By JANIE HAR (Associated Press)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Payments of $5 million to each eligible Black grownup, the elimination of private debt and tax burdens, assured annual incomes of not less than $97,000 for 250 years and houses in San Francisco for simply $1 a household.
These had been a number of the greater than 100 suggestions made by a city-appointed reparations committee tasked with the thorny query of the right way to atone for hundreds of years of slavery and systemic racism. And the San Francisco Board of Supervisors listening to the report for the primary time Tuesday voiced enthusiastic assist for the concepts listed, with some saying cash shouldn’t cease town from doing the correct factor.
Several supervisors mentioned they had been stunned to listen to pushback from politically liberal San Franciscans apparently unaware that the legacy of slavery and racist insurance policies continues to maintain Black Americans on the underside rungs of well being, training and financial prosperity, and overrepresented in prisons and homeless populations.
“Those of my constituents who lost their minds about this proposal, it’s not something we’re doing or we would do for other people. It’s something we would do for our future, for everybody’s collective future,” mentioned Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, whose district consists of the closely LGBTQ Castro neighborhood.
The draft reparations plan, launched in December, is unmatched nationwide in its specificity and breadth. The committee hasn’t executed an evaluation of the price of the proposals, however critics have slammed the plan as financially and politically not possible. An estimate from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, which leans conservative, has mentioned it might value every non-Black household within the metropolis not less than $600,000.
Tuesday’s unanimous expressions of assist for reparations by the board don’t imply all of the suggestions will finally be adopted, because the physique can vote to approve, reject or change all or any of them. A last committee report is due in June.
Some supervisors have mentioned beforehand that town can’t afford any main reparations funds proper now given its deep deficit amid a tech trade downturn.
Tinisch Hollins, vice-chair of the African American Reparations Advisory Committee, alluded to these feedback, and a number of other individuals who lined as much as converse reminded the board they might be watching carefully what the supervisors do subsequent.
“I don’t need to impress upon you the fact that we are setting a national precedent here in San Francisco,” Hollins mentioned. “What we are asking for and what we’re demanding for is a real commitment to what we need to move things forward.”
The concept of paying compensation for slavery has gained traction throughout cities and universities. In 2020, California grew to become the primary state to kind a reparations job drive and continues to be struggling to place a price ticket on what’s owed.
The concept has not been taken up on the federal degree.
In San Francisco, Black residents as soon as made up greater than 13% of town’s inhabitants, however greater than 50 years later, they account for lower than 6% of town’s residents — and 38% of its homeless inhabitants. The Fillmore District as soon as thrived with Black-owned evening golf equipment and outlets till authorities redevelopment within the Nineteen Sixties compelled out residents.
Fewer than 50,000 Black folks nonetheless dwell within the metropolis, and it’s not clear what number of could be eligible. Possible standards embody having lived within the metropolis throughout sure time durations and descending from somebody “incarcerated for the failed War on Drugs.”
Critics say the payouts make no sense in a state and metropolis that by no means enslaved Black folks. Opponents typically say taxpayers who had been by no means slave house owners shouldn’t must pay cash to individuals who weren’t enslaved.
Advocates say that view ignores a wealth of knowledge and historic proof displaying that lengthy after U.S. slavery formally resulted in 1865, authorities insurance policies and practices labored to imprison Black folks at greater charges, deny entry to dwelling and enterprise loans and limit the place they might work and dwell.
Justin Hansford, a professor at Howard University School of Law, says no municipal reparations plan will have the funds for to proper the wrongs of slavery, however he appreciates any makes an attempt to “genuinely, legitimately, authentically” make issues proper. And that features money, he mentioned.
“If you’re going to try to say you’re sorry, you have to speak in the language that people understand, and money is that language,” he mentioned.
John Dennis, chair of the San Francisco Republican Party, doesn’t assist reparations though he says he’d assist a critical dialog on the subject. He doesn’t contemplate the board’s dialogue of $5 million funds to be one.
“This conversation we’re having in San Francisco is completely unserious. They just threw a number up, there’s no analysis,” Dennis mentioned. “It seems ridiculous, and it also seems that this is the one city where it could possibly pass.”
The board created the 15-member reparations committee in late 2020, months after California Gov. Gavin Newsom accepted a statewide job drive amid nationwide turmoil after a white Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, a Black man.
The committee continues to deliberate suggestions, together with financial compensation, and its report is because of the Legislature on July 1. At that time it is going to be as much as lawmakers to draft and move laws.
The state panel made the controversial determination in March to restrict reparations to descendants of Black individuals who had been within the nation within the nineteenth century. Some reparations advocates mentioned that strategy does take note of the harms that Black immigrants undergo.
Under San Francisco’s draft suggestion, an individual must be not less than 18 years previous and have recognized as “Black/African American” in public paperwork for not less than 10 years. Eligible folks should additionally meet two of eight different standards, although the listing could change.
Those standards embody being born in or migrating to San Francisco between 1940 and 1996 and residing within the metropolis for least 13 years; being displaced from town by city renewal between 1954 and 1973, or the descendant of somebody who was; attending town’s public colleges earlier than they had been absolutely desegregated; or being a descendant of an enslaved particular person.
The Chicago suburb of Evanston grew to become the primary U.S. metropolis to fund reparations. The metropolis gave cash to qualifying folks for dwelling repairs, down funds and curiosity or late penalties due on property. In December, the Boston City Council accepted of a reparations examine job drive.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”
