California's slavery disclosure law feeds a White guilt–Black power grievance economy while neglecting Black students' education
Source: "ELI STEELE: California is chasing slavery’s ghosts while Black students fall behind | Fox News." October 21, 2026. www.foxnews.com
The Gist
The author argues that California's new law forcing big companies to dig through their records for links to slavery is mainly about politicians and activists scoring moral points and collecting grievances. He says the state should instead focus on fixing schools where Black students are falling behind in reading and math.
Conclusion
California's AB 2599 (Truth in Disclosure Act) is a misguided, symbolic exercise in racial grievance politics that diverts attention from the real, present-day harm of failing schools for Black students, and it should not be a priority over fixing classrooms.
Premises
- AB 2599 requires large companies that existed before 1965 to search their records back to 1849 for ties to slavery and to report findings under penalty of perjury, with the results published online indefinitely.
- Most California students, including Black students, are underperforming in reading and math, which is a present-day crisis of 'miseducation.'
- Historians already exist to uncover history, so the law's real purpose is not discovering history but producing confessions that can be turned into grievances.
- 'White guilt' is a transactional dynamic in which Whites seek moral innocence and Black leaders gain power by supplying it through the promotion of Black victimization.
- This White guilt–Black power symbiosis has led to policies such as programs of dependency and lowered education standards, and it keeps both sides invested in perpetual grievance, which pushes it ever further into the past as America makes racial progress.
- Newsom signed the bill to buy his own racial innocence, since refusal would have branded him a protector of companies that exploited slaves.
Assumptions
- Legislative and public attention are zero-sum, so time spent on historical disclosure comes at the expense of fixing schools.
- The motive behind the law can be inferred from the structure of incentives (White guilt dynamics) rather than from stated purposes like transparency and historical truth.
- Public records of corporate slavery ties will function mainly as grievance fuel rather than as legitimate historical or civic information.
- Present-day Black educational underperformance is largely attributable to lowered standards driven by White guilt rather than other factors.
- Legally compelled disclosure differs in kind, and is worse than voluntary historical scholarship.
- The author's and his father's theory of White guilt accurately describes the motives of legislators, activists and Black leaders.