Former Black Lives Matter activist Xavier DuRousseau said San Francisco's reparations plan is a way to "gaslight" Black Americans.
Payments of $5 million to every eligible Black adult, the elimination of personal debt and tax burdens, guaranteed annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years, and homes in San Francisco for just $1 per family were some of the more than 100 recommendations made by a city-appointed reparations committee tasked with how to atone for centuries of slavery and systemic racism.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearing the report for the first time Tuesday supported for the ideas, with some members saying money should not stop the city from doing the right thing.
"This is 111 ways to gaslight black Americans into thinking that we need to be dependent on a system of handouts in order to be successful," DuRousseau, who is Black, said during an appearance on Fox News on Wednesday.
"Black Americans have been indoctrinated with these lies for far too long, and I used to fall for these lies until I took a deep dive into the videos on PragerU.com and realized how easily debunked these fraudulent narratives on systemic racism actually are."
The recommendations are "never going to actually happen," DuRousseau added.
According to one estimate, reparations could cost San Francisco, which has a 2022-2023 budget of $14 billion, approximately $50 billion.
According to a calculation from Stanford University's Hoover Institution, that would require each non-Black family in the city to pay at least $600,000 to make the reparations a reality.
"It is so unrealistic to think that the average family in San Francisco is going to be able to pay $600,000 extra apiece, and when people look at this list of the things that they're recommending, the most alarming thing for most is the $5 million going to each Black person," DuRousseau said.
"But for me as an American, I'm looking at this list and I see that they're wanting to sell homes at $1 to Black Americans. As an American and as someone who used to live in the San Francisco Bay area, it's disgusting to me that we're more focused on slavery, which ended in 1865, then we're focused on the veterans who are on the streets of San Francisco homeless and begging for spare change in 2023. That's where they need to start sending their money."
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.