Frustration and disappointment with the Democratic Party are at generational highs, and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ quixotic effort to provide reparations for black Americans is a case study that illustrates why.
Almost three years ago, the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee released its first report, recommending that the city give $5 million to every eligible black adult, guarantee $97,000 in annual free income to the city after that, and allow eligible recipients to buy homes in the city for just $1.
Eligible recipients have to be at least 18 years old, born in or migrated to San Francisco before 2006, and have “identified as Black/African American on public documents for at least 10 years.” No need to prove any relationship with actual slaves. The committee did require proof of other alleged harms, however, including displacement by San Francisco Redevelopment Agency between the years 1954 and 1973, prosecution or conviction of a drug crime during “the failed War on Drugs,” any physical or psychological harm from interacting with law enforcement, or “any individual who experienced lending discrimination in San Francisco between 1937 and 1968.”
According to the Hoover Institution, implementing the committee’s recommendations would have cost the average non-black family of four $600,000. Considering that price tag, it is unsurprising that even at the peak of Black Lives Matter wokeness, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors balked at approving the committee’s plans.
The activists on the reparations committee did not give up, however, and this past week the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution creating a fund authorized to begin collecting money for a reparations program. The ordinance does not in any way provide any actual resources to put in the fund, nor does it adopt the committee’s eligibility requirements or benefit programs. All it does is create a bank account for the city to use to receive funds for future reparations, with all details about who is eligible for the money and how it is to be distributed left for the later Board of Supervisors to decide.
If that isn’t a recipe for fraud and abuse, we don’t know what is.
Additionally, what kind of mixed signal does this send to San Francisco’s still shrinking black population? The city, supposedly, recognizes a deep, lasting harm caused by city policies toward the black community, but lacks the courage of its convictions to do anything about it. No wonder people are so frustrated with the Democratic Party.
The larger problem with San Francisco’s reparations plan is that it is built on lies. San Francisco’s black population is not shrinking due to racist city policies, unless you believe that San Francisco suddenly got a lot more racist in the 1990s and 2000s.
San Francisco is not the Deep South, and prior to World War II, it had a very small black population. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, fewer than 1% of the city’s residents were black. By 1950, that share had risen to 5.6%, nearly doubling again to 10% by 1960, before stabilizing at roughly 13% in both 1970 and 1980.
Those are key dates because the reparations committee wants to claim that San Francisco’s black community was harmed by racist red-lining policies right at the same time the black community was actually thriving in San Francisco, nearly doubling in size.
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San Francisco’s black population has since shrunk dramatically, falling to 11% by 1990, 8% by 2000, and just 5% today. But this isn’t because San Francisco suddenly became racist in 1990. This is because of globalization and the mass influx of immigrants from Asia, Mexico, and South America. As recently as 1980, almost 60% of San Francisco was white. Today, just 37% is. If the African American Reparations Advisory Committee wants to blame government policy for the decline of the black community in San Francisco, their beef is with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, not the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency.
San Francisco’s reparations scheme perfectly captures modern Democratic governance: maximal moral posturing, mythology masquerading as history, and zero actual delivery. After years of soaring rhetoric, the city offers nothing but an empty fund and deferred decisions. Voters see the pattern clearly: grand promises, bad math, and no results.