- San Francisco admits there’s no mathematical formula for determining $5 million payout in reparations to black residents.
- Critics denounce the proposal as unrealistic and fear it will financially cripple the city.
- The committee clarifies that the reparations are intended to address the effects of public policies that subjugated black people, rather than slavery which was never legal in California.
The issue of reparations has long been a topic of debate in the United States. For decades, black Americans have been calling for reparations to compensate for the injustices and discrimination they have faced throughout the country’s history. Now, several cities are considering reparations programs, including San Francisco.
San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee has proposed a $5 million payout to each long-term black resident, along with debt forgiveness and a guaranteed income of $97,000. However, the committee has admitted that they did not use a mathematical formula to determine the figure, but rather looked into the state’s history to arrive at it. While supporters argue that black residents in San Francisco earn significantly less than their white counterparts, opponents are concerned about the financial strain this payout would put on the city.
The committee clarified that the reparations are not intended to make up for slavery, which was never legal in California, but for public policies that were created to subjugate black people. To be eligible for the reparations, residents must have identified as black on public records for at least 10 years and be at least 18 years old. They must also meet two of several requirements, including having been born in the city or migrated to it between 1940 and 1996 and then lived there for 13 years.
San Francisco’s proposal includes supplementing qualifying low-income households’ income to match the city’s median income for the next 250 years. Other proposals include investing in San Francisco’s black community, providing financial education, offering legal protections for people’s reparations, providing tax credits, and bringing in black-owned banks to manage people’s money. The proposal also calls for a formal apology for past harms and a commitment to making substantial ongoing, systemic, and programmatic investments in black communities to address historical harms.
However, opponents of the proposal are concerned that the city will not be able to bear the cost of these measures, given that it is still recovering from the pandemic and faces a budget deficit of $728 million over the next two years. It is unclear how many San Franciscans will be eligible for the reparations, but the city is home to approximately 50,000 African Americans.
San Francisco is not the only city grappling with the issue of reparations. Other cities, such as Boston and St. Louis, are also still debating the issue. However, the majority of Americans oppose financial restitution, according to a January poll by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which found that six in ten people were against payouts to the descendants of slaves, and four in ten said that the federal government should definitely not pursue such a policy.
The final report on San Francisco’s reparations proposal is due to be released in June. In a recent development, Angela Davis, a famed Black Panther and communist, faced calls to pay reparations after discovering that her ancestors were white puritans who arrived in the US on the Mayflower.