tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/racial-wealth-gap-69783/articlesRacial wealth gap – The Conversation2023-06-15T17:06:47Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2068292023-06-15T17:06:47Z2023-06-15T17:06:47ZJuneteenth and Emancipation Day: How the ‘Buy Black’ movement is addressing economic inequality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531482/original/file-20230612-260763-y3p673.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C7%2C5172%2C3440&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 'Buy Black' movement encourages people to support Black-owned businesses.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/historical-legacy-juneteenth">Juneteenth</a> being declared a federal holiday in the United States and <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/emancipation-day.html">Emancipation Day</a> being officially recognized on Aug. 1 in Canada demonstrate significant progress towards creating more equitable societies in North America.</p>
<p>Juneteenth — a portmanteau of June and nineteenth — celebrates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. On June 19, 1865, <a href="https://time.com/6188864/general-order-3-juneteenth/">General Order No. 3 was released</a>. It officially enforced the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas and granted freedom to all remaining enslaved people in the U.S.</p>
<p>Emancipation Day holds similarly significant meaning in Canada and other former British colonies. It recognizes the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/slavery-abolition-act-1833">Slavery Abolition Act of 1833</a> that paved the way for liberation, impacting more than 800,000 enslaved Africans, Indigenous Peoples and their families across the British Commonwealth.</p>
<p>Both Juneteenth and Emancipation Day are powerful celebrations that honour the vibrancy and resilience of Black communities. They ignite important conversations and inspire individuals and groups to move toward greater equity and inclusion in society.</p>
<p>But despite the symbolic progress represented by these commemorative days, inequalities still persist for many African Americans and Canadians, including <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/a-300-billion-dollar-opportunity-serving-the-emerging-black-american-consumer">exclusion within consumer markets</a>.</p>
<h2>Buying Black and showing it</h2>
<p>In response to ongoing challenges about market exclusion, the <a href="https://www.myblackreceipt.com/">My Black Receipt</a> initiative emerged as a dynamic social movement. </p>
<p>By harnessing the power of markets — which have <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-11711-5_1">historically been racialized</a> — this movement aims to combat systemic disparities and promote economic empowerment. It does so by supporting Black-owned businesses and amplifying their impact.</p>
<p>My Black Receipt is a digital collective that encourages consumers to support Black-owned businesses. It was founded by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/24/business/my-black-receipt-businesses-yelp-trnd/index.html">American entrepreneur and activist Kezia Williams</a> in June 2020 to coincide with that year’s Juneteenth celebration.</p>
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<img alt="A group of people march while holding signs in support of Black Lives Matter and racial equality." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531472/original/file-20230612-25-clgj9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531472/original/file-20230612-25-clgj9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531472/original/file-20230612-25-clgj9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531472/original/file-20230612-25-clgj9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531472/original/file-20230612-25-clgj9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531472/original/file-20230612-25-clgj9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531472/original/file-20230612-25-clgj9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">People participate in an Emancipation Day March, in Vancouver, on August 1, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
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<p>The movement uses social media, media appearances and a website to educate consumers about the benefits of buying from Black-owned businesses, including <a href="https://www.myblackreceipt.com/about-us/">supporting Black employment, causes and wealth generation</a>. </p>
<p>My Black Receipt helps consumers identify and locate Black-owned businesses and then invites participants to upload their receipts to the movement’s website to show the collective impact of their actions. As of June 2023, consumers had uploaded nearly US$10 million in receipts.</p>
<h2>New type of online market</h2>
<p>The digital collective has galvanized change from the business community as well. For example, it <a href="https://blog.yelp.com/news/yelp-teams-up-with-my-black-receipt-to-support-black-owned-businesses/">partnered with online review site Yelp</a> to help businesses self-identify as Black-owned, allowing consumers to search for and support Black businesses. </p>
<p>It’s also <a href="https://www.myblackreceipt.com/pepsi/">partnered with Pepsi for its Dig In initiative</a>, which aims to generate US$100 million in sales for Black-owned restaurants over a five-year period.</p>
<p>These outcomes are a testament to the success of the My Black Receipt collective. My Black Receipt represents a new type of online enclave that brings together Black consumers, their allies and business owners and transcends geographic boundaries.</p>
<p>This makes it unique from more traditional racial and ethnic enclaves, like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/24/us/tulsa-race-massacre.html">Black Wall Street</a> in Tulsa, Okla., or the numerous Chinatowns that exist worldwide. My Black Receipt appears to offer some capacity to address material inequities.</p>
<p>As researchers, we asked ourselves: How do digital enclaves like My Black Receipt function? And what makes them thrive?</p>
<h2>Helping My Black Receipt thrive</h2>
<p>We conducted an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/07439156221130960">online ethnography study</a> with <a href="https://www.scrutinizers.org/home/our-research">our colleagues</a> to examine the My Black Receipt movement. Our research used data sourced from digital news platforms, social media channels and affiliated websites.</p>
<p>Through this study, we explored the role digital enclaves play in promoting market inclusion and equity for Black consumers and business owners.</p>
<p>The #MyBlackReceipt hashtag serves as a unifying force online, connecting networking sites and posts to form a dynamic digital enclave. This enclave propels collective action in support of the Black community. Participants actively engage in various practices within this enclave to fuel its growth and impact.</p>
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<img alt="Two Black women walk past a brick wall with a mural painted on it that says 'Black Wall St." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531452/original/file-20230612-220077-5r3fj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531452/original/file-20230612-220077-5r3fj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531452/original/file-20230612-220077-5r3fj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531452/original/file-20230612-220077-5r3fj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531452/original/file-20230612-220077-5r3fj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531452/original/file-20230612-220077-5r3fj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531452/original/file-20230612-220077-5r3fj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">People walk past the Black Wall Street mural in April 2021, in Tulsa, Okla. The original Black Wall Street was destroyed about 100 years ago when a white mob laid waste to the nation’s most prosperous Black-owned business district and residential neighbourhood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)</span></span>
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<p>Enclave organizers, led by influential figures like Williams, play a crucial role in creating the enclave’s purpose and garnering support from shoppers and business owners. </p>
<p>They contextualize the movement within broader conversations about Black inequality, freedom and well-being, highlighting its significance in addressing systemic issues.</p>
