The Corner

Politics & Policy

How Absurd Is the San Francisco Reparations Proposal?

The “progressives” keep reaching new heights in irresponsibility. It’s going to be hard to top this, though — the recommendation by a San Francisco advisory committee to that the city pay reparations to its black residents (and many others as well).

Writing at Liberty Unyielding, Hans Bader dissects the proposal:

Such reparations would be an unconstitutional racial preference, since they wouldn’t be available to non-black people (not even Asians or Hispanics who have suffered racial discrimination), and they aren’t a remedy for recentwidespread discrimination by the government of San Francisco (as any racial preference by the city would have to be, in order to be constitutional). Moreover, the reparations plan has an unconstitutional purpose, because it’s not actually intended as a remedy for discrimination by the city. Most people who would get reparations have no connection to San Francisco, and would qualify for reparations based on drug convictions, an area where the city is not even alleged to have singled out black people.

It would be illegal and financially ruinous, but to the ears of the “woke” such concerns only make one sound racist.

George Leef is the the director of editorial content at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. He is the author of The Awakening of Jennifer Van Arsdale: A Political Fable for Our Time.
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