Reparations task force member Rev. Amos Brown told The New York Times, “Of all these billionaires in San Francisco, you could establish a reparations fund” to pay millions to Black residents.
California is one of multiple states negotiating over economic reparations for Black Americans whose ancestors were victimized by the Atlantic slave trade and its legacy, despite the fact California was designated as a free state when it joined the Union in 1850.
The New York Times observed that the premise of San Francisco’s call for reparations in particular focuses on “redevelopment in the 1960s and 1970s when the authorities declared entire blocks to be ‘blighted’ and used eminent domain to purchase businesses and homes.” A building designated as “blighted” usually means it unsafe, unsanitary or somehow endangers the welfare of the surrounding community.
The panel called this designation and acquirement of property the “most significant example of how the City and County of San Francisco as an institution played a role in undermining Black wealth and actively displacing the city’s Black population.”
Kamilah Moore, chair of the California Reparations Task Force, and Amos Brown, vice chair, appear at the California Science Center in Los Angeles on Sept. 22, 2022. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
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“Despite past promises going unfulfilled, he said, he’s ‘very, very cautiously optimistic’ that the city will enact some form of reparations, even if he fears the $5 million idea could give false hope to Black residents,” The New York Times wrote.
“Of all these billionaires in San Francisco, you could establish a reparations fund,” Brown told the paper.
Fox News reached out to Brown for comment, but did not hear back.