I am grateful to San Francisco's  official African American Reparations Advisory Committee for the damage it has done to the notion that the current populace of the United States, none of whom were alive during slavery, owe some kind of debt to African Americans.  Its draft proposal recently released would elevate into the top 2% of wealth every African American resident of San Francisco who meets its criteria.

The notion that but for the "harms" it cites, including mortgage discrimination, the construction of public housing, and the "war on drugs," every African American would be rocketed into the ranks of the wealthiest Americans is patently absurd.  Adding on the debt forgiveness it demands — the cancelation of mortgage, student, and credit card debt — and the guarantee of at least area median income (currently $97,000 in the affluent Bay Area), regardless of any employment, for two and half centuries, exposes it as a greedy fantasy of people who want unearned wealth.

On the upside, it doesn't propose the massive looting of other people's earned wealth to any African American who can move to the city.  The criteria:

To qualify, people need to have identified as black on public records for at least 10 years and be at least 18 years old. They also must qualify for two of a number of requirements, including having been born in the city or migrated to it between 1940 and 1996 and then lived there for 13 years.

These limits are related to the "harms" it cites, since slavery was never legal in California or San Francisco.

"San Francisco's international reputation as a shining progressive gem in the west is undermined by its legacy of mistreatment, violence towards, and targeted racism against Black Americans. While neither San Francisco, nor California, formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the values of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people were legally codified and enforced," the proposal reads.

The claim is that but for these "harms," the targeted residents and their descendants for the next 250 years would all have earned wealth putting them into roughly the top one and a half percent of Americans.  (The top 2% of Americans have a net worth of $2,472,000, and the top 1% have $10,815,000.)

Here are the gifts demanded from the taxpayers of San Francisco.

[T]he committee proposed the city make a lump sum payment of $5 million to black residents who are at least 18 and have identified as black or African American on public documents for at least ten years. Residents must also meet at least two of eight other requirements. Among those requirements is that the resident is "personally, or the direct descendant of someone, incarcerated by the failed War on Drugs" or is a "Descendant of someone enslaved through US chattel slavery before 1865." (snip)

The panel released a lengthy list of recommendations, another of which was to create a "a comprehensive debt forgiveness program" for black residents to cancel student loans, housing loans, and credit card debt in an effort to give "Black households an opportunity to build wealth."

The report also suggests that the city offer financial compensation for families affected by "education harms" on black students, though it does not include specifics.

Other proposals include allowing black residents who are eligible for reparations to receive first choice of subsidized rental units and prioritizing "members of San Francisco's current and past African American communities for employment opportunities, training programs, professional certification, partnerships and contracting."

It is interesting that people with $5 million in cash and no debts would be prioritized for subsidized public housing over, for example, destitute Asian immigrants working two jobs to make ends meet.

San Francisco's population is "majority minority," with Whites (including many Hispanics) constituting 41.9%, Asians 33.9%, multiracial people 9.9%, African Americans 5.3%, Native Americans, Alaskans, Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders 1.1% and "other races" 8.4% of the population.  The idea that Asian- and Hispanic-descended people would happily fork over their tax money to make multimillionaires of Blacks and guarantee their descendants a high average income without working for 250 years is absurd on its face.

Thanks for totally discrediting your mission, folks.

Flag of San Francisco.