November 14, 2024 -- During a ceremony at City Hall Monday, Santa Monica officials unveiled a plaque with the text of an apology to the Black Community unanimously adopted by the Council two years ago.
At the ceremony, City officials, including current, former and future members of the City Council, affirmed Santa Monica's commitment to "justice, equity and inclusion."
“As a city, we acknowledge that decades of racist and inequitable policies have caused pain and negative outcomes for the Black community and other people of color,” Mayor Phil Brock said.
“Today marks an important step in our progress toward healing as a community.”
The apology states that the City "acknowledges over a century of racial injustice and discrimination against African Americans that have resulted in systemically racist policies that continue to exclude and discriminate against African Americans."
And it affirms that the City is "committed to programs, policies, and investments that can educate the public about this history of discrimination and its ongoing consequences," according to the statement.
The unveiling comes less than a year after racial justice advocates said the City had failed to live up to its commitment, claiming its support had been more talk than action ("Black Apology Fails to Deliver, Racial Justice Advocates Say," February 26, 2024).
City officials at the time pointed to a list programs and policies that racial justice advocates noted were already in place when the Black apology statement was approved by the Council on November 15, 2022.
The list included an arts program commemorating the history of the Belmar community razed in the 1950s and 60s to make way for urban development and a pilot program giving “historically displaced households” and their descendants priority for affordable housing units.
It also included more than 800 hours of "implicit bias training" for more than 200 City employees and an ongoing grants program for minority residents.
City officials this week said the Council has made "Racial Justice, Equity & Social Diversity one of its strategic priorities" and is making progress toward rectifying its history of discrimination.
"Much of this work will be included in the city’s Equity Plan, which is anticipated to be presented to council in early 2025," City officials said in a pess release this week.
There is no official recording of the November 2022 discussion and vote on former mayor Sue Himmelrich's request that the Council adopt a Statement of Apology to African-American residents.
A major technical glitch wiped out the audio and rendered the backup recording a constant hum, leaving viewers in the City Hall lobby, on YouTube and on the City's website watching a silent video ("City Council Left Speechless," November 16, 2022).
The adopted apology concludes with the City's commitment "to ferreting out and overturning systemically racist policies to ensure that the pain caused by several decades of racial injustice and discrimination against African Americans and other people of color is mitigated to the extent possible."