By JANIE HAR (Associated Press)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Payments of $5 million to each eligible Black grownup, the elimination of non-public debt and tax burdens, assured annual incomes of at the least $97,000 for 250 years and houses in San Francisco for simply $1 a household.
These are simply a number of the suggestions made by a city-appointed reparations committee tasked with a thorny query: What wouldn’t it take to atone for the centuries of U.S. slavery and generations of systemic racism that proceed to maintain Black Americans on the underside rungs of well being, schooling and financial prosperity, and overrepresented in prisons and homeless populations?
A primary listening to earlier than town’s Board of Supervisors on Tuesday might provide a glimpse of the board’s urge for food for advancing a reparations plan that will be unmatched nationwide in specificity and breadth. Critics have slammed it as financially and politically unimaginable. One conservative analyst estimated that every non-Black household within the metropolis must pay at the least $600,000.
Some supervisors have mentioned San Francisco can’t afford any main reparations funds proper now, given town’s deep deficit amid a tech business downturn, however they nonetheless need to talk about the proposals and contemplate future options. The board can vote to vary, undertake or reject all or any the suggestions.
But reparations committee members contemplate their outcomes to be an correct estimate of what it might take to start to restore the enduring harm of slavery and discrimination, and so they bristle at the concept that they need to work out find out how to pay for it.
“We are the harmed,” mentioned Eric McDonnell, chair of San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee. “If the judge ruled in our favor, the judge would not turn to us and say, ‘Help them figure out how to make this work.’”
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 process 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 stage.
Fewer than 50,000 Black individuals nonetheless dwell in San Francisco, and it’s not clear what number of can 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 individuals. Opponents usually say taxpayers who have been by no means slave homeowners mustn’t must pay cash to individuals who weren’t enslaved.
Advocates say that view ignores a wealth of information and historic proof displaying how lengthy after U.S. slavery formally resulted in 1865, authorities insurance policies and practices labored to imprison Black individuals at larger charges, deny entry to house and enterprise loans and limit the place they might work and dwell.
“There’s still a veiled perspective that, candidly, Black folks don’t deserve this,” mentioned McDonnell. “The number itself, $5 million, is actually low when you consider the harm.”
Justin Hansford, professor at Howard University School of Law, says no municipal reparations plan will come up with the money 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.
Black residents as soon as made up greater than 13% of San Francisco’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 night time golf equipment and outlets till authorities redevelopment within the Nineteen Sixties compelled out residents.
John Dennis, chair of the San Francisco Republican Party, doesn’t help reparations though he says he’d help a severe 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.”
Led by Supervisor Shamann Walton, the board created the 15-member reparations committee in late 2020, months after California Gov. Gavin Newsom authorized a statewide process drive amid nationwide turmoil after a white Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, a Black man.
At Tuesday’s listening to, the board might direct employees to conduct additional analysis, write laws or schedule extra conferences. The committee’s closing report is due in June.
California’s process drive continues to deliberate suggestions, together with financial compensation. Its report is because of the Legislature on July 1. At that time, will probably be as much as lawmakers to draft and move laws, usually a time-consuming course of.
The state panel made the controversial resolution in March to restrict reparations to descendants of Black individuals who have been within the nation within the nineteenth century. Some reparations advocates mentioned that method misses the continued harms that Black immigrants undergo.
Under San Francisco’s draft advice, an individual have to be at the least 18 years previous and have recognized as “Black/African American” in public paperwork for at the least 10 years. Eligible individuals should additionally meet two of eight different standards, although the listing might change.
Those standards embody being born in or migrating to San Francisco between 1940 and 1996 and dwelling within the metropolis for least 13 years; being displaced from San Francisco by city renewal between 1954 and 1973, or the descendant of somebody who was; attending town’s public colleges earlier than they have been absolutely desegregated; or being a descendant of an enslaved U.S. particular person earlier than 1865.
The Chicago suburb of Evanston grew to become the primary U.S. metropolis to fund reparations. The metropolis gave cash to qualifying individuals for house repairs, downpayments and curiosity or late penalties due on property within the metropolis. In December, the Boston City Council authorized of a reparations examine process drive.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”