<p>The organizers amplify their message by forging partnerships with prominent news media outlets <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/24/business/my-black-receipt-businesses-yelp-trnd/index.html">such as CNN</a> and collaborating with major corporations like Yelp and Pepsi. By doing this, they generate widespread awareness and interest in their cause.</p>
<p>To facilitate co-ordination and showcase the collective impact of their efforts, organizers established a dedicated platform on the My Black Receipt website. This platform allows individuals to upload their shopping receipts and create a spending scoreboard that visually represents the impact of their actions.</p>
<p>Through these practices and initiatives, the My Black Receipt enclave thrives, fostering a sense of community and empowerment while driving tangible change in support of Black-owned businesses and economic equity.</p>
<h2>Closing the racial wealth gap</h2>
<p>Digital enclaves like My Black Receipt are working towards establishing secure and prosperous market spaces for Black individuals.</p>
<p>Within these enclaves, Black consumers can access products that cater to their needs, support Black communities and avoid the need to justify their worthiness as customers in predominantly white markets. At the same time, Black business owners benefit from connecting with consumers who support Black-owned businesses. </p>
<p>These arrangements work together to bring and retain more wealth within the Black community, aiming to address the significant wealth gap between Black and white Americans. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2022/how-the-racial-wealth-gap-has-evolved-and-why-it-persists">Black Americans possess as little as US$4 in wealth for every US$100 accumulated by white Americans</a>, and <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/featured-reports/article-five-charts-that-show-the-impact-of-anti-black-racism-in-canada/">Black Canadians earn, on average, $12,000 less than their non-racialized counterparts</a>. </p>
<p>Juneteenth and Emancipation Day are powerful catalysts for communication and action against discrimination and inequity in society. These commemorative days, along with initiatives like My Black Receipt, seek to address market exclusion and generate tangible change for Black individuals. </p>
<p>By fighting against discrimination through market intervention, these movements create wealth within the Black communities. Together, they embody the ongoing struggle for justice and equality in our economic systems.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206829/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>By harnessing the power of markets, digital movements like My Black Receipt aim to combat systemic disparities and promote economic empowerment by supporting Black-owned businesses.Myriam Brouard, Assistant Professor, Telfer School of Management, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaAndrew N. Smith, Associate Professor of Marketing, Suffolk UniversityKatja H. Brunk, Professor of Marketing, European University ViadrinaMarcia Christina Ferreira, Senior Lecturer, Essex Business School, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1950862023-04-05T17:52:00Z2023-04-05T17:52:00ZBlack singles with college education embrace life without marriage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519412/original/file-20230404-20-6snpsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A new book titled 'The Love Jones Cohort' examines the lifestyles of middle-class Black Americans.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/african-american-woman-using-social-media-on-smart-royalty-free-image/1432253560">Morsa Images/DigitalVision Collection/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Why is it seemingly OK to ask single people “Why are you single?” when married people are rarely asked “Why are you married?”</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EhVdUK4AAAAJ&hl=en">Sociologist Kris Marsh</a> hopes to break this double-standard with her new book “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316672754">The Love Jones Cohort: Single and Living Alone in the Black Middle Class</a>.” In it, she examines the lifestyles of single people and explores the stigma that can come with their decision to not marry.</em></p>
<h2>What’s the story behind the title?</h2>
<p>My mentor and I coined the expression “The Love Jones Cohort” over coffee on a hot and humid summer day in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We were discussing how my idea to study Black middle class men and women who are single and living alone came from both media and my own life experiences. </p>
<p>I said that I was noticing – in both film and TV – a demographic shift in Black characters away from married couples to single adults. I believed this started with the 1997 romance drama “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119572/">Love Jones</a>,” starring Larenz Tate as an up-and-coming poet, and Nia Long as a talented but recently unemployed photographer.</p>
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<img alt="Movie still of group of young adults smoking and drinking at a table" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518593/original/file-20230330-390-elezol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518593/original/file-20230330-390-elezol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518593/original/file-20230330-390-elezol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518593/original/file-20230330-390-elezol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518593/original/file-20230330-390-elezol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518593/original/file-20230330-390-elezol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518593/original/file-20230330-390-elezol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The 1997 film ‘Love Jones’ is a story of Black love, life and friendship that still resonates today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/larenz-tate-and-nia-long-having-drinks-with-another-couples-news-photo/159840963">Addis Wechsler Pictures/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The film follows the two characters, as well as their friends and acquaintances, as they pursue careers and lovers. It deals with relationships, premarital sex, choosing partners, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-women-still-earn-a-lot-less-than-men-109128">gender pay gap</a> and the realization that growing old and single might affect one’s health. More than 25 years later, the film remains a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-love-jones-oral-history-20170313-htmlstory.html">staple within Black culture</a>.</p>
<h2>Tell us more about this shift in TV and film</h2>
<p>In the 1980s and 1990s, the media prototype for the middle class – whether Black or white – had been a married couple with children. For the Black middle class, this was exemplified by the Huxtable family from “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086687/">The Cosby Show</a>,” a sitcom starring Bill Cosby that ran from 1984 to 1992 about an obstetrician father, a corporate attorney and their four happy, intelligent and adorable children. </p>
<p>After “The Cosby Show,” a surge of sitcoms and films depicted Black middle-class characters of a quite different demographic profile. These characters were 20-something, educated professionals who had never been married, were child-free and lived alone or with an unmarried friend or two. “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106056">Living Single</a>,” a sitcom that ran from 1993 to 1998, centered on six Black friends living in a Brooklyn brownstone. “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0247102">Girlfriends</a>,” another popular sitcom, ran from 2000 to 2008 and followed the career and dating lives of four single Black women. </p>
