Despite that California was never a slave state, the San Francisco reparations committee just announced a proposal to pay each multi-decade black resident of the City $5 million.
But Wait! It doesn’t stop there.
The reparations committee also proposed granting total debt forgiveness due to the decades of “systematic repression” faced by the local Black community.
“This report joins the contemporary discourse about reparations–specifically expanding on the understanding of the role that city governments have played in perpetuating harms that further marginalize their African American communities,” the draft report says. “Moreover, the recommendations included are proposed to combat the ongoing, explicit, anti-Black discrimination that Black citizens in San Francisco continue to experience.”
“For example, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC) names urban renewal and its continued economic impacts on African Americans as a primary example,” the report continues. “The Committee identifies the ways that these harms were enshrined and perpetuated through policy decisions, corporate advocacy, and institutional choices across the last seven decades.”
The Board of Supervisors created the AARAC committee two years ago. But remember, San Francisco is Gavin Newsom’s city, where he served as Mayor 2004-2011.
As Governor, Newsom “appointed five individuals with a range of expertise and diverse backgrounds to serve on the state’s task force on reparations, after signing landmark legislation in 2020 to advance racial justice,” a May 2021 press statement from the Governor said. The committee is the result of legislation authored by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), Assembly Bill 3121.
The Globe reported Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide Reparations Task Force is considering an estimated $569 billion to be paid by the state for reparations (that’s two and a half times California’s current state budget which already is running a deficit) to give to black-Americans living in California for past discriminatory practices and slavery, despite that California was never a slave state. Some of the recent proposals were simply cash payouts of $350,000 to every African American and $250,000 for every black-owned business to help close the “racial wealth gap,” which is actually a social justice grievance, and not slavery.
In fact, both the San Francisco and state Reparations committees are seriously neglecting the state’s rich ethnic history.
A local historian friend sent this:
“Before and during the Civil War militia companies were ethnic, generally social groups with others from the ‘old country’ such as German, Irish, and Italian companies all over northern California. This was not then considered segregation, it was a place to socialize with those of similar backgrounds. Sacramento had a black militia company in that era. Many from those units joined the California Volunteers and fought in the eastern battles.
In the [Sacramento] Land Park area (there is a monument marker in the park) was Camp Union Sutterville where seven regiments of infantry, two regiments of cavalry, and smaller specialized units were trained and participated primarily in two Union moves. One was to replace regular army troops in the west and they garrisoned posts all the way to Salt Lake City, founding an army base in that area that is still active. The other went to southern California and joined units raised in that area. Confederates had occupied what is now Arizona and New Mexico up to the California border. Camp Union troops were involved with pushing them back into Texas and when the war ended Sacramento troops were well established in that state.”
Some of the recent proposals from Newsom’s statewide Reparations Task Force are cash payouts of $350,000 to every African American, and $250,000 for every black-owned business to help close the “racial wealth gap,” which is actually a social justice grievance, and not slavery.
Perhaps even more egregious than this pay-out proposal is the big lie about California’s history; California was part of the Union, not the Confederate, and wasn’t a slave owning state.
San Francisco’s plan is far richer: “The plan also calls on the city to supplement lower-income recipients’ income to reflect the Area Median Income (AMI), about $97,000, annually for at least 250 years,” Fox News reported.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported:
“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 that’s home to more than 60 billionaires and at least 7,000 homeless people, around 40% of whom are Black, despite Black people representing only 5% of the population.
A bill last year by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and 52 House Democrats sought reparations and a national apology for slavery. They are still pushing to set up a commission to “examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies,” the New York Post reported.
“Reparations are perhaps most analogous to the law of restitution, in which Party A, who has been unjustly enriched at Party B’s expense, must reimburse B by the amount A benefited,” the Post explained. “Alternatively, we might think of the contracts-law remedies of compensatory or expectation damages, in which Party A pays Party B enough to either compensate him for his injury or restore him to the place he would have been in but for the breach of contract.”
“But there’s a problem: In the context of modern reparations for antebellum slavery, who exactly is A, and who is B?”
Indeed. Another writer observed “Recent African immigrants aren’t descended from American slaves. On the contrary, many countries from which they hail, like Nigeria, were complicit in the slave trade.”
San Francisco’s reparations proposal goes far beyond reparations for the direct descendants of the enslaved – The City is proposing to also pay those “incarcerated during the war on drugs.”
