(Headline USA) San Francisco’s panel on reparations admitted this week that its recommendation that each black resident in the city receive $5 million was the result of a “journey” and not based on any objective reasoning as a matter of such delicacy might otherwise warrant.
“There wasn’t a math formula,” Eric McDonnell, chairman of the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee, told the Washington Post.
“It was a journey for the committee towards what could represent a significant enough investment in families to put them on this path to economic well-being, growth and vitality that chattel slavery and all the policies that flowed from it destroyed,” she said.
In January, the committee unveiled its recommendations to the city to repair the damage done by “decades of racist policies” in deep-blue San Francisco.
These policies, the committee said, were “explicitly created to subjugate black people in San Francisco by upholding and expanding the intent and legacy of chattel slavery.”
One of the recommendations is a $5 million check for each qualifying black resident.
City officials, however, have dismissed the proposal as “unrealistic.”
“I wish we had this kind of money in San Francisco’s general fund but if we want to maintain the services that exist today, we do not,” San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen said last month.
Another official, Supervisor Shamann Walton, said one way to potentially fund reparations would be to use the revenue brought in by the city’s Cannabis Business Tax.
The tax, however, would raise only about $10.25 million annually—enough to cover two black residents per year—according to the San Francisco Standard.
San Francisco Republican Party Chairman John Dennis blasted the reparations committee for refusing to take its task seriously.
“This is just a bunch of like-minded people who got in the room and came up with a number,” he said.
“You’ll notice in that report, there was no justification for the number, no analysis provided,” he continued. “This was an opportunity to do some serious work and they blew it.”
The reparations committee also proposed debt forgiveness in addition to the $5 million payments.
