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The San Francisco Black Reparations Advisory Committee has admitted it did not use a mathematical formula to calculate the amount it wants to pay each long-term black resident for decades of discrimination.
The 15-member committee proposed repair payments of $5 million in January, as well as debt forgiveness and guaranteed revenue of $97,000.
The city has now revealed that they did not follow a mathematical formula, but rather researched history to help determine the disputed figure.
“There was no mathematical formula,” Chairman Eric McDonnell told the Washington Post.
“It was a journey for the committee into what could represent a significant enough investment in families to set them on this path to the economic well-being, growth and vitality that slavery and all the policies that came from it destroyed.”
Black San Franciscans could receive up to $5 million each in repairs under a proposal from the African American Repairs Advisory Committee
Committee Chairman Eric McDonnell admitted they did not follow a mathematical formula to determine how much each qualified resident will receive.
San Francisco Republican Party Chairman John Dennis criticized the proposal, saying “there was no justification for the number, no analysis was provided.”
“This is just a group of like-minded people who came into the room and came up with a number,” he told the Post.
“This was an opportunity to do some serious work and they blew it.”
William A. Darity Jr., an economist who supports the repairs, even criticized the high price tag, saying the payment needs to be “somewhat realistic.”
“Asking for a $5 million payment from a local government undermines the credibility of the repair effort,” he told the Post.
However, supporters argue that black residents earn, on average, $44,000 a year, compared to their white counterparts who earn more than $100,000.
It’s unclear how many San Franciscans will be eligible, but the city is home to about 50,000 African-Americans. If every resident qualified, she would eat up a large chunk of the annual budget, which is still recovering from the pandemic.
To qualify, residents must have identified as black in public records for at least 10 years and be at least 18 years old.
They must also qualify for two of a series of requirements, including being born in or immigrating to the city between 1940 and 1996 and then having lived there for 13 years.
McDonnell (pictured) said: “It was a journey for the committee into what could represent a significant enough investment in families to set them on this path to economic well-being, growth and vitality that slavery and all the politics that were derived from it”. destroyed’
One of the historical events that the city has investigated was the displacement of the black community in the Fillmore district in the 1960s. Known as the ‘Harlem of the West,’ nearly 900 businesses and 20,000 people were forced to leave the neighborhood. , which has since become a predominantly white, upscale area.
The purpose of the reparations, San Francisco said, is not to compensate for slavery, which was never legal in the state, but for “public policies explicitly created to subjugate blacks in San Francisco by upholding and expanding the intent and legacy of slavery.” .’
San Francisco isn’t the only city struggling to find the perfect number to pay its citizens, as a dozen others, like Boston and St. Louis, are also debating it.
Cities considering reparations have to balance satisfying reparations advocates while keeping in mind that most Americans oppose financial restitution.
A January poll from the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that six in 10 opposed payments to descendants of slaves, while four in 10 said the federal government “definitely should not pursue” such a policy.
San Francisco’s proposal beats out several other cities and critics of the repairs fear the city will collapse under financial pressure. The city, which is still reeling from the pandemic, has an annual budget of $14 billion, according to the Washington Post. The city also faces a deficit of $728 million over the next two years.
To qualify, individuals must have identified as black in public records for at least 10 years and be at least 18 years old. They must also qualify for two of a series of requirements, including being born in or migrating to the city between 1940 and 1996 and then having lived there for 13 years.
Angela Davis, 79, appeared on an episode of PBS’s Finding Your Roots on Tuesday, during which she also learned that both her mother’s father and her father’s father were white men and descendants of slave owners.
The proposal also says that qualifying low-income households should have their income supplemented to match the city’s median income – $97,000 in 2022 – for the next 250 years.
“Racial disparities across all metrics have led to a significant racial gap in wealth in the City of San Francisco,” the draft states.
“By raising income to match AMI, Blacks can better afford housing and achieve a better quality of life.”
A host of other proposals include investments in San Francisco’s black community, financial education, legal protections from individuals’ reparations, tax credits, and black-owned banks to manage people’s money.
The proposal also says that San Francisco “issue a formal apology for past damage and commit to making ongoing, systemic, and programmatic substantial investments in Black communities to address historic damage.”
The final report will be published in June.
Earlier this month, a notorious Black Panther, who is also a communist, faced calls to pay reparations after discovering that his ancestors were white Puritans who came to the US on the Mayflower.
Angela Davis, 79, was shocked to discover that both sides of her family were white and her mother’s ancestors were slave owners, on the PBS show Finding Your Roots.
From California to Massachusetts, newly formed panels are grappling with what a repair scheme should look like.
Six in 10 respondents opposed payments to descendants of slaves, while four in 10 said the federal government should “definitely not follow” that policy.
And the startling revelations prompted calls for reparations from the famed University of California Marxist professor, after calling on whites to compromise in the past.
Sharing a tweet about the show, conservative pundit Matt Walsh wrote: ‘It gets better. She is also descended from a slave owner. On her father’s side he is a pilgrim. On her mother’s side she owns slaves. Looks like Angela Davis owes some severance pay.
Another Twitter user named AK Kamara wrote: ‘Angela Davis, the radical Marxist and former Black Panther, recently discovered that she is also the ancestor of colonizers and slave owners. I guess she owes herself amends. This timeline is hilarious.
She appeared surprised during a television interview that aired this week in which Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. told her about her ancestry.
‘No. I can not believe this. My ancestors didn’t come here on the Mayflower,’ she said, only to be told later that they did come to the US aboard the famous pilgrimage ship.
The Mayflower was an English ship that brought white English families, known as the Pilgrims, to the American continent to permanently establish the colony of New England in 1620.
“You are a descendant of the 101 people who sailed on the Mayflower,” reiterated Gates Jr., director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.