A man stands in the foreground in front of the ornate dome of San Francisco City Hall in the Civic Center neighborhood of San Francisco. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
"We have much more work to do, but this apology most certainly is an important step," he added.
The resolution cites as inspiration nine states that have previously issued similar apologies for slavery. It also parallels Boston, another U.S. city that has formally begged pardon for past racist behavior by its government and police force.
While slavery was never legal in San Francisco, reparations activists say the city imposed decades of racist policies that economically harmed Black residents.
Photo shows an aerial view of the San Francisco skyline.
A majority of Californians do not support reparations, according to a September poll. Almost 60% of California voters opposed cash payments, while 29% of voters supported the idea, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll that was cosponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
"There wasn’t a math formula. It was a journey for the committee towards what could represent a significant enough investment in families to put them on this path to economic well-being, growth and vitality that chattel slavery and all the policies that flowed from it destroyed," he said.
African American Reparations Advisory Committee Chair Eric McDonnell admitted figuring out how to afford the payments was not the committee's goal. "Our mission was not a feasibility study," he said. "It was, assess the harm, assign the value."
Fox News Digital's Kristine Parks and Hannah Grossman contributed to this report.
Timothy Nerozzi is a writer for Fox News Digital. You can follow him on Twitter @timothynerozzi and can email him at timothy.nerozzi@fox.com
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/san-francisco-issues-apology-to-black-citizens-for-decades-of-systemic-and-structural-discrimination