Activism

California Reparations Task Force Votes to Replace Economic Advisor

Darrick Hamilton, who was expected to bring an economic perspective to the work the group is doing, told the task force that there was some misunderstanding about the work he could provide. “I don’t think we had complete clarity at the time the (Department of Justice) made its presentation in October or September,” Hamilton said. “With F, I have great clarity given the time constraints as well as the potential budgets that are available.”

Published

5 years ago

December 21, 2021

Oakland Post

Darrick Hamilton, a leading national authority on race and public policy, has been involved in crafting progressive policy proposals, such as Baby Bonds, which are trust accounts for low-income kids funded by taxpayers.

By Antonio‌ ‌Ray‌ ‌Harvey‌ | California‌ ‌Black‌ ‌Media‌

One day after Darrick Hamilton testified before California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, the panel decided that it would not enter into a contractual agreement with the noted economist.

Seven members of the nine-member panel voted to move forward without Hamilton. Two appointees, Loyola-Marymount psychology professor Dr. Cheryl Grills and UCLA law professor Lisa Holder, abstained.

The group’s chair Kamilah Moore said Hamilton informed the task force that he would have to narrow the responsibilities of his role, from advising on both calculations and methodology, to a “renewed or narrower scope of work.”

“I feel that the work is inseparable,” Moore said before the vote.

Hamilton was expected to bring an economic perspective to the work the group is doing, helping to quantify past economic injustices African Americans faced in the state and elsewhere, and determining what or how much compensation should be for Black people living in California.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the state’s historic reparations bill into law, Assembly Bill (AB) 3121, in 2020. Former Assemblymember Dr. Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) authored the bill before she was appointed and sworn in as the state’s first African American Secretary of State in January 2021.

AB 3121, titled “The Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans,” created a nine-member commission to investigate the history of slavery in the United States, the extent of California’s involvement in slavery, segregation, and the denial of Black citizens their constitutional rights.

In October, the task force approved the appointment of Hamilton, who is an economics and urban policy professor at The New School in New York City.

According to Section F of Article 2, 8301.1, of the legislation, Hamilton would have been charged with affixing “what form of compensation should be awarded, through what instrumentalities, and who should be eligible for such compensation.”

The contract would have paid Hamilton $90,000 for the scope and term of his work, Moore said. But the reduced assignment the economist requested decreases his compensation to $45,000.

“Fast forward to (Decemer 7), Dr. Hamilton essentially communicated to the task force that while he’s still able to deliver on Section F, he will no longer be able to deliver on Section E,” Moore said. “That would be doing the actual calculations for what any compensation should be. He meant that there weren’t enough resources present in the given contract, he felt that he didn’t have enough time, and he also pointed out issues of clarity on how to tackle that part of the bill.”

Hamilton told the task force that there was some misunderstanding about the work he could provide.

“I don’t think we had complete clarity at the time the (Department of Justice) made its presentation in October or September,” Hamilton said. “With F, I have great clarity given the time constraints as well as the potential budgets that are available.”

Michael Newman, the Senior Assistant Attorney General of the California Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Enforcement Section, said the DOJ was still in negotiation with Hamilton before the task force’s fifth meeting and no contracts had been signed.

“To my knowledge, he has not done any reimbursable work under the contract. The contract has not been signed,” Newman said. “Other than sort of scoping out the project, doing the initial evaluation, or preparing for his testimony, he hasn’t done anything on the project. I think he’s accrued probably reimbursable time in his initial preparation, but we’ll have to talk about that.”

Hamilton, a leading national authority on race and public policy, has been involved in crafting progressive policy proposals, such as Baby Bonds, which are trust accounts for low-income kids funded by taxpayers.

Hamilton is also a proponent of the Federal Job Guarantee, a policy that would mandate the government to provide a job for any person that needs one. Those initiatives have garnered national media attention and served as inspiration for legislative proposals across the country at the federal, state, and local levels.

