Reparations task force member tells Californians to 'pay your sin bill'
Rev. Amos Brown discusses the costly reparations recommendations proposed for California and San Francisco.
EXCLUSIVE – Californians need to "chill out" about reparation proposals and pay their "sin bill." Those strong words come from a senior member of both the state and San Francisco reparation task forces.
"You cannot put a dollar sign on what has been done to Black people," Dr. Amos Brown, a civil rights activist and reverend of the Third Baptist Church, told Fox News Digital. "Our sin bill in this nation has been so high, and because of the long years of doing nothing, the interest has grown."
Earlier this month, the California reparations task force, which Brown is vice chair of, approved its final recommendations on how the state should compensate Black residents for the lasting effects of slavery, including cash payments of up to $1.2 million per person.
Brown also sits on San Francisco's African American Reparations Advisory Committee, which released a report earlier this year recommending $5 million payouts, guaranteed annual income of at least $97,000, and personal debt forgiveness for the city’s Black residents.
Rev. Amos Brown (Fox news Digital)
"All we did was evaluate the harm and state the case of what it might mean in terms of dollars and cents," Brown said. "But if you can't pay all of that, say what you can pay. That's the point."
Both the state and city proposals garnered national attention and pushback for their high price tags, especially as California faces a $32 billion budget deficit.
Economists on the state panel said reparations could cost more than $800 billion. San Francisco’s proposals could cost over $100 billion according to the New York Times – almost seven times its annual budget.
"They ought to say, ‘this is what we can afford,’" Brown said. "And if we can't pay it now, we do like the Germans did - pay for it over installments."
Brown said even when the U.S. was in more economically prosperous times, Black Americans were still treated unjustly.
"We need to stop making excuses and come to a reasonable plan that shows that we have good intentions," he said.
Kamilah Moore, chair of the California Reparations Task Force, left, and Amos Brown, vice chair, at the California Science Center in Los Angeles on Sept. 22, 2022. ((Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images))
"All we're saying is let's just chill out and pay your debt – your sin bill of enslavement. Of discrimination. Of intimidation. Of terrorizing Black people," Brown added.
Although California outlawed slavery in 1850, just before joining the Union, Brown said the state has a long history of imposing racist policies to suppress the growth of Black communities.
"Unfortunately, that evil group called the Ku Klux Klan in California was founded here in San Francisco," he told Fox News Digital. "So, San Francisco's hands are not clean. They have been complicit in this evil system."
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A 2021 University of Massachusetts Amherst poll found that almost two-thirds of Americans oppose reparations, including a majority of White, Latino and Asian Americans.
"There are good reasons to believe that that experience with enslavement among ancestors does continue to resonate and does continue to have effects in African-American communities right up to the present," Jesse Rhodes, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst who worked on the poll, previously told Fox News Digital. "But for people who are not African-American, some of those people may have difficulty understanding those linkages and seeing them."
Brown said the reluctance around reparations for slavery "is about being mean to Black people."
"Those who say, ‘Oh, no, It's too much. You don't deserve.’ They are not showing that they have a heart," he said. "They are hard-hearted."
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The state task force recommendations will move on to the state legislature for consideration. San Francisco's Board of Supervisors will meet in September to discuss the final reparations proposals.
Brown said he is hopeful the state and municipal bodies will vote to make reparations a reality.
"The ball is in their court. We have done our work," he said.