California City Readying $9K Payments to ‘Eliminate’ Racial Disparity

Racism is a problem in America; that’s a fair and true statement.  There are pockets of our culture where this sort of hate festers and stews and, when it erupts, much of the nation is left with egg on their face.

There are no easy solutions, either.  Bigotry is born of something intangible, passed on from person to person via vile and villainous dialogues and drivel.  We can’t take a pill and rid ourselves of it, and there is no way of sorting racists upon any common denominator to find them and reeducate them.

And so state, local, and federal governments are left with very few options when it comes to attempting to offset racism and its effects on society, which are large and tangible.

In Oakland, California, local officials are attempting to balance the issue of racism with money.  $9,000 to be exact.

According to CNN, the “Oakland Resilient Families Program” will give the extra cash to families with at least one minor child, selecting recipients at random from an online database:

To qualify for the Oakland Resilient Families payments, families must have at least one child under 18. Their income must be at or below the area’s median income: around $59,000 for a family of three.

But half of the available spots will be reserved for very low-income families — those who earn below 138% of the federal poverty level — or, about $30,000 per year for a family of three.

An online, multilingual screening form will be released later this spring and summer, after which families will be chosen at random to receive the payments. The program is also open to undocumented and/or unsheltered families. Because recipients will not be required to work for the payments, the money is not considered taxable income.

The program is reportedly funded by private donations rather than tax collection, and it will select 600 families for the payouts over a year and a half — a total of $9,000 per family, distributing $5.4 million out of $6.75 million the organization has raised so far.