San Francisco has now formally endorsed one of the most reckless ideas any major American city has entertained: a reparations fund that, under the city’s own advisory proposal, would provide up to $5 million in cash to individual Black residents deemed eligible based on ancestry and past discrimination.
No money has been appropriated. But in late December, Mayor Daniel Lurie signed legislation creating the fund and recognizing the recommendations of the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee — including its call for massive race-based payments. In government, symbolic approval is never neutral. Once a city endorses the idea that racial identity entitles residents to multimillion-dollar payments, political and legal consequences follow.
The proposal did not come from broad public deliberation or serious budget analysis. It was produced by a small activist committee created after the 2020 George Floyd protests, operating largely outside normal oversight. Its nearly 400-page report reads less like a governing plan than a wish list: cash payments, debt forgiveness, housing subsidies and guaranteed income programs explicitly tied to race. The $5 million figure was presented not as rhetoric but as policy.
Supporters insist the fund is merely symbolic, not a fiscal commitment. But symbols in public finance create expectations, lawsuits and pressure to spend. Once a city blesses race-based entitlements, it cannot later pretend nothing was promised.
The legal risks are obvious. Government programs that distribute benefits based on race face the highest level of constitutional scrutiny. Even Gov. Gavin Newsom has warned that ancestry-based payments could endanger federal funding. A city already struggling to maintain basic services cannot afford to gamble its legal standing on a program almost certain to be challenged.
The proposal is also socially blind. Racial inequality in San Francisco is real, but it does not align neatly with ancestry. The city’s Black population includes families struggling with housing insecurity and unsafe streets, as well as professionals, homeowners and business owners. A blanket racial payout ignores those differences while excluding non-Black residents facing the same pressures.
That is not justice. It is crude categorization.
The plan is also practically foolish. San Francisco has already tried governing through identity-based grant programs. Under the previous administration, tens of millions of dollars were routed through lightly supervised offices created in the name of racial equity.
One of the largest, the Dream Keeper Initiative, collapsed amid allegations of self-dealing and misuse of public funds. Money meant to help communities instead flowed through a system that rewarded political connections.
The reparations fund would recreate that model on a far larger scale, with higher stakes and fewer safeguards.
Lurie ran as a reformer who would end this culture of symbolic politics and insider dealing. By signing off on the reparations fund, even in “recognition” form, he has chosen the opposite path. He has validated a framework that substitutes racial classification for sound policy and moral signaling for accountable government.
If San Francisco wants to repair injustice, it should do so in ways that actually work: building housing, fixing schools, restoring public safety and lowering the cost of living.
Those are the tools that reduce inequality across the city, including for Black residents who have been pushed to the margins.
Turning justice into a race-based cash program is not progress. It is a distraction from the hard work of governing.
Great article, but where’s my $5,000,000 check? Enough studies, commissions, committees, etc. Just raise taxes like always to pay for it.
Why is this a topic for the Baltimore Jewish Times Editorial Board??