ELI STEELE: California forces companies to mine the past for slavery's sins

California passed AB 2599 in September 2023, and it takes effect January 1, 2025. The law requires any company doing business in California with annual revenues exceeding $1 billion to trace and publicly report any connections to slavery—either direct ownership of enslaved people before 1865, or ties to the slave trade itself. The California Secretary of State will maintain a public database. Companies face no legal penalty for what they find, but they must disclose it or face fines up to $2,500 per day of non-compliance. The law applies retroactively to any company's history, not just their current operations.

The mechanism matters: this isn't a reparations bill or a structural fix. It's a transparency mandate that creates a public register of corporate complicity. Proponents say it forces accountability by letting consumers and investors make informed decisions. Critics, including Steele, argue it's performative—a way for corporations to perform moral reckoning without actually transferring wealth or resources. A company like Wells Fargo or JPMorgan Chase can trace historical ties to slavery, post a report, issue a statement about their commitment to equity, and legally satisfy the requirement without funding a single school or paying damages to anyone's descendants.

What's genuinely at stake is different than either side claims. For California's roughly 10 million Black residents, the state's schools remain severely underfunded in majority-Black districts. Per-pupil spending in Oakland differs significantly from Palo Alto. AB 2599 requires corporate self-examination while the state's education budget remains under Prop 13 constraints that haven't been substantially reformed since 1978. The law directs resources toward documentation and moral accounting rather than toward material redistribution.

The conservative argument is blunt: California is performing guilt rather than solving problems. Companies will hire consulting firms to produce elaborate ancestry reports, generate CSR initiatives, and call themselves reformed—all while the students in South Los Angeles' most underfunded schools get no additional tutoring, no new buildings, no cash. It's a transaction where white guilt becomes a commodity that corporations can purchase through compliance without changing actual outcomes. Meanwhile, the real problem—that California's tax and spending structure leaves poor communities behind regardless of their race—remains untouched. Steele's point: if the goal is justice, write a check to schools. If the goal is making people feel better about history, pass a transparency law.

The precedent worth noting: this echoes the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission model—acknowledgment without restitution—but without even TRC's attempt at victim testimony. It's accountability theater that satisfies the formal requirement of transparency without the material requirement of repair.

Watch for two things in 2025: First, which Fortune 500 companies miss the January 1 deadline and how aggressively California enforces the $2,500-per-day fine. Second, whether any disclosed corporate ties to slavery generate actual lawsuits or shareholder action, or whether the reports simply become archived documents that don't change investment or consumer behavior.