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<img alt="Issa Rae and Yvonne Orji laugh while getting photographed at an event" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518828/original/file-20230331-18-6kwvv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518828/original/file-20230331-18-6kwvv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518828/original/file-20230331-18-6kwvv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518828/original/file-20230331-18-6kwvv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518828/original/file-20230331-18-6kwvv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518828/original/file-20230331-18-6kwvv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518828/original/file-20230331-18-6kwvv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Issa Rae and Yvonne Orji starred in ‘Insecure,’ which followed a group of young Black women living and dating in Los Angeles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/issa-rae-and-yvonne-orji-attend-vulture-festival-2021-at-news-photo/1353132110">David Livingston/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>More recent TV shows that represent the Love Jones cohort include “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2345481">Being Mary Jane</a>,” which ran from 2013 to 2019 and was about a young Black female news anchor and her career and family, and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5024912">Insecure</a>,” which ended in 2021 after six seasons. “Insecure” followed four Black women who are best friends as they deal with insecurities and uncomfortable everyday experiences, career and relationship challenges, and a variety of social and racial issues relating to the contemporary Black experience.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, on the big screen, films depicting this demographic profile include “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250274/">The Brothers</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0269341">Two Can Play That Game</a>” in 2001, and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301181">Deliver Us From Eva</a>” in 2003.</p>
<p>This shift in Hollywood, it turns out, was also grounded in the real world – where a <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1093/sf/86.2.735">growing number of middle-class Black Americans</a> in recent decades are single and living alone. Looking at Census data, I learned that the number of middle-class Black people age 25-44 that were single and living alone jumped from <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1093/sf/86.2.735">6% in 1980 to 14% in 2000</a>, where it remains today. </p>
<h2>What are some of your most interesting findings?</h2>
<p>Several findings stand out from my interviews with members of the Love Jones Cohort in the summer of 2015.</p>
<p>A number of the men and women – who were all identified by pseudonyms in the study – actively chose singlehood. For example, Genesis, who works in brand management, had decided to not date for the immediate future. “Right now I’m more content with being single due to other priorities,” she said.</p>
<p>Many also enjoyed the economic autonomy that accompanied being single. “I decide what I want to do, if it’s political, if it’s social, I decide, and I don’t have to answer to anyone,” said Joanna, a 47-year-old communications specialist. However, they also reported that buying a home on a single income can be an economic hurdle. </p>
<p>While freedom and self-reliance were central aspects of the cohort’s lifestyle, so was – in many cases – what I call “situational loneliness.” This refers to bouts of mild to moderate loneliness that ebb and flow over short periods of time, such as Valentine’s Day. As a result, members in the cohort tended to place high value on interactions with family, friends and social networks.</p>
<p>In fact, friends were often perceived as a direct extension of their families, and both men and women expressed how friends met various social needs – whether this be workout partners, golf buddies or fellow foodies.</p>
<p>The women in the cohort saw their female friends as sources of emotional support, and these nurturing, nonromantic relationships were central to their single and living alone lifestyle. The cohort’s men, meanwhile, talked about their circle of friends in more pragmatic terms. “My friends come over. … We have a rooftop pool and different stuff like that. They’ll come over and want to hang out and chill,” noted Reggie, a 30-year-old financial analyst.</p>
<h2>What’s driving single life?</h2>
<p>When people talk about the driving factors of Black singlehood, the discussion often involves suggesting that Black singles – usually Black women – are too picky and need to lower or modify their standards to be partnered or married.</p>
<p>The Love Jones Cohort’s women were hopeful that if they did decide to partner, it would be with an educated Black man. Research supports the tendency for people to want to marry or partner with people in their same <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.24.1.395">social and economic class</a>. However, Black women are <a href="https://www.jbhe.com/2019/03/the-gender-gap-in-african-american-educational-attainment-2/">outpacing Black men in higher education</a>. According to <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2018/demo/education-attainment/cps-detailed-tables.html">2018 Census data</a>, <a href="https://www.jbhe.com/2019/03/the-gender-gap-in-african-american-educational-attainment-2/">19% of Black men</a> between the ages of 25 and 29 held a bachelor’s degree compared to 26% of Black women. This can lead to a disparity in resources and social standing. </p>
<p>In the book, I argue that racism and gendered racism constrain personal choices and also need to be taken into consideration when discussing Black singlehood. </p>
<p>For example, sociologist <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=TcTbU6oAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Celeste Vaughn Curington</a> and her colleagues coined the term “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520293458/the-dating-divide">digital-sexual racism</a>” after they conducted a comprehensive study of a diverse group of daters. According to Curington, the term refers to how Black daters are rendered “simultaneously hyper-visible and invisible. … They are contacted on dating sites specifically because they are Black but also ignored on other user sites entirely because they are Black.”</p>
<p>I’m asking readers to consider how singlehood is not simply because of an individual deficit, choice or behavior. I hope for the book to challenge readers to consider how structural forces and social contexts also fit into the conversation on singlehood.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195086/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kris Marsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A sociologist interviewed dozens of middle-class Black singles about their friendships, freedom and dating lives.Kris Marsh, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of MarylandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1908812022-10-11T12:21:02Z2022-10-11T12:21:02ZBlack women endure legacy of racism in homeownership and making costly repairs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488142/original/file-20221004-19-t0fjc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=138%2C72%2C3887%2C2945&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The removal of drywall during mold remediation is seen after a basement flood. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/removal-of-drywall-along-staircase-leading-to-house-royalty-free-image/1345055192?phrase=home%20repairs%20disaster&adppopup=true">Catherine McQueen/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Yolanda, 61, owns a home in the predominantly Black 7th Ward neighborhood in New Orleans. </p>
<p>To fix her leaking roof in 2020, she had to borrow money. </p>
<p>“It’s one of them credit card loans,” she said. “Like interest of 30% and all that, you know. I was kind of backed up against the wall, so I just went on and made the loan, a high-interest loan.”</p>
<p>As <a href="https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/departments/sociology/people/faculty/robin-bartram">a sociologist</a> who has spent the past 10 years studying housing conditions in the U.S., I led a research team that conducted interviews with homeowners who are struggling with basic maintenance such as rotting wood siding and floors, mold, crumbling brickwork, outdated plumbing and leaking ceilings. Our first paper from this project is currently under peer review.</p>
<p>Like Yolanda, our interviewees – whom we gave pseudonyms to protect their privacy – were almost all Black women over the age of 60 who lived in old buildings in neighborhoods that have borne the brunt of discrimination – such as <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/segregation-by-design/9CEF629688C0C684EDC387407F5878F2#fndtn-information">redlining and inequitable land use decisions</a> – and disinvestment.</p>
