Inside San Francisco's plan to give black people $5m | Documentary

I knew we were in trouble when the back windshield of our car exploded; glass shards flew into the back of my head and my lap; my first thought was that we had been shot. My cameraman and I had been filming homelessness on the streets of San Francisco for a Telegraph documentary when we came under attack.

San Francisco is perhaps America’s most liberal city; it has been at the vanguard of radical, progressive politics for decades. Now the city is at the forefront in the push for “reparations”, cash payments for its black citizens to right the historic wrong of slavery, its proponents pushing for $5 million per person.

With the city facing an unprecedented rise in homelessness, drug overdoses and crime, in a new documentary for The Telegraph, I wanted to find out why local officials were so keen on handing over millions of dollars they can barely afford, in a state that never even had slavery, and whether America’s obsession with race will heal the wounds of time, or push an already divided population to the brink.

Watch The Telegraph’s Steven Edginton in a Telegraph documentary above.

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