A reparations plan that would give black San Franciscans $5 million each was found to have no calculations behind it.
While California has a state Reparations Task Force, San Francisco has its own as well: the African American Reparations Advisory Committee. In a December 2022 report, the committee recommended a slew of financial compensations to black residents, crowned by a one-time lump sum of $5 million per black resident. However, the committee admitted that there were no calculations behind the total whatsoever in an interview with the Washington Post.
“There wasn’t a math formula,” reparations committee chairman Eric McDonnell told the outlet. “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.”
The revelation resulted in criticism across the board, even from figures who advocate reparations.
“Calling for [a] $5 million payout by a local government undercuts the credibility of the reparations effort,” pro-reparations economist William A. Darity Jr. said.
“This is just a bunch of like-minded people who got in the room and came up with a number,” San Francisco Republican Party chairman John Dennis said. “You’ll notice in that report, there was no justification for the number, no analysis provided. This was an opportunity to do some serious work and they blew it.”
The report gives the rationale for the $5 million per person sum: "A lump sum payment would compensate the affected population for the decades of harms that they have experienced, and will redress the economic and opportunity losses that Black San Franciscans have endured, collectively, as the result of both intentional decisions and unintended harms perpetuated by City policy."
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The report additionally advocates reparations that would send the true total much higher, including a debt forgiveness program, supplementing poor black residents' income, and a wide range of other services.
California's Reparations Task Force also recommended a sum for reparations at over $200,000 per person for housing discrimination alone. The final report taking into account all discrimination is expected to suggest a far higher total.