Walters: Gavin Newsom embraced reparations at first. Now he’s sluggish rolling them.

George Floyd, a Black man who had been detained by Minneapolis police after a retailer clerk alleged he had used a counterfeit $20 invoice, died as Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for greater than 9 minutes, ignoring Floyd’s complaints that he couldn’t breathe.

A video of Floyd’s Could 25, 2020 loss of life triggered large protests all through the nation and throughout the globe, energizing the Black Lives Matter motion that had been based in 2013.

Three years later, in 2023, the duty pressure produced a 1,060-page report that catalogued California’s discriminatory remedy of Black folks after its 1850 admission as a state that formally prohibited slavery. The report beneficial “applicable treatments of compensation, rehabilitation, and restitution for African People, with a particular consideration for African People who’re descendants of individuals enslaved in the US.

“Compensation should be provided for any economically assessable damage, as appropriate and proportional to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of each case,” the duty pressure wrote.

The report recognized a collection of reparations quantities for varied functions, with some estimates amounting to $360,000 for every of the 1.8 million Black Californians deemed to have enslaved ancestors. That might complete practically $650 billion — about twice the state’s annual funds.

Two years later, the sluggish roll continues.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.