Can you put a price on overcoming historical injustices? According to a commission appointed by the city of San Francisco, the answer is a resounding yes.
In its draft reparations plan, San Francisco's African American Reparations Advisory Committee recommends the city pay qualifying Black residents $5 million each, compensation for racial discrimination from decades past.
Instead of following an equation, the committee's chair said members scrutinized San Francisco's history to decide what would be “a significant enough investment in families to put them on this path to economic well-being, growth and vitality that chattel slavery and all the policies that flowed from it destroyed.”
Board members cited the partial demolition and reconstruction of the Fillmore District in the late 1960s and 1970s, which displaced thousands of Black residents, as a prime example of lost wages and damages suffered by the city's African American population.
The large-scale redevelopment continues to attract controversy today. As recently as the 2010s, city planners defended the action as necessary to combat the high crime rate and economic distress.
However, attitudes have shifted, as The Washington Post notes:
The proposed reparations program is not a recompense for slavery, which was never legal in San Francisco, but instead, the committee's report says, for “the public policies explicitly created to subjugate Black people in San Francisco by upholding and expanding the intent and legacy of chattel slavery.”
Across the country, more than a dozen cities and states have begun developing reparations programs, attempting to quantify the financial damage brought by slavery and decades of Jim Crow laws. Some proposals envision offering scholarships, or housing vouchers, while others call for Black Americans to receive cash payments.
However, even in San Francisco, the struggle to find a number acceptable to reparations activists and palatable to taxpayers is real.
San Francisco's $5 million proposal, multitudes larger than amounts being discussed in other communities has drawn intense backlash from conservatives who lambaste the idea as financially ruinous for a city with an annual budget of $14 billion that is still recovering economically from the pandemic. The proposal doesn't explain who would qualify, but if even a fraction of the city's 50,000 Black residents met the criteria, it would consume a huge amount of its annual budget.
John Dennis, chairman of the San Francisco Republican Party, says that he's open to a conversation about whether Black residents should receive reparations but that the proposal wasn't a serious effort to start one.
Criticisms of the proposal are transcending partisan politics.
William A. Darity Jr., an economist who's supported reparations for decades, echoed Dennis, arguing the $5 million figure “undercuts the credibility of the reparations effort.”
The committee plans to release its final report in June.
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Can I get some of that money? My parents and grandparents picked cotton!
I’m not black but I like Johnny Cash
I WAS BORN AND RAISED IN SAN FRANCISCO IN THE 1940’S. CAN I GET REPARATIONS. I COULD REALLY USE THIS 5-MILLION DOLLARS TOO PAY OF MY BILLS.. I STILL IN CALIFORNIA, BAY-AREA.
BOBBY ~!~
Are you black?
He identifies as black. You can’t discriminate against him, whatever your eyes – or his DNA – may tell you.
no, half German and half Latino, am i still a minatory ??? and still live in California
BOBBY ~!~
No$ for you!
2 get city to achieve Chap 7
Typical of progressive California to throw money at a problem. What money they throw, it will return to a politicians pocket within a yrar
I identify as black. I should be able to get reparations, shouldn’t I?
Did you vote for Lincoln?
Engineers don’t make that much in a lifetime! Is there any measure of what these people have contributed to society and to the economy? How about education? Any adjustment for the effort and $$$ they have not put into an education? This is racism at its finest!
Tell you what. Let the committee send bulk mail with remittance envelopes and see what sort of response they get to fund their largesse.
Disgusting
Who pays? The middle class ALWAYS pays because that’s where the most money is for these liberal social programs. Liberals are determined to make the most people dependent to welfare and to force the liberal agenda on them.
I bet the mass exodus out of San Francisco and the state will intensify. It has been bad but will definitely escalate. Soon only Blacks, Latinos, homeless, and the progressive elites will be left. Oh, I suppose some of the lower to upper middle class who can not afford to move out of California will also remain. This should be real good for tax revenues LOL.
The warlords that sold their own people can pay what these people think they are owed. Maybe they ( the war lords should reimburse me for my contribution to the entitlement state this country has created. Now that has created slavery for life for some
Reparations for acts of long past history are absurd. Mankind has pretty much been at war, invading, wiping out huge segments of populations, yes, back in the day taking people and making them slaves. Reparations would be a never=ending idea that would limit the future for everybody. The red tape involved in deciding who would be paid and who would pay – it is simply a ridiculous idea. Again, injustice has been a huge part of human existence all over the world. Many Americans who have black ancestry also have white, Indian, other ancestry. Again who pays an who collects and think of the cost involved with tracing the family trees of millions of Americans. Just stop it! Use a t least one ounce of horse sense!!
I think I could agree to reparations if the payments were to be limited to college education tuitions and expenses. It seems the primary difference between the “haves” and “have nots” is education or the lack thereof. I’m guessing that there will be a small number of people who will take advantage of it. Those people just want “something for nothing”. They are blaming slavery for their own failures in life.
The big surprise is that the committee making this recommendation is comprised of people who identify as black and qualify for the 5 million dollars. This is idiotic on so many levels.
People are absolutely out of their frigging minds!!! Where would it stop? The Chinese, whose ancestors built half the western railroads, the descendants of the interred Japanese who have been somewhat compensated? Which blacks, the Africans that, arrived here last week? How about some Jews, Irish, or Italians everyone thought were part of the Mafia?
And where in HELL is that amount coming from? And will blacks be permitted to sue for property compensation if a government cannot raise the capital to make such payment after having guaranteed them?
You sound like an Armenian. Barev! Maybe they will give YOU a handout, too!
and if the country manages to survive
Reparations will never end. Each generation will demand to be paid
If one is determined to have ansisters are that were slaves. the next
generation will expect the pay out as well
4 of my white ancestors gave their lives fighting on the Union side,to free the slaves. Because they were white,does that disqualify them from “reparations” ? What price will I receive for my family loss?
Well, I have a Native American ancestress…will they give me a handout, too?