The Road to Hell is Paved With Reparations, By Charles Taylor (Florida)
San Francisco's quiet approval of a reparations framework promising, in theory, up to $5 million per eligible Black resident, is another example of how politics driven by symbolism and moral grandstanding can drift dangerously far from reality. Mayor Daniel Lurie signed the ordinance discreetly, just before Christmas, establishing a reparations fund recommended by the city's African American Reparations Advisory Committee. No money has been allocated, the eligibility criteria remain undefined, and the city itself is facing a projected $1 billion budget deficit. Yet the gesture alone tells us everything we need to know about the intellectual and moral confusion driving modern progressive governance.
This scheme is presented as an act of historical justice, but it is conceptually flawed at its core. The individuals who would receive these payments are not slaves. The people who would ultimately be asked to fund them are not slave owners. That fact does not deny the reality of historical injustice or discrimination, but it does matter when designing policy. Justice that abandons any connection between responsibility, harm, and remedy ceases to be justice at all. It becomes a form of collective moral theatre, untethered from accountability and indifferent to consequences.
The numbers alone reveal the unreality of the proposal. A city of roughly 50,000 Black residents could theoretically face reparations liabilities in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Even conservative estimates have suggested that the cost would amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars per non-Black household. The mayor now insists this will never happen because the city has no money. But that simply underscores the emptiness of the gesture. What is being offered is not reparations, but a promise without means, a moral claim without substance, and a framework designed to signal virtue rather than solve problems.
More troubling is what this fixation on reparations crowds out. San Francisco, like many major cities, is grappling with real and urgent social crises: failing schools, rampant homelessness, drug addiction, violent crime, family breakdown, and economic marginalisation. These problems disproportionately affect underprivileged communities, including Black communities. Yet instead of directing scarce resources toward improving education, restoring public order, expanding employment pathways, or strengthening families, city leaders are investing political capital in an abstract redistribution scheme rooted in identity rather than need.
This approach also risks hardening racial divisions rather than healing them. By framing public policy around race-based cash transfers, the city reinforces the idea that citizenship and entitlement flow from ancestry rather than shared civic belonging. It asks citizens to see one another not as neighbours with common interests, but as members of competing moral categories, some permanently owed and others permanently indebted. That is not reconciliation; it is a recipe for resentment.
There is a deeper problem here as well. Reparations schemes of this kind rest on the assumption that complex social problems can be solved through cash payments detached from behaviour, culture, and institutions. But history shows that money alone does not repair communities. Stable families, effective schools, safe streets, meaningful work, and a sense of personal agency do far more to improve life outcomes than any lump-sum transfer ever could. A guaranteed income of $97,000 or a free house may sound compassionate, but without addressing the underlying social conditions, such policies risk entrenching dependency rather than fostering dignity.
This is why the reparations debate increasingly feels less like a serious policy discussion and more like a moral performance. The city establishes a fund it cannot afford, promises sums it will never pay, and congratulates itself for its courage, all while the streets decay and basic services falter. The road to hell, as the saying goes, is paved with good intentions, and San Francisco seems determined to lay every brick.
If the goal is genuinely to help disadvantaged communities, there are better, fairer, and more effective ways to do so. Invest in early childhood education. Improve public safety. Support job creation and vocational training. Reform housing policy to increase supply and reduce costs for everyone. These measures would help those who need it most, regardless of race, and would strengthen the social fabric rather than tearing it apart.
Justice is not served by gestures that ignore reality. It is served by policies grounded in responsibility, fairness, and a clear-eyed understanding of human nature. Until cities like San Francisco rediscover that distinction, they will continue mistaking moral posturing for moral progress.
It is a profound lesson for the rest of the West facing the woke reparations issue, including Australia with Aboriginal treaties at the state level. We are just a bit ahead in this battle for sanity.
