A member of the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee is speaking out and says that white people are “still benefiting” from the “harm caused by their ancestors.”
According to the UK outlet The Telegraph, committee member Nikcole Cunningham said that straight white men were not supporting reparations and are a “danger to society.” She also said that “white supremacy is ingrained in the DNA in this country and definitely in this city.”
“They pose more of a harm than support and help,” said Cunnigham. “And then you got to remember their ancestors are the ones who were standing out here in their Sunday best watching Black people hang and burn.”
Cunningham said that nothing would change until white people “come to grips” with their ancestry.
“So until white people come to grips with their ancestry too and make amends with them, to say, I want to be the change,” she said.
The reparations task force member also noted that even though straight white men are “privileged,” they are often “abusive” and make up the majority of the “serial killers” in society.
“They have the most, I watch these shows, the most serial killers,” she said. “Straight white men are the ones who are shooting up schools, right? So they are a danger to society. Not all of them.”
The San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee recommended that the city provide eligible Black residents with a one-time payment of $5 million to atone for the racist policies affecting Black people.
To be eligible, residents 18 and over must prove they’ve been living in the city for at least 10 years. They would also have to prove two other criteria on a list, including being descended from an enslaved person or attending San Francisco public schools during segregation. Other criteria include residents who were directly affected by the failed War on Drugs or having been born in San Franciso or migrated to the city between 1940 and 1996.
The committee also recommended a formal apology be issued to Black Americans by the city as well as supplement low-income recipients’ salaries to bring their annual income to the Area Median Income, which is $97,000. The plan recommended that the city supplement incomes for a minimum of 250 years.
“Racial disparities across all metrics have led to a significant racial wealth gap in the City of San Francisco,” wrote the reparations committee. “By elevating income to match AMI, Black people can better afford housing and achieve a better quality of life.”
The state of California also set up a reparations committee, and both committees received backlash from conservatives questioning how reparations would be paid. The California Reparations Task Force recommended that cash payments between $2,300 per resident for every year they resided in California to compensate for over-policing of Black neighborhoods to $77,000 per person for Black-owned business losses due to racist policies. Both committees had a deadline to submit their proposals by the end of June for lawmakers to consider.
California Assemblymember Isaac G. Bryan shared a picture of the state’s more than 1,100-page proposal on Twitter with the caption, “This report weighs 400 years.”
Cunningham also suggested that a way to pay for reparations could be to tax utilities such as cable, internet, electricity, water and garbage disposal.
“You adding even $0.05 to these things, you have millions and millions, if not billions of dollars,” she said. “But the simple fact that these are things that you have to use, who’s going to say, ‘I’m not going to give those people reparations. I’ll turn my water off?’ No one.”
She also said President Joe Biden sent billions of dollars to Ukraine after Russia invaded them, and officials didn’t worry about where the money would come from.
“No one asked us, ‘Hey, Nikcole, can we send this money to Ukraine?’ They just found the money and sent it.”