<p>Once <a href="https://www.datacenterresearch.org/pre-katrina/orleans/4/14/snapshot.html">a lively district</a> of Black businesses and homes, the 7th Ward has become an area of high poverty since <a href="https://www.nola.com/300/article_64e363c2-2c60-5516-90e0-3c904190e27e.html">the I-10 expressway</a> was built during the 1960s directly through its heart. </p>
<p>Yolanda had already been living there for a decade before the highway was built. </p>
<p>Though brightly painted, Yolanda’s home is separated from I-10 only by an empty lot, and the constant noise and higher rates of pollution make it hard to imagine Yolanda would be able to sell her home for a profit or use its declining value as equity. </p>
<p>Did Yolanda take out a high-interest loan for nothing?</p>
<p>Was she throwing good money after bad? </p>
<p>These are not easy questions to answer. </p>
<p>Like other Black female homeowners whom we interviewed, Yolanda had to choose between debt and disrepair. </p>
<p>As she explained, she was “backed up against a wall.”</p>
<h2>The racist and sexist history of disrepair</h2>
<p>According to a 2022 analysis of federal census data by <a href="https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/home-repairs-and-updates-pose-considerable-burdens-lower-income-homeowners">Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies</a>, nearly a third of homeowners who earn less than US$32,000 – about 4.8 million people – spent nothing on maintenance or improvements. </p>
<p>I have noticed worrying trends in the circumstances of those who live in housing in disrepair.</p>
<p><a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo174780463.html">In my book</a>, “Stacked Decks,” I explore the connections between urban housing, race, gender and income inequality.</p>
<p>Since at least the 1970s, <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663883/race-for-profit/">real estate agents and lenders have exploited the precarious financial positions of Black women and sold them mortgages on homes in poor condition</a>. </p>
<p>Today – 50 years later – these homes pose even greater health and safety risks to their owners than when they first bought them.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="as seen from this aerial photograph, a major highway cuts through a residential neighborhood." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486183/original/file-20220922-30154-avsb6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486183/original/file-20220922-30154-avsb6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486183/original/file-20220922-30154-avsb6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486183/original/file-20220922-30154-avsb6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486183/original/file-20220922-30154-avsb6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486183/original/file-20220922-30154-avsb6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/486183/original/file-20220922-30154-avsb6g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The I-10 interstate highway cuts through residential neighborhoods in New Orleans shown here after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/is-shown-flooded-from-hurricane-katrina-september-11-2005-news-photo/55736407?adppopup=true">Jerry Grayson/Helifilms Australia PTY Ltd/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Studies show that after less than two years of ownership, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15575330.2010.491154?casa_token=sh3YscPy7EwAAAAA%3A1kiaOfyDDRuerz_65JPSltmldTZjCk36HKepXokJqrWcBxY3hCZl-GvS7e0rTp7_vguil0xPGBST">disrepair makes maintaining a livable home difficult for low-income homeowners</a>.</p>
<p>Unaddressed repairs such as leaky roofs or broken pipes frequently result <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo174780463.html">in code violations</a> and court cases, which prompt liens, foreclosures and the possibility of homelessness.</p>
<p>The situation is worse for Black women, <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203707425/black-wealth-white-wealth-melvin-oliver-thomas-shapiro">who have much less wealth</a>, on average, than their white or male counterparts. Without money to pay for repairs, female homeowners face incurring more debt if they make repairs.</p>
<p>Climate change means that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/24/what-climate-change-will-mean-your-home/">these problems are getting worse</a> as a result of increased rainfall and extreme temperatures.</p>
<p>Doris, a homeowner in Chicago, told us in 2021 about her old and leaking roof and the flooding in her basement. She explained that the flooding was partially due to the overflowing of nearby city-owned drainage pipes. </p>
<p>“Every time it rains, the water comes in,” she said. “By the sewer not being clean … so much water came in my basement that my washer and dryer was floating up on the water.” An insurance claim covered some of the costs of this repair for Doris, and the <a href="https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/water/supp_info/basement_floodingpartnership.html">city is experimenting with new ways to tackle floodwater</a>, but water still gets in when it rains hard. </p>
<h2>Racism and sexism in the housing industry</h2>
<p>The racism pervading the housing industry is now well known. The real estate industry has, at different points in history, <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo5298959.html">excluded Black Americans from homeownership</a>, <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663883/race-for-profit/">included them through predatory loans and deals</a> and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/39518">reinforced racial segregation</a> by denying loans to Black and other minority residents. Known as redlining, the practice became a self-fulfilling prophecy of disinvestment and declining values.</p>
<p>But real estate agents and mortgage brokers were <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663883/race-for-profit/">sexist as well</a>. </p>
<p>These real estate agents and mortgage brokers knew Black women had <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663883/race-for-profit/">limited options and assumed they would be likely to default on their mortgages</a>. </p>
<p>Black women were consistently <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02637758211013041?casa_token=2EwxQlPIkHsAAAAA%3ALCMHw3y5OO72gKleOGaMiAc8hooAQ10vRhMHM1zmfnm9VQbcsQCB3boeSMhmlx48rQSienRO_HTq">sold homes that needed repairs</a>.</p>
<p>A lot can happen to a house in 50 years.</p>
<p>Buildings naturally deteriorate over time, because of the combination of aging construction materials and weather. At some point, all homes need repairs and preventive maintenance. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The roof of a building is covered in plastic tarp." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488139/original/file-20221004-1853-38y6rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488139/original/file-20221004-1853-38y6rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488139/original/file-20221004-1853-38y6rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488139/original/file-20221004-1853-38y6rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488139/original/file-20221004-1853-38y6rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488139/original/file-20221004-1853-38y6rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488139/original/file-20221004-1853-38y6rj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A damaged building roof covered in plastic tarp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/damaged-building-roof-covered-in-plastic-tarp-royalty-free-image/680653536?phrase=home%20repairs%20disaster&adppopup=true">Douglas Sacha/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Chicagoan Kimberly cares for her grandson almost full time and told us about her concerns about the rotted wood that has made her back porch dangerous to stand on. </p>
<p>“We don’t go out of the back door at all,” Kimberly said. “We have not used that in years. Four years now. Four years we have not used the back porch at all.” </p>
<h2>Disrepair and environmental injustice</h2>
<p>Disrepair is an issue of environmental injustice. The government has a responsibility to help with repairs because of its <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/the-color-of-law/">role in the housing discrimination</a> that has created such racial disparities in housing conditions. </p>
