Because African heritage people in a racist nation faced insurmountable obstacles in owning property – a primary means of increasing their wealth – they, therefore had limited options to hand down their resources to their descendants.
For example, in a 2020 U.S. government report, white people own 80% of the nation’s accumulated wealth while comprising 60% of the population. A 2016 report by the Brookings Institute showed a $171,000 net worth for a typical white family. This is almost ten times that a black family of $17,150.
Gaps in wealth between black and white households show the impact of uninterrupted systemic inequality and discrimination beginning at the nation’s inception. And no, this gap is not the result of some defective lowered intelligence among African heritage bodies, or a diminished sense of motivation, talent, or ingenuity.
These charges are used as a justification for those enamored by the lie, the myth that the U.S. functions as a meritocracy, and by so doing, blames the victims of inequality for that inequality.
Enslaved Africans literally constructed the foundations of not only James Madison’s home, but they formulated the very foundations of our nation with their blood, sweat, and tears mixing with the connecting mortar without just compensation then and throughout the next 400 years.
This continued following the Civil War into the Jim Crow era and beyond in the areas of employment discrimination, segregated education, housing redlining, poor or no health care, higher loan rates, gentrification forcing them from their neighborhoods, unequal treatment in the “justice” system, over incarceration, and the list continues.
While the U.S. government promised reparations of a sort to those formerly enslaved with “40 acres and a mule,” those promises went unmet soon following President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865 when the newly inaugurated President Andrew Johnson rescinded the order and restored the land back to its white owners.
The national government established the practice of Affirmative Action to level the employment and educational processes and practices for people of color and women in institutions in which they have been underrepresented and have faced discrimination. Though it existed in some forms previously, President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Executive Order 10925 referred specifically to “affirmative action” in national government contracts, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extended this where a court found that an employer intentionally engaged in discriminatory practices.
Affirmative Action has never truly addressed the longstanding inequities as institutions have consistently undermined its purposes by employing and promoting a few token employees of color and women as mere “window dressing” to present a diverse image.
In addition, legislators have passed laws and courts have handed down rulings to diminish Affirmative Action’s effectiveness. Therefore, Affirmative Action cannot be viewed as an adequate or equitable form of reparations.
Reparations to groups of individuals have precedence, however, in U.S. history. The government allotted meager payments of approximately $20 thousand dollars to surviving Japanese Americans who it interned in the United States during World War II after forcing them, many of whom were U.S. citizens either by birth or naturalization, to leave their homes and communities and shipping them to crowded barbed-wire enclosed camps in interior regions of the U.S.
In addition, victims of the inhumane and highly unethical Tuskegee Study, which infected 399 black men with syphilis and left them untreated, the U.S. government eventually paid $10 million in reparations, and they and their families were provided lifelong medical care.
The United States should make reparations, to be determined, to African Americans, whether they can or cannot show direct lineage to an enslaved ancestor. And reparations can come in different forms. For example, progressive politicians have advocated that all people should have the option of attending state colleges and universities tuition free. Until the government grants this universally, African heritage people should have this option today.
The city of Evanston, Illinois can serve as a nation model. It gives black residents who were specifically targeted with racist housing policies money for home repairs, down payments, or mortgage payments. In this way, Evanston has directed a bright light on actual racist housing policies while searching for equitable ways of at least beginning to make restitution.
Other suggested forms of reparations include giving black people the option of taking out a loan at zero interest rates, erasure of student debt, education scholarships given directly to young people in zip codes with underperforming school systems.
Or the government could give reparations for those employed in fields with verified unfair hiring practices. In this case, the government could provide a matching program with corporations, giving extra money with each paycheck instead of one lump sum.
Or the government can tax inherited wealth at a higher rate while setting aside a portion of this sum to give black people what should have been their share of inherited wealth?
Historian Jeffries stated in his TED Talk:
“History reminds us that we stand on the shoulders of greats like James Madison. But hard history reminds us that we as a nation also stand on the shoulders of enslaved children, little boys and little girls who with their bare hands made the bricks to serve as the foundation for this nation, and if we are serious about creating a fair and just society, then we would do well to remember them.”
Jeffries asserts that we must teach and “disrupt the continuum of hard history” and seek the truth, that reparations must begin with lifting the rug and sweep away the diseased dust mites of white supremacist racism, nativism, neo-fascism, and all the diseased oppressive mutations.
