By Rev. Amos C. Brown
The resignation of Dr. Sheryl Davis as head of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission over allegations of corruption is most unfortunate for San Francisco. But for the Black community, it is more than unfortunate: it is a source of immense pain, driven by the fear that we will lose the Dream Keeper Initiative, one of the few programs that even attempts to make reparations for the effects of systemic racism and oppression.
Yes, there must be a just and thorough investigation into the allegations of mismanagement and misuse of funds within that program, one based on the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty. And those found guilty of wrongdoing must face real consequences. Malfeasance in a position of public trust is unacceptable, especially in efforts so essential to providing reparative justice to an entire underserved community.
Unfortunately, some would use the actions of individuals to dismantle the entire Dream Keeper program. That is not only the wrong remedy—it is no remedy at all. It would punish the very people the program is supposed to help, not the administrators accused of mismanaging it—and once again, break a promise to the Black residents of San Francisco.
Make no mistake: despite the false arguments made by people ignorant of history, Blacks in San Francisco and across California still suffer from what the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee called “explicit, codified discrimination that Black citizens in San Francisco have historically faced and continue to experience.”
California may not have had the same record of enslaving Blacks as states in the South, but the legacy of racism here is strong, beginning with the state’s first governor, Peter Burnett, an avowed racist. Anti-Black language nearly made its way into the state constitution. Racism was very, very real.
San Francisco’s record is just as bleak.
Restrictive covenants in real estate and redlining by lenders prevented Blacks from buying homes in nearly every neighborhood in the city. Combined with job discrimination and sub-par schools, this created a social environment that prevented Black families from building the generational wealth enjoyed by their white neighbors. The so-called urban renewal of the 1950s and ’60s was, in fact, racist “urban removal,” displacing Black homeowners and businesses from the Fillmore District and devastating economic opportunities for Black people in San Francisco.
In fact, the Economic Policy Institute reported in August that Black unemployment in California is nearly double that of whites.
Both Governor Newsom and San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors have issued formal apologies for systemic racism and its effects. Along with those apologies came pledges of action to meaningfully address the serious economic injuries suffered by the Black community—injuries that continue to have negative effects on our lives. Yet, for all the sincerity of those words, no substantive actions have succeeded. That is why the Dream Keeper Initiative is vital—a thread from which the Black community can weave a lifeline in a time of peril.
Either the body politic in California and San Francisco respects its Black citizens as human beings, or it does not. While much more is needed, the Dream Keeper Initiative represents a start on the road to reparations. Keeping it, with restructuring and oversight, is essential to justice. Eliminating it would be yet another broken promise.
Rev. Amos C. Brown is president of the San Francisco Branch of the NAACP and a former member of the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee.