<p>But, like <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/markets-of-sorrow-labors-of-faith#:%7E:text=Markets%20of%20Sorrow%2C%20Labors%20of%20Faith%20is%20an%20ethnographic%20account,services%20under%20market%2Ddriven%20governance.">disaster relief</a>, assistance to homeowners is uneven and hard to obtain. </p>
<p>U.S. cities often use <a href="https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/doh/provdrs/homeowners/svcs/home-repair-program.html">lotteries to distribute funds for repairs</a>, barely scratching the surface of the number of homes in need of repair. </p>
<p>Although all homes need repair work over time, disrepair disproportionately affects people with the fewest resources, because maintenance is expensive. Disrepair also causes health and safety issues, as do other environmental injustices, such as the placement of highways and location of polluting factories. </p>
<p>Disrepair can also force people to leave their homes because they cannot afford repairs. </p>
<p>But making repairs can exacerbate debt. </p>
<p>What all this means is that owning a home, or even paying off a mortgage, does not guarantee that homes remain affordable, an asset or a safe shelter. </p>
<p>Recognizing disrepair as environmental racism could be one step in ensuring homes are all these things.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190881/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robin Bartram does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Routine maintenance is necessary for every homeowner. But for Black women, that burden is complicated by decades of redlining and the impacts of climate change.Robin Bartram, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Tulane UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1856462022-06-30T12:22:00Z2022-06-30T12:22:00ZRacial wealth gaps are yet another thing the US and UK have in common<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470585/original/file-20220623-51459-drcbgs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Britain's Prince William speaks during the unveiling of the National Windrush Monument on June 22, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/britains-prince-william-duke-of-cambridge-speaks-during-the-news-photo/1241451369?adppopup=true">John SibleyPOOL/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s an old saying that Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language. </p>
<p>But they are united by racial wealth gaps that formed at a similar time for related reasons. Black Britons of the “Windrush generation,” arriving in Britain from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1973, and Black Americas from the Great Migration of the 1940s-1970s encountered similar disadvantages that were reproduced in the last 50 years.</p>
<p>Today, examining household assets, Black Britons of Caribbean backgrounds have 20 pence on the £1 compared to white Britons. Black Britons of African background – more recently arrived in Britain – have just <a href="https://www.runnymedetrust.org/publications/the-colour-of-money">10 pence</a> on the £1 compared to white Britons. </p>
<p>In the U.S., Black Americans have assets about <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/wealth-inequality-and-the-racial-wealth-gap-20211022.htm">15 to 20 cents</a> on the $1 compared to whites. </p>
<p>This is in large part the result of policymakers in both countries putting up roadblocks to Black advancement at the time they instituted policies to grow the middle class.</p>
<p>In my view <a href="https://calscherm.com/">as a historian</a> of slavery, capitalism and African American inequality, it’s not just the long shadow of enslavement, which Britain abolished in its western colonies in 1833 and the U.S. ended in 1865 with passage of the 13th Amendment. </p>
<p>When Black members of the British Commonwealth moved to Britain starting in 1948 and African Americans moved from the South to the North and West, they encountered new obstacles. </p>
<p>The long struggle for equal job opportunities has had a lasting effect on the ability to accrue wealth and pass it on to subsequent generations.</p>
<h2>The British illusion of opportunity</h2>
<p>The moment Black opportunity in Britain opened up was June 22, 1948, when the British ship <a href="https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/national-maritime-museum/windrush-day">Empire Windrush</a> docked on the River Thames, disembarking 802 passengers of Caribbean background in England.</p>
<p>They led the first sustained Black migration, the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43782241">Windrush generation</a>, mostly Black and Asian, arriving in Britain between 1948 and 1973.</p>
<p>U.K. employers wanted their labor amid a post-World War II shortage. </p>
<p>About a third of Windrush passengers were veterans of the British forces who served in World War II and recruited by employers for skilled jobs. </p>
<p>Caribbean women, for instance, became vital to the new <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/">U.K. National Health Service</a> as nurses, cooks and cleaners, many <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/2694-the-heart-of-the-race">caring</a> for patients by night and families by day. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A bronze statue depicts a black man looking toward the sky while holding hands with his wife and child." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470579/original/file-20220623-51568-4m5qy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470579/original/file-20220623-51568-4m5qy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470579/original/file-20220623-51568-4m5qy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470579/original/file-20220623-51568-4m5qy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470579/original/file-20220623-51568-4m5qy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470579/original/file-20220623-51568-4m5qy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470579/original/file-20220623-51568-4m5qy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The National Windrush Monument, created by Jamaican artist Basil Watson, is unveiled at Waterloo Station in London on June 22, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-national-windrush-monument-created-by-jamaican-artist-news-photo/1241451640?adppopup=true">John Sibley/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span>
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<p>But, as British journalist <a href="https://www.afuahirsch.com/">Afua Hirsch</a> argues, they faced persistent discrimination in housing and jobs. Employers wanted them as laborers, not neighbors, and they faced hostility from those determined to “<a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/11/keeping-britain-white">Keep England White</a>.”</p>
<p>When a Bristol bus company refused to employ Black conductors and drivers, Black workers counter-organized, staging a successful Bristol <a href="https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/civil-rights-movement/the-bristol-bus-boycott-of-1963">bus boycott</a> against employment discrimination. </p>
<p>Such action led to the <a href="https://uomhistory.com/2021/10/15/the-campaign-against-racial-discrimination-britains-answer-to-the-naacp%EF%BF%BC/">1964 Campaign Against Racial Discrimination</a>, which helped catalyze the 1965 <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/relationships/collections1/race-relations-act-1965/race-relations-act-1965/">U.K. Race Relations Act</a> banning public discrimination and made promoting hatred based on “colour, race, or ethnic or national origins” a crime. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, civil rights leaders such as <a href="https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/civil-rights-movement/how-olive-morris-fought-for-black-womens-rights-in-britain/">Olive Morris</a> fought for economic inclusion through organizations like the <a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/10/the-making-of-britains-black-working-class">Black Workers Movement</a>. These efforts helped include Black workers in unionized industry and led to wage gains.</p>
<h2>The American allure of opportunity</h2>