The SF Chronicle explains:
The period of urban renewal that began in the 1950s remains one of the most damning examples of how local government stole wealth from Black communities by razing them, and then ensured they never recovered. As AARAC’s report highlights, most of San Francisco’s formerly redlined neighborhoods — where residents were deemed ineligible for federal housing loans between 1933 and 1954 — are low-income neighborhoods undergoing gentrification now.
“To qualify for the payments, residents must be 18 at the time the committee’s proposal is enacted, and have identified as Black or African American on public documents for at least 10 years. They may also have to prove they were born in the city between 1940 and 1996, have resided in San Francisco for at least 13 years.”
“This reparations process gives us a chance to look at the many ways, not just economically, that harm can and should be repaired,” AARAC vice chair Tinisch Hollins told the Chronicle. “And even though San Francisco has passed policies that touch on the legacy of slavery, we have needed something that goes toward quantifying that harm.”
Both the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee and State Reparations Task Force are expanding reparations beyond slavery. It’s almost like a grab for all grievances. But where does this end?
As the Globe reported in December, Reparations task force member Jovan Scott Lewis said: “Spoiler-alert: We don’t yet know the racial wealth gap in the state of California.” This is the preliminary conversation to figure out what we know and what we don’t know.”
Remember this: “Racial wealth gap.”
Another task force member Dr. Cheryl Grills said: “Racial terror leads to racial trauma … also known as race-based traumatic stress.”
The state Reparations Task Force is already pulling a bait-and-switch on Californians – with talk of a “racial wealth gap,” “racial terror,” “race-based traumatic stress,” and “guaranteed income for dependents of slaves,” what they are really promoting is social justice reparations and nothing more than a redistribution of wealth.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who claims he isn’t running for President, has opened a can of worms signaling to the country that he is amenable to reparations.
Read the DRAFT San Francisco Reparations Plan:
Read all on the Globe’s coverage on the Reparations Task Force.
View Comments (31)
The author minimizes Jim Crow and redlining policies and ignores gross inequities in real estate and bank lending practices that linger today. Were potential recipients anything other than Black, the issue would not be as problematic.
California was never a slave state. Neither San Francisco or California ever had Jim Crow laws which were passed by Democrats in some southern states to enforce segregation. If there are still any "gross inequities in real estate and bank lending practices that linger today" in California, then why doesn't Attorney General Rob Bonta who is a Democrat of Filipino descent enforce federal and state discrimination laws? The truth is that there are no gross inequities in real estate and lending in California. The other truth is that Gov. Newsom and the Democrat party are looking for scapegoats to deflect the mess they’ve made over the decades they've been in control of California.
There have been factions of the KKK and other white supremacists organizations operating in California for decades. California began with the systematic enslavement of Indigenous Californians through slavery in Spanish California. The arrival of the Spanish colonists introduced chattel slavery and involuntary servitude to the area. Over 90,000 Indigenous peoples were enslaved at the Spanish missions in California between 1770–1834. African slaves were part of the California Gold Rush. Also, California did have Jim Crow laws that were mostly aimed at the Asian population and they were predominantly in the San Francisco area. So, it's probably best to refrain from expressing opinions referencing history before actually knowing the history.
Well said. It should be noted that the first slave owning colonies were Massachusetts (1641), Connecticut and Rhode Island (c.1650), New Amsterdam (New York), (1664). Virginia had slavery foisted upon it by the Governor
of Virginia colony, who served at the pleasure of the king.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed no slaves, North, South or West. Freed negroes were denied access
to northern states post Civil War. Read your history!
Are you then suggesting the Mexicans, Spaniards, and Catholics should be gone after for reparations? Because by logical extension of your own argument, you should be.
You're so right, Mario. And do they have any idea what the economic repercussions of this will do to EVERYONE in the state, and into the rest of the country? This could be the end of California. Anyone with sense would leave now.
Mr. Johnson, that's a straw man argument. While restrictive covenants did exist in the real estate sector that discriminated against Blacks and others of non-White European ancestry 60+ years ago, Supreme Court rulings and landmark federal and state legislation passed in the 1960s have banned discrimination in housing, voting and employment. So would you be in favor of Willie Brown, London Breed, Brooke Jenkins (who's half-black) and even San Francisco native O.J. Simpson receiving the $5 million in reparations being proposed?
For forty years or more San Francisco has been run by Democrats. So what they are admitting is that Democrats are racist and THEY should be the ones to pay reparations!
