“This historic resolution apologizes on behalf of San Francisco to the African American community and their descendants for decades of systemic and structural discrimination, targeted acts of violence, atrocities, as well as committing to the rectification and redress of past policies and misdeeds.”
That was the apology made by San Francisco Board Supervisor Shamann Walton Tuesday to the African American community.
The apology made San Francisco the second major U.S. city to issue an apology for slavery, behind Boston. Nine states have also formally apologized, including Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina and Virginia.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws in 2008; the Senate apologized in 2009.
The apologies are largely branded as a starting point to issuing “reparations” to victims of slavery or their descendants. It follows the well-known 1865 Special Field Orders No. 15, “Forty acres and a mule,” passed by Union General William Sherman. It gave most of roughly 400,000 acres of the east coast to newly emancipated slaves in 40-acre sections. (President Andrew Johnson reversed the order and gave the land back to its former Confederate owners.)
That order is essentially the origin of today’s debate over reparations, which reignited in 2020 especially, amid the protests against police brutality.
Various levels of government across the nation have thrown out different forms of reparations – financial compensation, scholarships, waiving fees, land-based compensation and settlements.
But so far, apart from one town in the U.S., most governments haven’t done more than token gestures like apologizing, naming a street or building after someone or removing monuments and street names of slave owners.
The arguments in favor of reparations run the gamut of the racial wealth gap, from housing discrimination to health care to education to incarceration.
Supporters point to other instances of reparations being paid to minority groups after mistreatment, like the $20,000 to each survivor of Japanese-American internment during World War II under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and land, money and oil reserves to native Alaskans under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
Opponents of the idea for African Americans often argue none of those living are responsible for slavery, and slaves’ ancestors aren’t enslaved. Critics also say financial compensation won’t do anything to fix modern-day racism, and policy changes are more effective.
But elected officials also face the practical challenges of reparations: Can a dollar amount atone for slavery? Who should be paying? Who should get paid? Should people have to prove their ancestry? How far down the line should it go? Are we focusing on just slavery or modern-day racism?
Some officials may prefer wealth-building opportunities over direct payments, but how efficiently can policy changes provide those?
Indeed, paying reparations to some 40 million African Americans is a different ballgame than the 80,000 eligible Japanese-Americans.
At the same time, there’s still a significant racial wealth gap – a $240,120 difference in wealth between the median white household and the median black household to be exact, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve.
The black homeownership rate in 2022 was 44.1% compared to the white homeownership rate of 72%, according to the most recent data from the National Association of Realtors.
And those statistics don’t mention disparities in health care, unemployment, education and incarceration.
There is one municipality that paid its African American residents directly: Evanston, Ill.
The town used revenue from a sales tax on recreational cannabis, and deemed black residents eligible under three categories: 1. Ancestors who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969; 2. “Direct descendants” of an “ancestor”; and 3. By submitting evidence of housing discrimination after 1969.
Each person is eligible for $25,000, and at least 117 ancestor applicants have received funding as of January 2024. At first, the funding had to be used on down payments, mortgage assistance or home repairs.
But last year, the city council voted to allow direct cash payments.
Other municipalities and states are trying to get there.
California, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland and New York have all adopted legislation to get the ball rolling – to get insurance company records and/or to start a commission to recommend forms of reparations.
Many want this on a federal level.
Nine members of Congress sponsored H.R. 414, a bill introduced last year which would prompt the federal government to spend $14 trillion on a reparations program.
The bill points to estimates claiming the U.S. benefited from more than 222 trillion hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865 – valued at $97,000,000,000,000 today.
But that bill doesn’t appear to be gaining much traction, and it faces an uphill battle in a legislative branch struggling to pass any spending bills.
It’s unclear what, if anything, will change the calculus, from the federal government down to individual cities considering reparations.
That being said, Evanston has gotten a lot of inquiries about how to launch such a program. City officials warn there’s several legal and practical hurdles to the concept.
Bobby Burns, a city councilor who represents Evanston’s historically black Fifth Ward, toldCourthouse News Service the key piece of advice for other communities looking to pay their African American residents is to, first and foremost, find funding before planning anything else.
“The money is the most important thing. That’s how people know it’s real.”
