Money for nothing? Apparently, according to this headline, “Plan to pay Black residents in US city $5million each to address ‘decades of harm“, from Online Express, published on Wednesday, January 18th.
Black residents living in San Francisco may be eligible to $5 million each under new plans to recompense the “decades of harm they have experienced”.
The proposal was drafted by the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC) with the city’s Board of Supervisors.
To qualify for the lump sum payment, individuals need to meet a series of criteria, including identifying as black on public records for the past 10 years and being at least 18 years old.
They would also need to meet two out of eight additional standards, including having been born or having moved to the city between 1940 and 1996 and having lived there for a minimum of 13 years.
“A lump sum payment would compensate the affected population… and will redress the economic and opportunity losses that Black San Franciscans have endured, collectively, as the result of both intentional decisions and unintended harms perpetuated by City policy,” the proposal stated.
“The idea that White people owe blacks a penny is absurd!”, commented Thomas Robb, The National Director of the Knights Party of the Ku Klux Klan, centrally based in Harrison, Arkansas. He continued, “Slavery wasn’t what it’s portrayed as. Maybe it wasn’t the nicest of conditions, working in cotton fields, but White people worked in them too. Unless you’re retired, or maybe won the lottery, we are all slaves to our jobs, right? We have to do what our bosses tell us, or we face consequences. What do we work for? Shelter, food, clothing, etc. What were black slaves given for their work in the fields? Shelter, food, and clothing. Now I realize they weren’t paid money for their work, but they came from Africa, so I’m sure they didn’t know what money was, so how could they be expected buy what they needed to survive? The slaves that were brought here were already slaves in Africa, owned by black slave masters, that treated them much worse than any White slave master did here. And the idea that we as White people owe them money? If reparations is what is needed, then all these ancestors of slaves need to return to Africa. That’s who enslaved them. It’s made to sound like White people went to Africa and rounded up all these civilized, well cultured, intelligent people. That isn’t so. Believe me, I’m all for sending them back to Africa. America’s crime rate would drop by 50%. We could lower our crime rate, and they can get their reparations from black African citizens who have decendants of black slave owners. It’s a win/win.”