The advisory committee also recommends providing Black low-income residents with supplements that meet the area’s median income.
San Francisco, California – The San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee, a 15-member advisory board to the city and county of San Francisco was established in 2020. The board recommended the $5 million amount per person to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors last year in December of 2022.
In the recommendation, the advisory committee wrote, “Reparations are being demanded by members of the Black/African American communities not to remedy enslavement, but to address the public policies explicitly created to subjugate Black people in San Francisco by upholding and expanding the intent and legacy of chattel slavery,” the draft plan explains. “While neither San Francisco, nor California, formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the tenets of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people were codified through legal and extralegal actions, social codes, and judicial enforcement.”
The discussion of reparations for Black Americans and the historical 400 years of slavery has been an ongoing topic throughout the country. Asheville, North Carolina, the largest city in western North Carolina, made the first move to address reparations by approving a $2.1 million reparations initiative in 2020.
Though the state of California was never a slave state, it did enforce a variety of racist laws, segregation, and more that kept Blacks from living a quality and healthy lifestyle. Such as Bruce’s Beach, Black-owned beach resort that was taken from the original owners as they were pushed off the property by local Whites and government officials.
The committee also recommended that all eligible Black residents be supplemented with funding to meet the area median income (AMI) of $97,000. The proposal reads, “Racial disparities across all metrics have led to a significant racial wealth gap in the City of San Francisco. By elevating income to match AMI, Black people can better afford housing and achieve a better quality of life.”
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has yet to respond to the proposal, but the board’s President, Aaron Peskin, has expressed to the San Francisco Chronicle that he supports the committee’s proposal. “There are so many efforts that result in incredible reports that just end up gathering dust on a shelf. We cannot let this be one of them.”
