldozed by local authorities in the 1950s and 1960s for industrial redevelopment, Local News Matters reported.
These local efforts come amid a broader national wave of municipalities exploring racial redress. Most notably, the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, made headlines by distributing $25,000 housing grants to eligible Black residents to address historic housing discrimination — an initiative that is currently facing a federal legal challenge.
Five years after the OUSD promised reparations for its black students, critics and parents argued that initiative went nowhere with the district still producing dismal academic outcomes.
Interviews with former members revealed that 2021 effort fell apart over bitter disagreements regarding school closures and what role district officials should play in the reparations work.
Meanwhile, OUSD spokesperson John Sasaki told Mercury News that the task force remains “active and moving forward under strong leadership, with a clear focus on supporting Black student achievement and well-being.”
Lowell Cauffiel is the recipient of Columbia University’s prestigious Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award for his series in the Detroit News that reduced deadly racial conflict in the city in the 1980s. He is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