In his defense, Grills said Hamilton’s knowledge, intellect and skill set are absolutely not “limited.” Hamilton is more than capable of performing the task, she explained, and said that he wanted to make sure both Section E and F would be completed thoroughly.

“I think he’s trying to caution us about what it really takes to do a careful set of calculations that are aligned with how we are defining some of the factors and understanding the costs,” Grills said. “He’s offering caution about what it takes and to do it in a way that minimizes the negative feedback that we will get on everything we do.”

With five meetings left on the agenda, Moore said that the task force will consider the services of William A. “Sandy” Darity Jr., the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. He is also the Samuel DuBois Cook professor of public policy, African and African American studies, and economics at Duke University.

Darity’s research focuses on racial, class and ethnic inequality and stratification economics; education and the racial achievement gap; North-South theories of trade and development; and the economics of reparations.

Darity and Kirsten Mullen, co-authors of the book, “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the 21st Century,” testified before the task force during the first meeting in June.

Task Force member Don Tamaki said that Darity absolutely has the “stature” in terms of notoriety and has arrived at a number in his and Mullen’s book “anywhere from $9 trillion to $14 trillion” in terms of reparations.

As did Grills, Tamaki also warned that it doesn’t matter who does the work for 8301.1 Sections E and F. The report will get backlash, he said.

“The report is going to get criticized, scrutinized, and really taken apart,” Tamaki said. “So, it really has to be a first-rate expert in this area.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

Drawings of Golden Gate Village Win 2021 Landscape Architecture Competition

Don't Miss

COMMENTARY: Why Stacey Abrams Is Important for Georgia and Our Democracy

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of July 8 – 14, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of July 8 – 14, 2026

Published

2 days ago

July 12, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Diabetes in Black California: Turning the Tide from Crisis to Control

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, nearly 17.9% of Black adults in California have been diagnosed with diabetes — above the national Black adult average of 16.8%, and nearly five points higher than California’s overall adult rate of 12.6% across all races. California ranks 24th out of 39 states with available data for Black adult diabetes rates.

Published

1 week ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

Dr. Khadijah Lang is a family physician with a clinic in Los Angeles who specializes in several family medical practices, including prenatal care. Lang believes in family medicine. She says it is important to treat all members of a family. Thursday, June 5, 2026. Photo by Solomon O. Smith/California Black Media.

By Charlene Muhammad, California Black Media

Crystal Lambert knew something was terribly wrong with her three-year-old granddaughter as she sped down the street trying to get her to the hospital.

“I thought she got a hold of some poison,” Lambert recalled.

Doctors found Lambert’s granddaughter had a blood sugar level over 800, diagnosing her with Diabetic Ketoacidosis(DKA), a state in which the body, starved of insulin, begins to shut down.

Lambert said she was born with a pancreas that was not fully functioning — it lacked the specialized cells required to produce insulin.

Her granddaughter survived and is five years old today. Now, she gives herself insulin shots, asks endless questions about her condition, and runs like the spirited child she is. But the terror of that night transformed Lambert — and ultimately inspired her to launch the We Fight Back Organization, a mobile health and food access initiative serving underserved communities across California. Lambert is the executive director.

The Crisis by the Numbers

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, nearly 17.9% of Black adults in California have been diagnosed with diabetes — above the national Black adult average of 16.8%, and nearly five points higher than California’s overall adult rate of 12.6% across all races. California ranks 24th out of 39 states with available data for Black adult diabetes rates.

Nationally, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Black Americans were 24% more likely than the overall U.S. population to have diabetes in 2024. They also died from diabetes 78% more often than the general population in 2022. Black Americans are also more than twice as likely as the overall population to develop kidney failure caused by diabetes.

According to the California Health Care Foundation’s 2024 Health Disparities Almanac, Black Californians have the shortest life expectancy in the state at just 74.6 years — due in part to chronic conditions like diabetes and its devastating complications.

Leon Rock, co-founder of the African American Diabetes Association, believes statistics, though revealing, only tell part of the story.