<p>While the Windrush generation took shape, African Americans too were moving north and west in search of opportunity. Journalist Isabel Wilkerson <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/321/321351/the-warmth-of-other-suns/9780141995151.html">contends</a> that “the Great Migration had more in common with the vast movements of refugees from famine, war, and genocide in other parts of the world.”</p>
<p>In the three decades following the Great Depression, the American wage structure became more equal than at any time before or since, a process economic historians term “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2118322">The Great Compression</a>.” Between 1940 and 1960, the distance between earners in the top 10% and bottom 90% narrowed by a third. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black boy dressed in a shirt and tie stands near a black woman in front of car with their belongings tied to the top.car" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470595/original/file-20220623-52151-izb45a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470595/original/file-20220623-52151-izb45a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470595/original/file-20220623-52151-izb45a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470595/original/file-20220623-52151-izb45a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470595/original/file-20220623-52151-izb45a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470595/original/file-20220623-52151-izb45a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470595/original/file-20220623-52151-izb45a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An African American family leaving Florida during the Great Depression.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-african-american-family-leaving-florida-during-the-great-news-photo/2667542?adppopup=true">MPI/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But policies giving white Americans a boost up the ladder tended to hamstring African Americans.</p>
<p>Social Security <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html">initially excluded most Black workers</a>. Union wages rose, but African Americans were <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4300995/">underrepresented</a> in union jobs.</p>
<p>Home loan guarantees went to white families and specifically excluded Black-occupied properties in many U.S. cities. </p>
<p><a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/the-color-of-law">Redlining</a> was the practice of denying loan guarantees to properties occupied by Black and other minority residents. It became a self-fulfilling prophesy of disinvestment and declining values. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, post-WWII programs to improve social mobility, like the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/index.html?dod-date=622">1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act</a>, or GI Bill, <a href="https://theconversation.com/gi-bill-opened-doors-to-college-for-many-vets-but-politicians-created-a-separate-one-for-blacks-126394">largely benefited white veterans</a> by expanding the middle class with job, college and home loan assistance. </p>
<p><a href="https://mattdelmont.com/">Historian Matthew F. Delmont</a> <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/624655/half-american-by-matthew-f-delmont">argues</a> that “by funneling resources to white veterans and denying loans to Black veterans, the GI Bill intensified the racial wealth gap and shared the terrain of opportunity in America for decades after the war.”</p>
<p>In the 1960s, legal barriers gave way to what African American Studies scholar <a href="https://aas.princeton.edu/people/keeanga-yamahtta-taylor">Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor</a> calls “<a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663883/race-for-profit/">predatory inclusion</a>” in home ownership, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237476">finance</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2329496516686620">education</a>. </p>
<p>By the time Black Americans began to narrow <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30101/w30101.pdf">a persistent wealth gap</a>, the economy was paying diminishing returns to workers. </p>
<p>The wealth-to-earnings ratio <a href="https://eml.berkeley.edu/%7Esaez/saez-zucmanNBER14wealth.pdf">rose</a> in the U.S. <a href="https://voxeu.org/article/capital-back">and</a> U.K. after 1973, and Black Americans who had recently climbed one or two rungs on the ladder started to move backward relative to whites. </p>
<h2>Britain’s failed promise</h2>
<p>By the 1970s, multicultural Britain had taken shape. As <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/professor-paul-gilroy">British sociologist Paul Gilroy</a> <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo3620902.html">argues</a>, Black Britain, including people of African and South Asian descent, had become a complex of class and cultures as diverse as England’s imperial geography that once included colonies in Asia, Africa and the Americas.</p>
<p>But diversity didn’t mean inclusion. Just as Black working-class Britons were making gains in unionized industry, that rung of the ladder cracked.</p>
<p>Starting in the late 1970s, factories closed or moved offshore, and ways into the middle class narrowed as the U.K. and U.S. pursued a strategy of more privatization and less government spending on social services. </p>
<p>Union strength declined across sectors, and worker wages stagnated. Many Black Britons were trapped in segregated neighborhoods and didn’t reap gains from <a href="https://www.allagents.co.uk/house-prices-adjusted/">rising home values</a>. Today, 2 in 3 white British families own homes <a href="https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/housing/owning-and-renting/home-ownership/latest#by-ethnicity">compared</a> to 2 in 5 Black British families of Caribbean background and 1 in 5 Black British families of African background. </p>
<p>By the 2000s, those who lacked capital or technological skills in Britain had a hard time <a href="https://iariw.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Sonia_Paper.pdf">climbing</a> up the economic ladder. Income inequality <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/householdincomeinequalityfinancial/financialyearending2020provisional">soared</a> between 1979 and the early 2000s, reaching levels not seen since <a href="https://www.chartbookofeconomicinequality.com/inequality-by-country/united-kingdom/">before</a> WWII.</p>
<h2>America’s reinvention of inequality</h2>
<p>Meanwhile in the United States, legal barriers fell while the economy changed in ways that disadvantaged Black workers in new ways. In 1979 the average Black worker <a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/july-2013/changes-in-the-racial-earnings-gap-since-1960">earned</a> 82 cents on the dollar compared to white counterparts. By 2000, the earnings gap widened to 77 cents on the dollar. </p>
<p>The Great Recession of 2008 destroyed <a href="https://www.epi.org/blog/the-great-recession-education-race-and-homeownership/">half</a> of Black wealth, and in 2015 an estimated 1.5 million Black American men were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing-black-men.html">missing</a> from the economy, having died early, been incarcerated or shut out of the employment market – 8.2% of working-age African American men compared with 1.6% of white men in the same age range. </p>
<p>Despite wealth gains since 2016, Black wealth was more vulnerable and <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disparities-in-wealth-by-race-and-ethnicity-in-the-2019-survey-of-consumer-finances-20200928">harder</a> to accumulate. </p>
<p>The earnings gap remains wide today.</p>
<p>Black women workers in the U.S. <a href="https://leanin.org/data-about-the-gender-pay-gap-for-black-women">earn 79 cents</a> on the dollar compared to white women, and Black men <a href="https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/compensation/pages/racial-wage-gaps-persistence-poses-challenge.aspx">earn</a> 87% of white men’s wages. </p>
<h2>Discrimination across the Atlantic</h2>
<p>In the U.K., just before the pandemic, Black Britons of African and Caribbean background <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/articles/ethnicitypaygapsingreatbritain/2019">earned</a> 85% and 87% of the wages of white Britons, respectively. </p>
<p>According to a study by two leading U.K. inequality think tanks, British women of color <a href="https://www.runnymedetrust.org/publications/broken-ladders">endure</a> “intersecting structural barriers and discrimination faced at every point of the career pipeline, from school to university to employment.” </p>
