Opinion: Eli Steele Says California's New Slavery-Records Law Digs for Grievances While Black Students Fall Behind
The filmmaker argues AB 2599, which makes big companies search their pre-1965 records for ties to slavery, is about 'White guilt' politics rather than history. He points to state test scores for Black students.
This is a summary of an opinion column. The views belong to Eli Steele, not to RightNewsRightNow.
Steele, a native Californian, opens by saying he cannot get over seeing "California and slavery in the same sentence." He remembers learning in elementary school that the state joined the Union in 1850 as a free state. A note on the column says Steele directed the new documentary essay "White Guilt."
The law. On Sept. 30, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2599, the Truth in Disclosure Act. Steele says it applies to any company doing business in California with more than $100 million in worldwide annual revenue that existed in some form by the end of 1964. Once the legislature funds it, he writes, those companies must search their records, and those of parents, subsidiaries and predecessors, back to 1849. They must report any finding that they sold or leased enslaved people, used them as loan collateral or insured them. He says the first filings are due as early as Jan. 15, 2029, and will stay online indefinitely. Newsom said the point is to make the findings public: "These are insurance policies on enslaved people. Human beings used as collateral, quite literally as collateral for loans."
The argument. Steele agrees the history should be learned. His objection is to making it "a legal obligation, sworn under penalty of perjury." He calls the exercise "a fishing expedition," and argues its aim is "to unearth confessions that can be commodified as grievances" rather than to add to what historians have found. He builds on the idea of "White guilt" from his father, Shelby Steele, which he describes as a transaction in which white people buy a sense of innocence and Black leaders gain power by emphasizing victimhood. He says the law came from California's reparations task force and that Newsom could not have refused to sign without being attacked.
The schools. Steele points to results released Oct. 15: only 33.7% of Black students met the state standard in English and 21.5% in math. He asks why Sacramento wants to excavate 1849 records "rather than fix the classrooms today." He quotes Kristin Nimmers of the California Black Power Network telling Fox News Digital that "a single check is not going to holistically repair our communities," and that she wants "a harm-based approach."
His conclusion. He says the database will become more "proof" for activists that California and America are systemically racist, and that Black children will be told the sins in it "have been holding them back all along."
Note for readers: the characterizations of motive, and the account of what the law does, are Steele's. We did not check the bill text or the test-score figures. Newsom's stated aim is to make the findings public, and the column does not include a response from the law's backers.