San Francisco’s reparations offer causes waves: ‘America must admit its sin’

The reparations debate is only just beginning. In July, the controversy will flare up when the California Indemnification Task Force sets the price of indemnification, and lawmakers and Governor Newsom discuss how to pay for it. Despite the shock of the stickers, other blue states and some Democrats in Congress may follow suit.

“California’s reparations will be standard,” board member Reginald Jones-Sawyer says. “They’ll take our plan and start from there determining what national reparations will be.”

In a 500-page interim report, the 9-member California Task Force details what it sees as 300 years of repression and discrimination for which black Americans deserve compensation. He cites government policies, Jim Crow laws, and a red line for causing a wealth gap between white and black communities.

“America must confess its sin,” says Rev. Amos Brown, a member of a San Francisco committee proposing that every black resident be given up to $5 million in compensation. “Redeem it and act in terms of providing concrete measures that will pay off for the wrong done.”

SAN FRANCE REFUND COMMITTEE OFFERS $5 MILLION TO EACH BLACKYEAR LONG-TERM RESIDENT, FULL DEBT FORGIVENESS

Solution: Comprehensive reparations to prevent African Americans from falling into the trap of poor housing, polluted neighborhoods, and failing schools.

“Reparations are something that was promised and something is due,” said committee member and state senator Stephen Bradford.

The state commission, created under legislation signed by Newsom in 2020, has yet to set a price for damages, but the recommended remedy for housing discrimination alone exceeded $560 billion, or $223,000 for every eligible descendant of a black person who lived in the U.S. before 1900. of the year. currently resides in California.

Eligibility is slightly different in San Francisco. You must be 18 years old, identify as black or African American for at least ten years. Alternatively, you can be born in the city between 1940 and 1996. Connection with slavery is not required. You may qualify for damages by being “a personal or direct descendant of a person imprisoned as a result of a failed war on drugs.” The plan also calls for the city to supplement the income of low-income recipients to reflect the regional median income (AMI), about $97,000, annually for at least 250 years.

California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at a news conference in San Francisco, California.
((Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images))

“The idea of ​​reparations in California is nuanced,” says a member of the San Francisco task force.

Professor James Taylor of the University of San Francisco. “This is not Georgia, this is not Alabama, where blacks were kept in chains. Blacks came here because it was a free state, but when they got here, the contradiction is that racial prejudice still existed.”

Some argue that reparations in California have more to do with social justice than slavery, since California was not a slave state during the Civil War. The militias here were multinational, and the regiments fought on the side of the Union, driving Confederate soldiers out of Arizona and New Mexico back into Texas. It also becomes more difficult when trying to separate blacks of African descent from Caribbeans or countries involved in the slave trade. However, several progressive cities—Boston, Providence, Amherst, Massachusetts, Evanston, Illinois, St. Louis, and St. Paul, Minnesota—have all appointed task forces studying how to pay reparations to black Americans.

“Reparations are not charity or a gift,” says Traherne Crews of the Saint Paul Reparations Advisory Committee in Minnesota. “It’s a debt, it’s a debt for 400 years of slavery.”

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Another thing is how to pay for it and what is politically realistic.

San Francisco is facing a $728 million deficit, but its reparations committee is also proposing to forgive mortgages, student loans, and credit card debt because “black households have more expensive or riskier debt.”

The city has 44,000 black residents, if even half of them are eligible for reparations, experts estimate the cost to be over $100 billion. Blacks make up just 5% of San Francisco’s residents, compared to 34% Asians and 15% Hispanics, and neither group is likely to admit that they experienced less hardship in the US than African Americans. Nationwide, black households have an average wealth of $24,100 and Hispanics $36,000, compared to an average white household wealth of $188,200, according to the Federal Reserve Consumer Finance Survey.

View of San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge. A magnitude 5.1 earthquake hit the Bay Area on Tuesday.
(Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

The city is 45% white. A November Pew Research poll found that 80% of whites in the country oppose reparations, even though Democrats were almost evenly divided on the issue.

“It’s not that blacks are trying to get something from whites through begging and borrowing. It’s about these states, traumas and obstacles placed on people for decades and centuries,” says Taylor. “At the local level, it’s not about slavery at all. It’s all about discrimination, housing and other forms of discrimination in relation to labor and jobs.”

Financially, California is not much better off, running a $25 billion deficit. Is it politically realistic to hand over billions when the state hasn’t built a dam in 40 years, its public schools are ranked 48th in the country, it’s home to 1/3 of the country’s welfare recipients, and it ranks first in homelessness. I posed this question to State Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, who is on the state reparations task force. He does not expect a lump sum, but rather a bond, new taxes, or a new source of income that will generate income over time.

Los Angeles, CA: September 22, 2022 California Indemnity Task Force Chair Camila Moore speaks at a task force meeting to hear public opinion on indemnity at the California Science Center Los Angeles on September 22, 2022.
(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“I think justifying the number is a really important step,” he said. “And then developing a pay methodology that makes sense to most if not all Americans will overcome that. If you can not only justify it, but also come up with a solid plan that makes sense over a period of time, it can mitigate a lot of what you call sticker shock.”

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Jones-Sawyer believes the debate in California will be enough to spur other states. Democrats in Congress considered the bill last year Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas, who demanded reparations and a national apology for slavery. He could have set up a commission to “study slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present, and recommend appropriate remedies, but he died on the committee. Since the Republicans currently control the House of Representatives, this attempt is probably dead. .