Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, is criticizing a proposal from a San Francisco committee on reparations after it proposed that the city pay $5 million to each longtime Black resident.
The San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a draft report in December with recommendations for how the city can address reparations, as it advises the city government.
While California wasn’t technically a slave state, the draft proposal contends that reparations would ‘address the public policies explicitly created to subjugate Black people in San Francisco by upholding and expanding the intent and legacy of chattel slavery.’
One of the committee’s recommendations includes a $5 million one-time payment to eligible residents in San Francisco.
‘A lump sum payment would compensate the affected population for the decades of harms that they have experienced, 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 draft proposal states.
Owens said in a statement to Fox News Digital that the proposal is conveys a ‘racist narrative.’
‘The conversation of reparations is condescending, counterproductive, illogical, logistically impossible, and deflects from Democrats’ overwhelming success in propagating misery. It also conveys a racist narrative that Black Americans are a hopeless, hapless, and oppressed race who need pity and handouts to succeed,’ Owens said.
‘The best way to defeat this narrative of failure is to teach America’s history of freedom fighters seeking to become a more perfect Union through God’s Grace. This makes innovation and reform in our education system imperative, which is why it’s the top priority of the Republican’s Education and Workforce Committee. Educational freedom for every child – regardless of race, creed, color or zip code – is on its way,’ he added.
Included in the proposal is also a plan to ‘finance a comprehensive debt forgiveness program that clears all educational, personal, credit card, payday loans.’
In order to be eligible for the reparations program, applicants should be 18-years-old and have identified as Black or African American on public documents, as well as proving two out of eight criteria items, including ‘Born in San Francisco between 1940 and 1996 and has proof of residency in San Francisco for at least 13 years,’ and/or, ‘Personally, or the direct descendant of someone, incarcerated by the failed War on Drugs.’
Additionally, the draft proposal calls on San Francisco to ‘Supplement African-American income of lower income households to reflect the Area Median Income annually for at least 250 years,’ which would be $97,000.
Fox News’ Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.
