Reparations

The supposedly progressive city is alienating its black residents

San Francisco, long a bastion of extremist progressivism, is currently outdoing itself. The city’s reparations committee has just adopted a proposal to give $5 million — and grant debt forgiveness — to all long-time black residents who can prove descent from slaves. It is a gesture, and one that is unlikely to be adopted at a time when the state is under severe fiscal stress. The city isn’t in much better shape either; San Francisco now stands as among the least recovered of America’s core cities after the pandemic.

Elite guilt about the past will do nothing to help the world’s poorest.

For today’s progressive left and its corporate backers, the past increasingly determines the future. At home and abroad, they seek to remedy historical guilt. So, in recent months, progressive elites have embraced affirmative action and reparations for anyone whose ancestors have ever been poorly treated by those dastardly people of European descent.

An activist has warned California’s reparations task force that there will be ‘a serious backlash’ if they do not comply with his demands for more than $800,000 to be handed out black residents,

Deon Jenkins told the first meeting of the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans that money given to black people in the California should be in-line with the average price of a home in the state, around $800,000.

Following that appearance at the public hearing in Oakland’s City Hall on Wednesday, Jenkins, who refers to himself as a ‘hip hop organizer’ said in an interview: ‘Either they’re going to comply or it’s going to be a serious backlash.’

A taskforce set up by California Gov. Gavin Newsom is urging the federal government to pay every African American in the US at least $223k for ‘housing discrimination’ – while continuing to probe other areas for compensation.

The nine-person group believes that black Americans should receive the money for ‘enduring the economic effects’ of racism and slavery – after initially making the suggestions in California.

It was created by Newsom’s legislation which he signed in 2020 and is the largest reparation effort in recent history.

The Left loves to promote “reparations”—but only up until the point where history and truth run counter to its simplistic narratives about the past.

British royals expert Hilary Fordwich threw CNN host Don Lemon for a loop on Tuesday when he asked her if the British monarchy should pay reparations for colonialism and slavery.

Lemon said to Fordwich, “[Y]ou have those who are asking for reparations for colonialism, and they’re wondering, you know, ‘$100 billion, $24 billion here and there, $500 million there.’”

The Woman King is a new movie from Hollywood that helps to bring a little history to the same audience that ate up Disney’s Black Panther. However, as even some Blacks are realizing, the Dahomey tribe that is central to the movie had significant responsibility for perpetuating the African slave trade. At some point, though, American Blacks are going to have to grapple with why no one has seen fit to blame the Africans Blacks and Muslim slave traders.

California’s first-in-the-nation taskforce on reparations for African Americans will release a report on Wednesday documenting in detail the harms perpetrated by the state and recommending steps to address those wrongs, including expanded voter registration, making it easier to hold violent police accountable and improving Black neighborhoods.

It also recommends the creation of a special office that would, in part, help African Americans descended from free or enslaved Black people in the country at the end of the 19th century document their eligibility for financial restitution.