The mayor of San Francisco has signed a city measure to create a fund that could grant each of the city’s eligible black residents $5 million in reparations.
But where that money will come from won’t be as easy an official signature.
The new ordinance, signed by Mayor Daniel Lurie just before Christmas, establishes a reparations fund, as proposed by the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC) in 2023 – a measure that would cost an estimated $50 billion.
But the measure allocates no money.
According to reporting by the Daily Mail:
Per the [AARAC’s] 2023 report, every eligible African-American adult in San Francisco should be handed a $5 million lump sum to ‘compensate the affected population for the decades of harm that they have experienced.’ Approximately 50,000 black people live in San Francisco, and the qualifying requirements remain unclear.
While this effort has captured the most attention – and sparked the most controversy – the AARAC rattled off more than 100 suggestions, including debt relief, guaranteed annual income of $97,000, debt forgiveness and city-funded homes for black people.
In 2023, the libertarian Cato Institute called the plan “true lunacy,” pointing out that even the authors of the proposal recognized “San Francisco was never a hub of the African slave trade.”
The conservative think tank the Hoover Institution also weighed in that year, saying the plan would cost each non-African American household in the city about $600,000 in tax dollars.
However, Mayor Lurie told the Daily Mail taxpayers were off the hook, saying the city has been struggling financially and was expecting a $1 billion budget deficit for 2026.
“Given these historic fiscal challenges, the city does not have resources to allocate to this fund,” he told the Mail.
He sounded as if signing the bill was more of symbolic gesture than one based in economic reality, telling the Mail:
For several years, communities across the city have been working with the government to acknowledge the decades of harm done to San Francisco’s black community. While that process largely predates my administration, I am signing the legislation to create this fund in recognition of the work of so many San Franciscans and the unanimous support of the Board of Supervisors.
Lurie said the city was open to “outside donors” and “we stand ready to ensure that funding gets to those who are eligible for it.”
However, with a seemingly unattainable price tag in the multi-billions, the measure appears to have established that the city of San Francisco is now officially in the practice of virtue signaling.
Even San Francisco’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has publicly opposed the city’s handling of the Reparations Fund.
Reverend Amos Brown, the president of the NAACP chapter, repeatedly said in public appearances in 2023 that reparations plan gave black residents “false hope.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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