California Puts Slavery Reparations to an $800 Billion Test

The numbers are striking in their precision. The statistical value of each year of human life, accounting for racial differences in life expectancy: $13,619. Wealth missing due to lower rates of Black home ownership: $148,099. Average devaluation of Black-owned businesses: $77,000. Each year of disproportionate incarceration factored by race, combining lost wages and freedom: $159,792.

These calculations by California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, buried in the nearly 500-page draft of a report that will go to the state legislature in late June, belie the complexity and raw emotion underlying the first state-level effort ...