Thomas Buckley's "California's Anti-Racist Equity Plan" article in California Globe discusses the California State Water Resources Control Board's 2023-2025 Racial Equity Action Plan that contains inflammatory language about "white supremacy." It requires the Board to use a “racial equity lens” throughout its decision-making processes and pay BIPOC and tribal community partners for their time and expertise. It's just another scheme to fund leftist groups mostly connected with the Democrat party that are often radical and violent such as BLM? The reparations scam seems to be endemic throughout California's government?
This all amounts to clear anti-white racism, and trying to get fair-skinned people to give their wealth to blacks, even if undeserved. My ancestors never owned slaves nor did they live in the U.S. during the period of slavery. I'm not guilty for the sins of someone else's ancestors. Let's also make the Africans who sold their own kin into slavery pay too, then, shall we, along with all the European nations which benefitted from the slave trade?
I am white. I was denied college assistance but my ethnic friends got a free ride in the 80's. My ethnic friend was hired at Dean Witter. We both applied. He was hired because of affirmative action. I was not. So based on A&B where is my check??
If anyone should be paying reparations, it's Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats in positions in power in California who locked healthy Californians and small businesses down (while excluding themselves) during the Covid-19 scamdemic and who mandated experimental mRNA shots that have injured and killed thousands of innocent Californians. They are guilty of crimes against humanity and they should pay for the carnage they created?
That should Democrat Mayor London Breed of San Francisco who locked down the city and imposed a mask mandate that she was caught violating several times. She mandated covid vaccinations for City employees and for health care providers, including workers at adult day centers, residential care facilities, dentist offices, home health aides and pharmacists. She imposed a mandate that required patrons and employees to provide proof that they were fully vaccinated in several indoor settings, including bars, restaurants, gyms and events. You’d think that Mayor London Breed as an African-American would be opposed to segregating people?
THE BROWNS AND NEWSOM, AND PELOSI FAMILIES ARE THE CORRUPTED CAUSES OF THIS AND EVERY THING ELSE IN CALIFORNIA!! AND THEY KNOW IT . THERE , LYING CHEATING STEALING AND CORRUPT WAYS . HAVE RULED THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA FOR OVER 40 YEARS ,THAT RIGHT OVER FORTY YEARS THEY ALL NEED TO BE INVESTIGATED. AND LOCK UP FOR THE Illegal shit they have gotten away with so far. What about the high speed train How many millions or billions have they ripped the state off on that so far investigation needs to be done
The Brown's ,Pelosi Getty's and Newsom and have had control over California's governments for over 40 Corrupted years that's right 40 years of corrupt cheap lying stealing tax payer money . California taxpayers hard earned money, those 4 families need to be a investigation , where is the high speed rail train how many millions have they rip off on that and where's is it shitting at to this day. it there BANK ACCOUNT????????????
Gov. Newsom knows that Democrats are the party of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws and the KKK. Their history has gotten in their way and so they've tried to rewrite history to make it fit into their current reparations narrative.
So the Democrats are basically saying that they believe that blacks are incapable of doing anything on their own without their largesse?? Or, "keeping them on the plantation"???
What a slap in the face to a race.....
These SF Democrats are vile, disgusting, stupid people....
Seems to me that the Dem/Marxists have a history of floating preposterous, unworkable ideas like this one, with the idea that all they have to do is SAY what they intend to do, all the while knowing that they won't (or can't) do it; that they have NO INTENTION of doing it. It's a way of stirring up the resentment pot, of stirring up division. Think of the "student loan forgiveness" nonsense. I contend the Sleepy Joe Admin knew it wouldn't happen, that it couldn't happen. But in addition to buying votes before an election it was also a way to plant another seed and grow more resentment between the so-called "have-nots" and the so-called "haves." When the Dem/Marxists float "slave reparations" of $5 MILLION paid to each eligible person in S.F. alongside a half-baked proposal of doing the same throughout California, those who think they are eligible will expect to receive it. When the unworkable, undo-able, unaffordable proposal is dropped, many of those who expected to receive a $5 MILLION payment will ----- with a little help from the same politicians who proposed this nonsense and who hope to sow racial division ----- end up blaming "white supremacists" for denying them what they were never going to receive in the first place. At least that is the hope of the Dem/Marxist party "leadership" fiends and certain craven, conscienceless Dem politicians. We'll see.