“There are a whole bunch of Black folks that don’t tell you that they have diabetes — or don’t know,” he said.

And the disease itself, Rock is careful to note, is not what kills. “They die from the complications. That’s heart attack, that’s stroke, that’s amputations of legs, of feet. Going blind. All those complications are inherent in a system that has impacted Black folks with diabetes in California and across America.”

Crystal Lambert, creator and executive director of We Fight Back. She started the organization out of a need to learn more about diabetes on behalf of her granddaughter. Now she is looking to spread the impact of her organization to the valley. Friday, June 6, 2026. Photo by Solomon O. Smith/California Black Media.

Crystal Lambert, creator and executive director of the We Fight Back Organization, started out of a need to learn more about diabetes on behalf of her granddaughter. Now she is looking to spread her organization to the valley, on Friday, June 6, 2026 Photo by Solomon O. Smith/ California Black Media

An Information Gap Fuels the Crisis

For Rock, part of the solution is diagnosis. He says the medical and public health systems are failing Black Californians by the absence of information designed for them.

“That is the bottom line. We need good information. Information that is culturally specific,” said Rock.

Telling people to eat healthy or exercise, he added, falls short when culturally specific alternatives are not provided, and when many residents of urban communities do not feel safe exercising in some neighborhoods – or outside at night.

Dr. Khadijah Lang, a family medicine physician and president of the Golden State Medical Association, agrees that the roots of the crisis run deeper than individual behavior — and blaming patients misses the point.

“We are not genetically predisposed to diabetes,” Lang said. “But the system under which we live increases the likelihood that we will develop it.”

What the Body Needs — What Communities Are Denied

Type 2 diabetes, which accounts for 90 to 95% of all diabetes cases, according to the CDC, develops when the body can no longer use insulin effectively to regulate blood sugar. Left unmanaged, it damages nerves, kidneys, eyes, and the cardiovascular system. The hemoglobin A1C test is a blood draw that reveals how the body has processed sugar over the previous three months — not just at the moment of the test. It is the standard tool for both diagnosis and ongoing monitoring.

That distinction matters, Lang emphasized, because patients cannot manipulate three months of blood sugar history the way they might fast for a day before a single blood draw.

“The pill is not meant to undo or control a sugar level that’s being constantly stressed,” Lang said. “It’s meant to work in conjunction with a low-carbohydrate diet and exercise.” She recommended at minimum 30 minutes of physical activity five days a week — breakable into 10-minute sessions for those who need it.

Lang stressed that education must be delivered in language people recognize and can relate to. The goal is to inform them of the choices that serve their health best, she said.

But for many Black Californians, even those informed choices remain out of reach, Lambert said.

“They need access to healthy foods and medication, too” she said.

California has made some critical policy advances. The state has expanded access to the Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM), which has transformed diabetes care for state residents. Assembly Bill 365, introduced in 2024, proposed requiring Medi-Cal to cover the costs of CGM and other related medical equipment but it failed in the State Senate. Since then, the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) reports that the core Medi-Cal CGM benefit now available to eligible patients was solidified through previous budget actions and pharmacy policy updates.

These measures, while meaningful, have not closed the gap for the communities most at risk, according to advocates.

Control Through Community

Health care advocates conclude that the solution must be communal, culturally grounded, and sustained — not a fad, not a celebrity moment, not a single clinic visit. For example, observed Lang, lifestyle shaped by shared values and collective accountability can move the needle where individual prescriptions have not.

Rock is building infrastructure to match the urgency, establishing local chapters of the African American Diabetes Association across the country, with California next.

“We have to do for self, period,” he said. “Health is wealth. We have to eat to live.”

And Lambert, whose granddaughter unknowingly started all of this for her, keeps showing up.

“Diabetes advocacy is about dignity, education, prevention, and hope,” she said.

Video: Diabetes Disparity Exposed in California

This article is supported by the California Health Care Foundation

(CHCF). Visit www.chcf.org