‘He played them’: How a GOP reparations bill splintered supporters of California’s Black Caucus

Update: On Wednesday, Bill Essayli was sworn in as the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, casting doubt over the fate of his Assembly bills. As legislators consider, which, if any, they will sponsor, the rift between leading reparations proponents remains.

At a time when the political climate calls for strong and steady leadership, many Black Californians are losing faith in the lawmakers they sent to Sacramento to deliver on a justice agenda anchored by reparations.

It has enabled one of the Capitol’s chief disruptors — a conservative firebrand — to seize an opportunity to highlight the Democratic party’s hypocrisy by championing a reparations bill that competes with a similar measure put out by the California Legislative Black Caucus.

And one of the state’s preeminent reparations groups has made the eye-opening decision to back this version of reparations legislation, rather than the Black Caucus’ proposal, deeming the Republican lawmaker, Assemblymember Bill Essayli from Corona, more trustworthy.

At least, until this week. On Tuesday, Essayli resigned from his Assembly seat to become a federal prosecutor for the Trump administration. Now leading reparations advocates look like they got played, the rift within the economic justice movement grew deeper, and the future of Essayli’s legislation is up in the air.

Supporters of his bill have already been making Zoom calls to lawmakers, hoping to find a new sponsor. If they fail, the measure dies.

Either way, the rancor between the Black Caucus and some of its most vocal constituents remains.

“It breaks my heart,” lamented Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Democrat from Culver City. “I’m not sure how you pick up the pieces and repair the relationship. This has done tremendous damage.”

People on both sides are throwing shade. I can’t say I blame them. 

Some spurned supporters say they half expect to be insulted and disappointed again this year. It’s hard to trust in the process — or even in the caucus — when you can’t tell who is being serious about reparations and who doesn’t mind failing so long as they can claim that they tried.

Recently, Black Caucus leaders predicted in interviews with CalMatters that their so-called “Road to Repair” package of 16 priority proposals would win lawmakers’ and the governor’s approval, and ultimately help right decades of racial wrongs.

In that package is a foundational measure designed to be a first step toward reparations. 

Authored by state Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson, the San Diego-area doctor who chairs the Black Caucus, Senate Bill 518 would create a state agency called the Bureau for the Descendants of American Slavery, which would develop a database of descendants of enslaved persons.

Another bill linked to it would pay California State University $6 million to research the best way to verify peoples’ genealogy. 

Soon after, Essayli introduced AB 1315, which would create a California American Freedmen Affairs Agency to also determine reparations eligibility, only it wouldn’t spend $6 million on research.

That measure does not have the Black Caucus’ endorsement, even though its language is right out of the reparations playbook and is similar to a popular bill that was pulled on the final day of the session last year.

Capitalizing on a broken promise

Essayli is known for being a political provocateur. He sometimes revels in the ire he stirs up among his Democratic colleagues. 

For instance, last year he was removed from two legislative committees and his microphone was turned off mid-speech at least twice because of his antics. Once during an altercation he had to be physically separated from Assemblymember Corey Jackson, a Moreno Valley Democrat he had goaded.

Essayli has said many times he’s against paying cash reparations. Yet he swore he was serious about backing this reparations offering. He just left out that he was in the running for the U.S. Attorney job.

And some people believed him. The Coalition for a Just & Equitable California, one of the state’s biggest reparations coalitions, wholeheartedly endorsed Essayli’s measure over the Black Caucus’. Some of its leaders even posted pictures on social media with him. 

The seeds of their defection were planted last year, when members of the Black Caucus yanked a couple of key reparations proposals just before lawmakers could vote on them. Many reparations supporters were shocked then and are still seething.

“They broke their own promise,” says Kamilah Moore, former chairperson of the state’s reparations task force. Two years ago, the nine-member, state-appointed panel created a massive report for lawmakers on how slavery and racism devastated generations of Black citizens.

Read More: California is the first state to tackle reparations for Black residents. What that really means

Moore seems less troubled by Essayli’s departure. She told me Essayli assured her in a text message that the bill isn’t dead and advised her group to contact the “new Republicans” who have expressed interest in it.

Without the controversy usually swirling around Essayli now gone, she thinks it might be easier to find other sponsors.