For example, in a 2020 U.S. government report, white people own 80% of the nation’s accumulated wealth while comprising 60% of the population. A 2016 report by the Brookings Institute showed a $171,000 net worth for a typical white family. This is almost ten times that a black family of $17,150.
Gaps in wealth between black and white households show the impact of uninterrupted systemic inequality and discrimination beginning at the nation’s inception. And no, this gap is not the result of some defective lowered intelligence among African heritage bodies, or a diminished sense of motivation, talent, or ingenuity.
These charges are used as a justification for those enamored by the lie, the myth that the U.S. functions as a meritocracy, and by so doing, blames the victims of inequality for that inequality.
Enslaved Africans literally constructed the foundations of not only James Madison’s home, but they formulated the very foundations of our nation with their blood, sweat, and tears mixing with the connecting mortar without just compensation then and throughout the next 400 years.
This continued following the Civil War into the Jim Crow era and beyond in the areas of employment discrimination, segregated education, housing redlining, poor or no health care, higher loan rates, gentrification forcing them from their neighborhoods, unequal treatment in the “justice” system, over incarceration, and the list continues.
While the U.S. government promised reparations of a sort to those formerly enslaved with “40 acres and a mule,” those promises went unmet soon following President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865 when the newly inaugurated President Andrew Johnson rescinded the order and restored the land back to its white owners.
The national government established the practice of Affirmative Action to level the employment and educational processes and practices for people of color and women in institutions in which they have been underrepresented and have faced discrimination. Though it existed in some forms previously, President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Executive Order 10925 referred specifically to “affirmative action” in national government contracts, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extended this where a court found that an employer intentionally engaged in discriminatory practices.
Affirmative Action has never truly addressed the longstanding inequities as institutions have consistently undermined its purposes by employing and promoting a few token employees of color and women as mere “window dressing” to present a diverse image.
In addition, legislators have passed laws and courts have handed down rulings to diminish Affirmative Action’s effectiveness. Therefore, Affirmative Action cannot be viewed as an adequate or equitable form of reparations.
Reparations to groups of individuals have precedence, however, in U.S. history. The government allotted meager payments of approximately $20 thousand dollars to surviving Japanese Americans who it interned in the United States during World War II after forcing them, many of whom were U.S. citizens either by birth or naturalization, to leave their homes and communities and shipping them to crowded barbed-wire enclosed camps in interior regions of the U.S.
In addition, victims of the inhumane and highly unethical Tuskegee Study, which infected 399 black men with syphilis and left them untreated, the U.S. government eventually paid $10 million in reparations, and they and their families were provided lifelong medical care.
The United States should make reparations, to be determined, to African Americans, whether they can or cannot show direct lineage to an enslaved ancestor. And reparations can come in different forms. For example, progressive politicians have advocated that all people should have the option of attending state colleges and universities tuition free. Until the government grants this universally, African heritage people should have this option today.
The city of Evanston, Illinois can serve as a nation model. It gives black residents who were specifically targeted with racist housing policies money for home repairs, down payments, or mortgage payments. In this way, Evanston has directed a bright light on actual racist housing policies while searching for equitable ways of at least beginning to make restitution.
Other suggested forms of reparations include giving black people the option of taking out a loan at zero interest rates, erasure of student debt, education scholarships given directly to young people in zip codes with underperforming school systems.
Or the government could give reparations for those employed in fields with verified unfair hiring practices. In this case, the government could provide a matching program with corporations, giving extra money with each paycheck instead of one lump sum.
Or the government can tax inherited wealth at a higher rate while setting aside a portion of this sum to give black people what should have been their share of inherited wealth?
Historian Jeffries stated in his TED Talk:
“History reminds us that we stand on the shoulders of greats like James Madison. But hard history reminds us that we as a nation also stand on the shoulders of enslaved children, little boys and little girls who with their bare hands made the bricks to serve as the foundation for this nation, and if we are serious about creating a fair and just society, then we would do well to remember them.”
Jeffries asserts that we must teach and “disrupt the continuum of hard history” and seek the truth, that reparations must begin with lifting the rug and sweep away the diseased dust mites of white supremacist racism, nativism, neo-fascism, and all the diseased oppressive mutations.