The San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee is recommending eligible Black residents receive $5 million each as compensation for the “decades of harm they have experienced."
According to the New York Post, the reparations committee, a 15-member panel established by San Francisco supervisors in May 2021, proposed wiping debts associated with educational, personal, credit card, and payday loans for black households along with the $5 million payout in a report on Monday (January 17).
“Reparation must be adequate, effective, prompt, and should be proportional to the gravity of the violations and the harm suffered,” Monday's report states. The intention behind reparations is "not to remedy enslavement” but to “address the public policies explicitly created to subjugate Black people in San Francisco by upholding and expanding the intent and legacy of chattel slavery.”
While neither California, which has formed a separate task force to study reparations, or San Francisco “formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery,” “social codes” and “extralegal actions” were designed to exclude Black residents, the report adds.
Eligible recipients of the proposed $5 million include those that meet two of eight standards, including being born in or having migrated to San Francisco between 1940 and 1996, being a descendant of or someone jailed in the “failed War on Drugs,” or being a descendant of a person enslaved before 1865.
The San Francisco reparations committee is set to make its final recommendations to the city in June. Their latest proposal could cost the city about $50 million, according to the Daily Mail.
“There are so many efforts that result in incredible reports that just end up gathering dust on a shelf,” Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said in a statement. “We cannot let this be one of them.”
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