Some people are calling Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf racist for rubber-stamping a universal income for poor families of color be instituted for at least the next 18 months with no strings attached while impoverished white families are summarily left out in the cold.
The program will dole out $500 a month to low-income families of color. It inexplicably excludes more than 10,000 white residents in the city living below the poverty line.
Private philanthropists have funded the racially-charged lottery system that will send one-half of the $500 checks to families that make less than $59,000 per year if they have at least one child. The other half will go to individuals of color that earn less than $30,000 a year. Many see this as a form of reparations and wealth redistribution.
The justification for the program and favoring those of color comes from data connected to an Oakland Equity Indicators Report. It claims that white households earn approximately three times what black households do.
(Video Credit: CBS News)
That same report noted that just about 8 percent of Oakland’s white residents live in poverty. That’s approximately 10,000 people.
Schaaf was quick to justify her move to the Associated Press. She said “the reason for limiting eligibility to black, indigenous, and other people of color was that white households in Oakland make on average about three times as much as black households.” That’s straight out of the report.
She went on to say: “We have designed this demonstration project to add to the body of evidence, and to begin this relentless campaign to adopt a guaranteed income federally.”
Her mandate and justification were met with angry debate on Reddit and in other places. One commenter called it “pure racism.”
“Is this even legal? Can a city government legally have a program that’s only for certain races?” asked another.
One person addressed changing demographics: “The high-income earners in Oakland are mostly young transplants that did not grow up in Oakland. They should have done research on upward social mobility in Oakland and restricted based upon that. But I guess that’s too much work.”
One progressive commenter wrote: “Poor is poor. Being poor and white sucks, you may not get locked up for trivial shit like our dark-skinned brothers and sisters but it’s no secret that White Privilege always has and always will require a certain shade of green to your name.”
Oakland Resilient Families is the group behind the push for universal income in the city. Their plan for race-based payments surfaced in 2020 after Schaaf vowed to bring a guaranteed income program to the city. She was allegedly inspired by Stockton, California doing the same thing in 2019 by issuing some residents earning less than $46,000 per year a $500 a month check.
Stockton is the pilot program that leftists are touting as a major success that has brought economic prosperity to the city. It is seen as a blueprint for a federally mandated universal basic income plan.
Oakland Resilient Families states that it plans to ensure half of the monthly checks goes towards black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in east Oakland.
The report also stated that in 2016 median household income for white families was $110,000, for Asians it was $76,000, for Latinos it was $65,000, and for blacks, it was just $37,500.
It should also be noted that Oakland’s homeless population has exploded by 47 percent between 2017 and 2019 according to the latest data that is available.
The Department of Health and Human Services defines any individual earning less than $12,880 a year as living in poverty. A household of two earning just $17,420 would also qualify and that delineation would rise to $31,040 for a household of five.
Attorneys are already lining up to file constitutional lawsuits. And Marin County in California is jumping on the bandwagon too, but doing so for non-white women:
Marin County is doing it, too.
“the Marin initiative will be limited to non-White women”https://t.co/wdmapMsFzo
— JLaw (@yoopermomma) March 25, 2021
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