“This is truly a blessing in disguise,” she said. “The bill itself is strong and rooted in the task force’s recommendations.”

Even though the Black Caucus’ measure has a better chance in a Legislature dominated by Democrats, reparations supporters remain divided.

Chris Lodgson, a leader of the coalition, put it this way in a recent social media post:

“Black Americans willing to support the best policy no matter who it comes from is SCARY to these people,” he wrote on X. “And when you escape the (Democratic) party plantation and think for yourself unafraid to support good common sense ideas no matter what party it comes from, the first people to be mad at you are the people who are benefiting from keeping you/us where we are.”

It doesn’t help that some people are suspicious of the decision to spend the $6 million — half the state’s money set aside for reparations work — on a Cal State genealogy project.

Essayli insisted he and other Republicans are ready to listen, and that reparations is a concept worth debating. Although he doesn’t like cash reparations, he wouldn’t mind it in the form of private school vouchers or small business loans, he recently told me.

But there’s another reason he backed the Freedman’s bureau idea: He knows it may embarrass the Democrats. Essayli likes the mind game.

Don’t hate the player, he says.

“If I have the opportunity to embarrass the Democrats, I’m going to do it,” he explained last month. “This is politics, OK? If I have the opportunity to court a new group of voters why wouldn’t I?”

Reluctant to speak

Few state legislators or national reparations experts want to talk about it. Out of more than a dozen professors, advocates and lawmakers I called or emailed about this unexpected twist, only a few came to the phone to comment. 

William Darity Jr., a Duke University economist who consulted with the reparations task force, suggested starting with state reparations bureaus isn’t the best route, anyway. Pursuing federal reparations is a surer bet, he told me.

James Gregory, a history professor at the University of Washington, says his state’s recent approach to reparations is working. In the past year, the state has lent $16 million in down payment assistance to people of color whose families were discriminated against by restrictive covenant laws.

In California, Weber Pierson’s office said she is apparently too busy for a phone interview on one of her most high-profile proposals, though she provided some comments via email.

“The fact that my Republican colleague introduced a bill similar to mine speaks volumes about the bipartisan nature of this issue,” Weber Pierson wrote. “Both bills reflect a shared commitment to repairing the generational damage inflicted on Black Californians and righting past wrongs.”

But of course her proposed legislation is better, she says, because it would also create a division to help families regain land or property taken through racist eminent domain practices.

When I asked her why the Black Caucus is floating their new legislation instead of just reintroducing last year’s measure, I was told the old one needed amendments to make it palatable for a fickle ally: Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“We believe these changes make the package much stronger, and we are fully confident that all of the (Black caucus’) bills will reach the governor’s desk and be signed into law,” she wrote.

She also claims their legislation “doesn’t create any unnecessary bureaucracy” and will use existing state agencies for many of its functions. 

That’s less clear to me, since it looks like Essayli’s proposal would enable the Freedman agency to start its work immediately — while the Black Caucus’ new agency might have to wait for research results. The legislation funding the genealogical study notably does not list a deadline.

That research will be worth it, insists Bryan.

“It can’t be ‘I check this box because I know I have a relative.’ We need the agency structure, but we also need the genealogical methodology,” he said. 

So far none of the new reparations measures have had a hearing. While we’re waiting, how likely is it that the two sides might come together and reconcile their bills?

“I am open to collaborating with anyone who is sincerely committed to addressing and repairing the historical harms endured by Black Californians,” Weber Pierson said diplomatically.

Bryan also said his door “will remain open” to work with any legislator, though he doubted Essayli was ever serious. He said Essayli had to know he was on the list of the US Attorney job and should have leveled with his bill’s supporters.

“I think if you try to collaborate with known opposition, with someone who has opposed Black people and who has never passed a piece of legislation of his own, you can’t be surprised when he leaves you hanging and you look foolish,” Bryan said.

“He played them. They thought they were playing chess with the Black Caucus and he was playing chess with them on behalf of the MAGA movement.”

Still, the Black Caucus and Newsom haven’t shown they can deliver either. And there’s no guarantee they’ll stand behind this year’s legislation. 

Before California can be taken seriously, as a state that seeks to repair the real damage in its past, its leaders will first have to restore the belief that they can keep their promises.