San Francisco To Issue Apology To Black Community, Some Say It’s Not Good Enough

While Supervisor Shamann Watson, who has been pushing the city to take action on reparations, and the board’s only Black member, says the apology is a concrete step, others are less charitable in their interpretation.

San Francisco will formally apologize to its citizens for its lack of investment in the city’s Black community. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has scheduled a vote for Feb. 27, which is merely a formality, as all 11 board members have already signed onto the resolution as sponsors.

However, as The Associated Press reports, the divide over reparations that has plagued the city for years has gone nowhere. While Supervisor Shamann Watson, who has been pushing the city to take action on reparations and is the board’s only Black member, says the apology is a concrete step, others are less charitable in their interpretation.

Rev. Amos C. Brown, a member of the San Francisco reparations advisory committee that proposed both the apology and additional actions, told the AP that he wants to see more. “An apology is just cotton candy rhetoric,” Brown said, “What we need is concrete actions.”

Though an apology is the first of the proposed actions, the commission also recommended cash payments for eligible Black adults. The commission recommended both a lump-sum payment of $5 million as well as $100,000 in guaranteed yearly income, both of which may be in jeopardy due to Mayor London Breed’s belief that reparations should be handled at the federal level as well as her budget cuts to an office that was supposed to handle reparations related affairs.

In a column for the LA Times, Erika D. Smith and Anita Chabria argued that another part of the problem is the homeless crisis affecting the State of California, which they connect to the state’s history of disenfranchising its Black citizens.

They discussed the topic of reparations with Margot Kushel, the head of the Benioff Initiative and the author of an expansive study from the Benioff Initiative, which examines homelessness and housing in California. The study also recommends cash payments to help Black Californians who are disproportionately experiencing homelessness.

Kushel told the Times, “This didn’t just happen by accident, and it didn’t just happen because there were a few bad people. This was organized,” Kushel said. “This is the strongest case for reparations, right?” she said. “That feels like a conversation that, if we are being honest, we need to have.”

Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer summed up the need for reparations in any context by telling the Times, “America’s original sin is the genocide and enslavement of human beings,” Jones-Sawyer said. “America’s second greatest sin is watching it happen and pretending that it never did.”