California could soon give reparations to Black people. Here's what that could look like

• Reparations advocates are looking at California as a bellwether for the country, with a national program their ultimate goal.
• A significant majority of the U.S. population remains opposed to reparations for Black people, especially direct payments, but public support is growing.
• Financial reparations, along with an apology, would acknowledge an oppressive history and show an effort to atone, said California state Sen. Steven Bradford.

After publishing a sweeping historical account linking Black oppression from the slavery era to systemic racism today, the California Reparations Task Force now faces its most challenging task: figuring out the structure and the cost of a reparations plan for descendants of enslaved people.

In a nearly 500-page interim report, the task force laid out a detailed history of slavery, Jim Crow segregation and continuing discrimination and how that created structural racism that persists, as evidenced in the huge wealth gap between Black and white Americans.