<p>U.K. wealth is largely white, <a href="https://assets-global.website-files.com/61488f992b58e687f1108c7c/61bcc1c736554228b543c603_The%20Colour%20of%20Money%20Report.pdf">resulting</a> from the “history of economic relations between Britain and the rest of the world, especially Africa, the Caribbean and Asia,” according to the <a href="https://www.runnymedetrust.org/">Runnymede Trust</a>, an inequality think tank. </p>
<p>Over the last 80 years, the underbelly of Britain and America is that both countries reinvented racial economic disadvantages. </p>
<p>Instead of making their economies fundamentally fair, racial exclusions gave way to inclusion that came with surcharges on opportunity while failing to rectify past wrongs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185646/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Calvin Schermerhorn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The legacy of racism in both the United States and the United Kingdom has impacted the ability of Blacks and other ethnic groups to accumulate wealth.Calvin Schermerhorn, Professor of History, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1645462021-09-16T12:11:58Z2021-09-16T12:11:58ZHow reparations can be paid through school finance reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421395/original/file-20210915-23-k7ab9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5420%2C3753&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Schools in predominantly Black communities receive less funding, even though Black homeowners pay higher tax rates.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-nine-year-old-african-american-student-linda-brown-news-photo/454410523?adppopup=true">Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>White public schools have <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">always gotten more money</a> than Black public schools. These funding disparities go back to the so-called “<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/133243/men-created-separate-equal">separate but equal</a>” era – which was enshrined into the nation’s laws by the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537">Plessy v. Ferguson</a>.</p>
<p>The disparities have persisted even after <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a>, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that ordered the desegregation of America’s public schools.</p>
<p>Since Black schools get less funding even though <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">Black homeowners pay higher property taxes</a> than their white counterparts, we think <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">reparations are due</a> – and they can be paid by reforming the ways Black homeowners are taxed and schools in Black communities are funded.</p>
<p>We make this argument as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0NQWga8AAAAJ&hl=en">school finance</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=z-bISjgAAAAJ&hl=en">education law</a> scholars who have studied racial inequality in education for decades. We propose a four-part reparations plan to address racial inequalities in education. The plan deals with: 1) local property taxes, 2) school revenues, 3) targeting funding to close gaps in student outcomes, and 4) federal monitoring.</p>
<h2>1. Tax rebates to Black homeowners</h2>
<p>A big reason for racial funding disparities is housing segregation. This separation has led to vast <a href="http://btbcoalition.org/index%20page%20images/2018.11_Brookings-Metro_Devaluation-Assets-Black-Neighborhoods_final.pdf">differences in housing values</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spz002">wealth</a> that families have been able to accumulate. This in turn <a href="https://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai21-363">affects how much funding can be raised</a> through property taxes for local public schools.</p>
<p>In Connecticut, for example, Black-owned homes are valued on average at about <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">$250,000, versus over $420,000 for white-owned homes</a>. Even for homes in the same metro areas within Connecticut with the same number of bedrooms, the <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">difference is $173,000</a>. </p>
<p>Since Black home values overall are lower, higher tax rates are <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">often adopted</a> to generate more local tax revenue. This comes in the form of what we refer to as a “Black Tax.” In Connecticut, the average Black homeowner pays a Black Tax of just over 0.6% in higher property taxes. On a $250,000 home, that <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">amounts to $1,575 per year</a>. But even with higher tax rates, Black communities do not raise the same amount of property tax revenue to fund public schools as white communities in the same state or metropolitan area. Tax rates required to fully close these gaps would simply be too high. In a 2021 article, we documented <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">similar disparities in other states</a>, including Maryland and Virginia.</p>
<p>We recommend direct rebates to Black homeowners in previously redlined or otherwise segregated communities in the amount calculated to cover the Black Tax. For example, the Black Tax in Bridgeport, Connecticut is just over 0.5%. For a home valued at $340,000, the annual rebate amount would be <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">just over $1,800</a>. These rebates would put money in the hands of Black homeowners, who would then have the option to either spend more on their local public schools or increase their personal savings. Either way, we believe they are owed this compensation, including possible cumulative compensation for past overpayment.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Black male teenager studies at a library while listening to music through his earphones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black school districts have less taxable wealth compared to white school districts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/teenage-boy-studying-in-school-library-royalty-free-image/88752144?adppopup=true">Hill Street Studios/DigitalVistion via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Closing racial gaps in school district revenues</h2>
<p>State general aid programs, which are intended to make sure all schools get equitable funding, <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">routinely fall short</a>.</p>
<p>In Connecticut, the average state general aid per Black child is <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">$2,756</a> more than the average state general aid per white child. This is because districts serving Black children tend to have less of their own taxable wealth. That is, districts serving more Black children do receive more state general aid than districts serving more white children, but not enough to close the gap <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">$4,295</a> in local revenue raised. We calculated that the remaining gap is <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">$1,574 per pupil</a>. Additional state aid to school districts in Black communities could close this gap.</p>
<h2>3. Change how race factors into school aid formulas</h2>
<p><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://www.shankerinstitute.org/sites/default/files/moneymatters_edition2.pdf">Money matters</a> for improving schools and <a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/6/6/21102760/devos-says-school-spending-and-student-outcomes-aren-t-related-but-recent-research-suggests-otherwis">improving student outcomes</a> – from <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25368/w25368.pdf">test scores to graduation rates and college attendance</a>. School finance reforms have <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w29177#fromrss">proved especially beneficial to Black students</a>. Research is <a href="https://works.bepress.com/c_kirabo_jackson/38/">increasingly clear</a> in this regard. Equitable and adequate financing of public school systems is a necessary condition for ensuring children equal opportunity to succeed.</p>
