Justin Phillips is an op-ed columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle. He specializes in writing about Black issues. His latest column, which appeared yesterday, was on the “2022 agenda,” i.e. things he feels society needs to do this year in order to advance his ideas of racial equity.
Phillips’ first concern is about “criminal justice reform,” a favorite topic of his. Like the rest of us, he has noted the significant public shift away from defunding the police in favor of increasing police budgets to help cops fight crime. I personally welcome this turnaround as an historic shift in public attitudes towards police. But Phillips is offended by it. He has watched as almost every major political leader in both San Francisco and Oakland has switched positions to where they’re now in favor of more cops, but instead of interpreting this as a rational response to the crime epidemic, Phillips accuses these politicians of compromising on their previous positions. He blames this on “the ‘defund’ slogan [being] weaponized by the right.”
That is insulting to the vast majority of San Franciscans and Oaklanders, who fear for their safety and have let their political leaders know it. They’ve sick and tired of people like Phillips accusing them of being “rightwingers” for wanting more cops, when, in fact, most of them are liberal Democrats.
Phillips other concern is about reparations for Black people because of slavery. Phillips clearly is in favor of them, although he’s willing to wait a few years, until a state task force and the Legislature hammer out the details.
I’ll credit Phillips with understanding correctly that “Reparations doesn’t poll well as a concept nationally, especially among the right,” although again, he tries to demonize anti-reparationists by calling them rightwingers. In fact, national polls consistently, over the years, show about 64% of all Americans are opposed to reparations.
Surely not all of them are rightwingers or racists. These Americans are perhaps willing to support some kind of symbolic reparations, such as an apology made by the President of the United States, a declaration of Congress, or a public memorial. But they’re opposed to cash payments to the descendants of slaves—if that can even be proven.
The California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, which was established by the Assembly “to study and develop reparation proposals,” is going to have to tread very carefully, in order to avoid antagonizing millions of Californians who oppose giving money to Black people because of slavery. At the same time, Americans must be educated to the fact that the sin of slavery existed and was in fact built into the Constitution. Republicans are trying their best to expunge this awful history, which is yet another reason for defeating them—as if more reasons were even needed!
Steve Heimoff