What to Make of the San Francisco $5M Reparations Proposal
AllSides Summary
The San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a proposal recommending the city pay $5 million to qualifying black residents as reparations for “segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people.” The proposal has sparked conversation and debate on how best to address the contemporary ramifications of America's past.
In Favor: The proposal is receiving general support from the left. A writer in the San Francisco Chronicle called the proposal “bold” and determined that the city’s next steps will determine if they “are serious about confronting the city’s checkered past, or are simply pretending to be.” A writer in HuffPost (Left Bias) endorsed the plan for its advancement of the discussion of reparations in America, calling the proposal “innovative because it uses historical and socioeconomic evidence to identify what, exactly, it will take to help the average Black San Franciscan to close the racial wealth gap.”
In Opposition: Most writers on the right have voiced opposition to the proposal, most commonly questioning the methodology used to determine which residents qualify for reparation payments, as well as the price tag for the city. Ben Shapiro (Right Bias) questioned the distinction between “harms from deliberate policies” deserving of reparations and “vague societal ills” that he doubts can be “cured with social engineering.” The National Review Editorial Board called the plan “insane,” stating the proposal is “deliberately conflating the unique historical injustice of slavery with other forms of legal discrimination.”
Featured Coverage of this Story
From the Left
$5 million for each longtime Black resident? S.F. has a bold reparations plan to consider
A century after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and lamented how “the Negro still is not free.”
“One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity,” he said during his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
King could have been describing today’s San Francisco, a 47-square-mile city...
From the Center
San Francisco Panel Proposes $5 Million To Each Black Resident For 'Decades Of Harm'
San Francisco's African American Reparations Committee has urged the city to pay each longtime Black resident $5 million, citing decades of harm and systematic repression against the community.
In a draft of the San Francisco reparations plan published last month, the panel said that a lump sum payment would compensate the community for the "decades of harm" and amend economic and opportunity losses Black residents have endured due to repressive city policies.
The panel also recommended granting each Black resident total debt forgiveness that would clear each eligible person's student...
From the Right
San Francisco’s Insane ‘Reparations’ Program
An advisory committee to the city of San Francisco has recommended that the city pay “reparations” to its black population. The plan was prepared by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission staff for the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee, the very name of which suggests that the committee’s conclusions were foregone. This is madness.
Under the plan, the city would pay a minimum of $5 million to each qualifying black resident of the city over age 18 and commit to a 250-year program of guaranteeing a $97,000 income...
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