The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has voted unanimously for reparations for Black Americans due to the abolished nineteenth-century institution of slavery. California was not a slave state.
The African American Reparations Advisory Committee’s recommendations included $5 million cash payments to each Black adult citizen, the elimination of personal debt and tax burdens, guaranteed annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years, and homes in San Francisco for just $1 a family, according to the Associated Press.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearing the report on Tuesday “voiced enthusiastic support for the ideas listed, with some saying money should not stop the city from doing the right thing,” the AP noted.
The Associated Press, which markets itself as “nonpartisan” journalism, couched its advocacy of the left-wing extremist program in explicit terms.
“Several supervisors said they were surprised to hear pushback from politically liberal San Franciscans apparently unaware that the legacy of slavery and racist policies continues to keep Black Americans on the bottom rungs of health, education and economic prosperity, and overrepresented in prisons and homeless populations,” the AP said.
“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,” said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman. The AP adds that Mandelman comes from the “heavily LGBTQ” Castro neighborhood.
The AP did mention that there was criticism of the plan as “financially and politically impossible. It cites an estimate from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, which “leans conservative,” has said it would cost each non-Black family in the city at least $600,000.
“Tuesday’s unanimous expressions of support for reparations by the board do not mean all the recommendations will ultimately be adopted,” the AP added, “as the body can vote to approve, reject or change any or all of them. A final committee report is due in June.”
The San Francisco Board’s expression of support may be “symbolic” and empty “virtue-signaling.” But it should disturb the city’s residents that the board does not feel tethered by reality and supports policies that are mere fantasy. It is indicative of the once-shining golden city decaying into a trash-filled, drug-infested, feces-laden, homeless-overrun, decadent vestige of its former self.
Follow Kyle Becker on Twitter @kylenabecker.