The city of San Francisco has never made a secret of its inclination to institute progressive social policies. This time, the city looked to the events of a century and a half ago for its most recent issue.
On Oct. 31, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed an ordinance that would give companies providing the city with insurance, financial or textile services nine months to search their records for any documents that might reveal past “”participation in the slave trade,”” as listed in the minutes of the board meeting.
According to Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, the author of the legislation (who also happens to be black), the goal is to atone for whatever profits these companies might have garnered from slavery by encouraging them to contribute to an awareness fund.
But this attempt at redressing the wrongs of the past is not only archaic, but damaging to practical efforts to improve the lives of modern American minorities.
For one, targeting financial and textile companies is simply disingenuous: It’s nearly impossible to single out companies that profited from slave labor, because all companies profited from it one way or another.
More importantly, any material gains slavery might have provided to companies 150 years ago are irrelevant to their service today. It is unreasonable to hold the current employees of these companies accountable for the action or inaction of their predecessors. San Francisco was not even part of a slave state in the 19th century; had a city in one of former Confederate states passed this legislation, it might have been far more meaningful.
This law also establishes a blatant double standard regarding grievances toward different minority groups. Where is the legislation calling for the return of the state of California to Mexico? Why is there no mention of reparations for the Irish and Chinese immigrants who worked in ghetto-like conditions to build the first transcontinental railroad? In both of these instances, a dominant racial group used force to appropriate wealth from a race they considered inferior.
Certainly, slavery was evil, but carving out a third of Mexico via force of arms and adding it to U.S. territory is hardly any better. Yet nobody has suggested finding those who profited from adding California to the Union and asking them to donate to a fund dedicated to raising awareness about historical American imperialism.
The greatest flaw with the San Francisco legislation, however, is that it contributes heavily to the idea of self-victimization among minorities.
True, white Protestant males still control a significant majority of the nation’s political and economic clout, but this fact does not mean that all of the problems of minority communities stem from the various evils committed by whites, past and present. The spirit of self-victimization encouraged by the San Francisco ordinance is exactly the opposite mindset needed to overcome economic and educational difficulties faced by minorities who suffered under de jure discrimination in the past, and face de facto discrimination in the present. As Bill Cosby said to the black citizens of Detroit in 2005, “”It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing.””
Instead of creating legislation that promotes this self-victimization, the bleeding hearts who passed this ordinance should consider a community-oriented self-empowerment program instead.
For example, in response to Cosby’s challenge, Detroit blacks formed A.R.I.S.E. Detroit! to promote community action and volunteering to solve issues such as illiteracy, drug abuse and urban blight, issues that have traditionally plagued minority neighborhoods and stymied economic progress.
If the goal of the Board of Supervisors is truly to “”ameliorate the effects of slavery upon the residents of San Francisco,”” as its members stated in the meeting where they unanimously passed the ordinance, it must encourage people of the present to take action — not look to actions of people in the past.
Why, one must wonder, would the board focus on a slave trade that ended close to two centuries ago, when a modern version is burgeoning in the sex shops of the Tenderloin district? A four-part series of articles in the San Francisco Chronicle this October dove into the rampant illegal sex trade in the city, part of a billion-dollar business that brings thousands of Asian women into the country, often forcing them to work under conditions little better than slavery. Surely this pressing contemporary issue deserves more attention than the slave trade of the 19th century.
San Francisco’s decision to pass this ordinance reflects poorly on the judgment of those who enacted it. Not only is it a colossal waste of time and effort to sift through the necessary historical records, but the legislation fails to address the obstacles faced by minorities other than blacks, as well as being detrimental to the very cause it supposedly supports. We should prevent self-victimization, not promote it.
