$5M for each longtime Black resident? S.F. reparations plan to consider | Hacker News Reader

$5M for each longtime Black resident? S.F. reparations plan to consider

sfchronicle.com

17 pointssubharmonicon25 comments

From the draft recommendation, it looks like this is the eligibility criteria:

VIII. Eligibility for Reparations

Checklist for eligibility:

REQUIRED:

- An individual who has identified as ‘Black/African American’ on public documents for at least 10 years - 18 years or older

You must meet at least TWO (2) criteria from the following list (must have supporting documentation):

- Born in San Francisco between 1940 and 1996 and has proof of residency in San Francisco for at least 13 years

- Migrated to San Francisco between 1940 and 1996 and has proof of residency in San Francisco for at least 13 years

- Personally, or the direct descendant of someone, incarcerated by the failed War on Drugs

- Record of attendance in San Francisco public schools during the time of the consent decree to complete desegregation within the school system

- Descendant of someone enslaved through US chattel slavery before 1865

- Displaced, or the direct descendant of someone displaced, from San Francisco by Urban Renewal between 1954 and 1973

- Listed, or the direct descendant of, a Certificate of Preference holder

- Member of an historically marginalized group that experienced lending discrimination in San Francisco between 1937 and 1968 or, subsequently, experienced lending discrimination in formerly redlined San Francisco communities between 1968 and 2008

https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-01/HRC%20Reparations...

What about those Chinese who died during the gold rush era and railroad constructions? Are we getting the same compensation?

> Are we getting the same compensation?

Of course not. Just like this isn't the same reparations compensation that Japanese and Japanese-Americans received during the Reagan administration.

You do think those internees should have received compensation, even though Black-Americans did not at that time, right?

Further, as https://theconversation.com/why-japanese-americans-received-... correctly points out: "It is much easier to obtain reparations under the following conditions:

   * The number of victims is relatively small.
   * The victims are easily identifiable.
   * Many of the direct victims are still alive.
   * The injustice took place during a relatively short time period.
   * The perpetrator is known.
   * The injustice is easily identifiable.
   * The injustice offends values of equality, personal safety and/or the right to own property.
   * There is a symbolic victim around whom advocates for reparations can rally.
   * The amount of reparations asked for is not so large that the public will find it unreasonable.

You'll notice San Francisco's list of requirements fits most of those conditions.

While the Chinese workers who suffered under back-breaking physical conditions and racial oppression some 150 or so years ago do not.

Other reparations are surely possible, and I agree with you they should be done. One sort of reparation is "guarantees of non-repetition", which I here might include explicit denunciation of the official white supremacy policies and "yellow peril" xenophobia in the US which lead to these atrocities, and resulted in the decades-long prohibition of Chinese immigration, and with the reasons for that denunciation taught as part of our history.

Could you elaborate what your "we" means? You certainly weren't one of those workers, and it's unlikely you are one of their descendants. This SF proposal doesn't include all Black people, and I'm hard pressed to think why you think you would be included in a similar one for America's 19th century Chinese labor oppression.

Absolutely not, you do not represent a voting bloc that San Francisco cares about.

This is definitely one of the dumbest things I've read in a long time.

Who is paying for it? Does SF really have that much budget surplus?

https://archive.ph/to3Eg

“and be someone, or the direct descendant of someone, incarcerated during the war on drugs”

It’s not clear from the article that it’s a requirement. It says “may”:

“They may also have to prove they were born in the city between 1940 and 1996, have resided in San Francisco for at least 13 years, and be someone, or the direct descendant of someone, incarcerated during the war on drugs.”

EDIT: Clarified here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34391669

Title modified to fit limit.

Originally: “$5 million for each longtime Black resident? S.F. has a bold reparations plan to consider”

What stops any random person from self-identifying as Black in order to claim this?

This is covered in the article:

> To qualify for the payments, residents must be 18 at the time the committee’s proposal is enacted, and have identified as Black or African American on public documents for at least 10 years.

So it's possible to identify as black even if one is not actually black?

Yes, lots of people have grown up unaware of their true parentage for various reasons and there's no commonly accepted definition of 'actually black' anyway, and the commonly accepted definitions vary by country, amongst other things, since they're mostly social categories.

In the US there used to be the 'one-drop' rule so 'passing' as white was a thing with genuine legal consequences, no matter how slight the genetics support for your categorization as something else, nowadays people lean towards self-identification but can still disagree on corner cases.

The category of Black people was invented by bigots for the purpose of discrimination. Sometimes they invented rules to codify the discrimination, but they were never founded on any rational difference between people. Trying to undo the harm of bigotry along similar lines will be similarly arbitrary. Not saying we shouldn't try, but don't expect an airtight logical specification.

> don't expect an airtight logical specification

Don't worry, I'm not.

Proving your lineage back to the 1865 census and still identifying as black on current government documents means you were exposed to massive amounts of labor theft and a lot of the race based discrimination that took place in between then and now.

Doesn't seem like an easy hurdle to jump over for non-FBA (Foundational Black Americans) people trying to cheat the system.

Is there a precedent for something like this?

Genuinely curious if there are any examples for large scale reparations such as Jews post WW2 or Armenians post-genocide or Cambodian people post-Khmer Rouge.

Israel exists?

Here’s one example: The Unlikely Story Behind Japanese Americans' Campaign For Reparations

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/03/24/820181127...

“… 40 years after the internment camps closed—President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which offered a formal apology and paid $20,000 to each survivor.”

The key difference here, is that Japanese-Americans were imprisoned, and as such there were records about who, when, where and how long people were imprisoned.

That makes reparations very easy - if you were imprisoned unfairly, you were entitled to payment.

I sense a market for DNA tests to prove that people are descended from slaves.

Ooh I bet cops would pay so much money for access to that DNA database

Where's the difference?

As https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34391669 quoted from https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-01/HRC%20Reparations... , the list of requirements for this proposed reparation depends on records.

You can easily read "identified as ‘Black/African American’ on public documents", "proof of residency", "Record of attendance", and other things which require evidentiary records.

Even "Descendant of someone enslaved through US chattel slavery before" requires records.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparations_Agreement_between_...

There’s still a significant number of claims from the Jewish communities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com