Reparations and Reality

The city of San Francisco made national headlines this past week with its proposal for reparations legislation, which could throw the Californian city into financial disaster and chaos.

On Wednesday, March 15, headlines across the country detailed the San Francisco Board of Supervisors agreeing to procedurally advance with reparations for the city’s Black residents.

The 11 supervisors expressed support for “a draft plan of more than 100 reparations recommendations for the city’s eligible Black residents,” according to NPR. 

Among those 100 reparation recommendations, the main shocking proposals “include a whopping one-time payment of $5 million to each adult and a complete clearing of personal debt — including credit cards, taxes and student loans. Black residents would also be able to collect an annual income of at least $97,000 for 250 years and buy homes within the city limits for $1,” according to NPR.

The recommendations were made by the African American Reparations Advisory Committee formed in 2020 to “craft a plan to address institutional, city-sanctioned harm inflicted upon African American communities,” according to CNN.

Additionally, to fuel the dissociation from reality, according to ABC News, the reparations were partly inspired by atonement for slavery: “The state of California and the cities of Boston and San Francisco are among jurisdictions trying to atone not just for chattel slavery, but for decades of racist policies and laws that systemically denied Black Americans access to property, education and the ability to build generational wealth.”

The idea that innocent taxpayers should bear the financial burden of reparations based on a practice abolished 158 years ago is absurd and full of nothing but virtue signaling. 

The San Francisco residents who qualify for reparations were not slaves, just as much as the taxpayers of San Francisco were not slave owners. In fact, many residents of the coastal city are immigrants who played no part in racial issues of the past: “In 2021, foreign-born residents represented at least a third of the population in Santa Clara (40%), San Mateo (35%), San Francisco (34%), Los Angeles (33%), and Alameda (34%) Counties,” according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Additionally, the destructive left-wing San Francisco Board of Supervisors has their own problems which substantially require the finances the Board proposes to needlessly hand out, such as an under-performing economy and a homelessness and drug crisis. In essence, the financial impact of the reparations cost would be enormous.

Stanford University’s Hoover Institution analyzed how much the reparations recommendations would cost the City of San Francisco and reported “Paying $5 million to 35,455 individuals totals about $175 billion…To put this in perspective, the city’s budget for the current fiscal year is $14 billion, while this proposed sum exceeds the current state budgets of all US states except for California, New York, and Texas,” according to The Federalist.

Realistically, many citizens believe reparations would be comical, as most issues and structures they intend to address no longer exist.

“‘It’s disgusting to me that we are more focused on slavery, which ended in 1865, than we are focused on veterans who are on the streets of San Francisco, homeless and begging for spare change in 2023,” DuRousseau said on Fox News Tuesday. “That’s where they need to start sending their money,’” according to The Federalist.

It appears the Californian city known for its appeal and beauty is falling apart with issues created by poor, disastrous governance. The Board of Supervisors seem to be supporting woke policy that would only drive San Francisco further into financial calamity, especially with its current problems that continue to go unaddressed and unsolved.

While San Francisco and liberal cities proclaim reparations are a “step forward” for America, the idea of reparations only chains innocent members of society to the past.