Authored by Kenin M. Spivak via RealClearPolitics,
California’s elected Democrats can’t move beyond pandering. Gov. Gavin Newsom is fixated on reparations for African Americans, and the legislature’s Democratic Party majority is once again trying to divide Californians by race, sex, and gender orientation.
In 1996, California stunned the nation when 55% of voters approved Proposition 209, which amended the state’s constitution to prohibit public institutions from considering race, sex or ethnicity in employment, contracting, and education. Ten years later, the United States Supreme Court confirmed its right to do so.
As the state moved further left, in 2019, the Democratic controlled legislature placed Proposition 16 on the ballot to repeal Proposition 209. That effort failed in 2020 when more than 57% of voters rejected it, despite widespread support of elected officials and opponents being outspent nearly 20 to 1.
Undeterred, in 2020, the legislature enacted laws that required California-headquartered public companies to include up to three directors who “self-identify” as women and up to an additional three directors from “underrepresented communities.” In 2022, California state judges enjoined that social engineering for violating due process under California’s constitution. California lost its appeals.
Also in 2020, Newsom signed into law a requirement that the state develop reparations proposals for black Californians. In 2022, he issued an executive order directing all state agencies to reorder their missions and hiring practices “to advance equity” while also establishing a commission to develop policies based on the reparations proposals. Among dozens of preferences, it recommended payments exceeding $1 million for each descendant of slaves, as well as housing assistance, guaranteed wages, racially segregated education, and overturning Proposition 209. Earlier this year, Newsom established a bureau to develop programs to implement the commission’s report.
Inevitably, those programs will violate the California and U.S. constitutions. At a USC Dornsife event last week, a panel of recently retired top Democrat officials acknowledged that the state could not afford reparations and that it would be far more productive for it to focus on improving academic and vocational education.
In 2021, Newsom signed into law AB 101, making California the first state to require ethnic studies for all high school students. The California Department of Education issued a Mathematics Framework that rejected “natural gifts and talents,” called for de-emphasizing calculus, ended classes for gifted children to eliminate “inequity,” and directed teachers to move away from focusing on correct methods or answers. After pushback from parents, the state abandoned the most extreme aspects of the Framework. But AB 101 took effect this school year, requiring a curriculum based on Critical Race Theory, with an emphasis on “equity” and “people of color.”
Following the Newsom commission’s report on reparations in 2023, the California Assembly passed Assembly Constitutional Amendment 7 to indirectly repeal most of Proposition 209 and allocate state funds to so-called marginalized minorities. Last month, the Assembly passed a modified version of ACA-7 that preserves race-based funding, and may still repeal some of the other protections accorded by Proposition 209. The California Senate is now considering that legislation.
If ACA-7 is enacted by the legislature, it will be placed on the ballot in November.
Reparations based on race are unconstitutional. More insidious, compelling middle class and poor families to subsidize affluent students is contrary to the principles of most Americans of every race, gender identification, and economic strata. Countless polls over many years show that Americans overwhelmingly oppose using affirmative action and DEI in hiring, admissions, promotions, and contracting. Only progressive activists believe otherwise.
In a 2016 Gallup poll, a 2019 Pew survey, and a 2021 College Plus survey, about 70% opposed the use of race and ethnicity in admissions decisions, including about two-thirds of Latinos and a majority of blacks. In a January 2024 CRC survey of 1,600 registered voters, 66% disapproved of relying on race, sex, or gender identity for hiring or promotion. The results were similar among men, women, Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, and moderates. Even liberals disapproved by a margin of 54% to 34%.
In a July 2024 survey of 2,100 likely voters by the Manhattan Institute, respondents across the partisan spectrum rejected race-conscious policies. Just 21% (including 36% of Democrats, 35% of Latinos, and 37% of blacks) agreed that “We should focus on creating a race-conscious society to repair the harms of the past by developing policies that benefit marginalized groups.” Majorities across all demographic groups agreed that “We should focus on creating a color-blind society where everyone is treated equally regardless of the color of their skin.”
A survey of 3,262 voters after the last presidential election conducted by Blueprint, a polling organization that helps Democrats, found that 67% of swing voters who chose Trump viewed Democrats as “too focused on identity politics.”
In 1860, there were 395,216 slave owners in the 15 states that permitted slavery and none in the other 18 states. In total, about 5% to 6% of all U.S. households owned slaves. Today, most blacks are at least middle class, live in diverse suburbs, and pursue the same careers as do people of other races.
When California was admitted in 1850, slavery was prohibited. No Californian has ever participated in America’s ugly legacy of slavery – whether as a slave, slave trader, or slave owner. None of their grandparents did. Very few of their great-great-great-grandparents did. More than a quarter of the state’s population is foreign-born. That means California’s elected Democrats are asking recent immigrants to subsidize the children of affluent, educated black Americans.
In a 2019 Associated Press-NORC poll, just 29% of Americans favored the payment of cash reparations to descendants of black slaves. In 2024, a Princeton University-Liberations poll found 36% approval for some form of reparations. A 2022 Rasmussen poll and a 2025 YouGov poll had similar results. Even a quarter of blacks oppose reparations. A search found no polls in which any meaningful percentage of Americans favor reparations to blacks who are not direct descendants of slaves.
Polls aside, the 14th Amendment prohibits governments from allocating benefits based on protected class, most notably race. Eliminating discrimination means eliminating all of it.
With a Republican leading the polls for the next governor of California, and many California Democrats opposed to reparations and racial pandering, more far-left virtue signaling is unlikely to benefit Democratic candidates. DEI and reparations deprive blacks of agency, penalize Americans with no connection to slavery, and represent racial politics at its worst.
Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of fiction and non-fiction books and a frequent speaker and contributor to media, including RealClearPolitics, The American Mind, National Review, television, radio, and podcasts.