<p>State school finance formulas <a href="https://carsey.unh.edu/sites/default/files/media/2020/06/20-11882_7._primer_policyscan_v3.pdf">include weights</a> – or cost adjustments – for things like how many children live in poverty or how many children have disabilities. The idea is that such children require more money to educate. The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2011.539957">evidence</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40704360">related studies</a> show that, because of governmental policies that created <a href="http://btbcoalition.org/index%20page%20images/2018.11_Brookings-Metro_Devaluation-Assets-Black-Neighborhoods_final.pdf">racial isolation and the economic disadvantage</a> that accompanies it, school and district racial composition is an important factor to include in state school finance formulas. But <a href="https://carsey.unh.edu/sites/default/files/media/2020/06/20-11882_7._primer_policyscan_v3.pdf">no state currently does this</a>. </p>
<h2>4. Eliminate racism in school finance formulas</h2>
<p>Some state aid programs <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED535555.pdf">exacerbate</a> racial disparities, and worse, some are built on the systemic <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/428886">racist policies that created them</a>.</p>
<p>Kansas, like many states, imposes strict <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0275-1100.2004.00344.x">revenue limits, or caps</a>, on revenue that can be raised locally in order to maintain equity. But a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40704338">2005 provision</a> added to their school funding formula raised the cap for 16 districts with higher average housing values, <a href="https://www.thepitchkc.com/funny-math/">based on the claim</a> that those districts needed to pay teachers more to live in their districts. But this specific provision almost uniformly applied to predominantly white districts where most neighborhoods had <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.00268">racially restrictive covenants in earlier decades</a>.</p>
<p>The provision excluded neighboring districts where homes had been devalued by redlining because they were inhabited by Black residents. These neighboring districts also presently use their <a href="https://www.ksde.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=8rP50roDAoQ%3d&tabid=398&portalid=0&mid=2427">maximum taxing authority</a>.</p>
<p>We recommend federal audits of state school finance systems to identify features of those systems that exacerbate racial disparities and may in fact be built on systemic racial discrimination. Since states have thus far been <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2012/09/19/38189/the-stealth-inequities-of-school-funding/">unwilling</a> to lead these initiatives themselves, we believe they need <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-resourcecomp-201410.pdf">federal encouragement</a>.</p>
<p>The funding adjustment on high-priced houses in Kansas provides one example, but <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/428886">there are others</a>, including state aid programs designed to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124507304126">reduce local property tax rates</a> in affluent suburban communities. </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164546/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A school finance expert and an education law scholar make the case for why reparations should be paid to African Americans by changing the way schools are funded.Preston Green III, John and Maria Neag Professor of Urban Education, University of ConnecticutBruce Baker, Professor of Education, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1623342021-09-03T12:37:44Z2021-09-03T12:37:44ZSlavery was the ultimate labor distortion – empowering workers today would be a form of reparations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418876/original/file-20210901-16-nd6f8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4308%2C2360&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Labor violations disproportionately affect Black Americans.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/labor-groups-and-workers-including-john-beard-with-the-la-news-photo/567385215?adppopup=true">Katie Falkenberg/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The conversation about reparations for slavery entered a new stage earlier in 2021, with the U.S. House Judiciary Committee <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/14/986853285/house-lawmakers-advance-historic-bill-to-form-reparations-commission">voting for the creation of a commission</a> to address the matter.</p>
<p>The bill, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/40">H.R. 40</a>, has been introduced every Congress since 1989 by Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and John Conyers, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/10/27/773919009/john-conyers-jr-who-represented-michigan-for-5-decades-dies-at-90">until his death in 2019</a>. But this year marks the first time that its request to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans has cleared the committee stage. </p>
<p>Calls to redress the lasting impact of slavery and racial discrimination have been amplified recently following further evidence of the impact of systemic racism – both through the <a href="https://covidtracking.com/race">disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on the Black community</a> and the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others at the hands of U.S. police.</p>
<h2>Disruption of labor relations</h2>
<p>To many, the question going forward is not so much whether or not reparations are in order, but what kinds of reparations might be appropriate.</p>
<p>Most of the conversation to date has focused on reparations in terms of payouts of some form. Prominent author <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">Ta-Nehisi Coates</a>, in a powerful argument for reparations, said payments must be made by white America to Black America – much as <a href="https://qz.com/1915185/how-germany-paid-reparations-for-the-holocaust/">Germany started paying Israel in 1952</a> to compensate for the persecution of Jews by the Nazis.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://divinity.vanderbilt.edu/people/bio/joerg-rieger">scholar who has written on economic justice and the labor movement</a>, I agree that reparations must have economic substance, because the impact of racism is inherently linked with power and money. But my <a href="https://chalicepress.com/products/unified-we-are-a-force">research suggests another model</a> for reparations: If one of the most significant aspects of slavery – even if not the only one – was a massive disruption of labor relations, then a crucial part in the reparations discussion could involve reshaping the labor relationship between employers and employees today. </p>
<p>I believe such a reshaping of the labor relationship would substantially benefit the descendants of enslaved people in the United States. Labor, as my research has argued, has implications for all aspects of life and labor reform would, I believe, address many of the problems of structural racism as well. In addition, reshaping the labor relationship would also have positive effects for all working people, <a href="https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/country-studies/united-states/">including those who still experience enslavement today</a>. </p>
<h2>Growing racial wage gap</h2>
<p>Labor relations can be considered “distorted” when one party profits disproportionally at the expense of another. In other words, it is a departure from a “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26159/26159-h/26159-h.htm">fair day’s pay for a fair days’s work</a>” – a concept that forms a bedrock demand of the labor movement, alongside good working conditions.</p>
<p>This is not just a matter of money but also of power. Under the conditions of slavery, the distortion of labor relations was nearly complete. Slave owners pocketed the profits and claimed absolute power, while slaves had to obey and risk life and limb for no compensation.</p>
<p>Black Americans continue to be disadvantaged in the labor market today. As CEO compensation <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-surged-14-in-2019-to-21-3-million-ceos-now-earn-320-times-as-much-as-a-typical-worker/">soars</a>, the number of Black CEOs remains remarkably low – there were just <a href="https://fortune.com/longform/fortune-500-black-ceos-business-history/">four Black CEOs at Fortune 500 companies</a> as of March 2021. In general, the wage gap between Black and white employees <a href="https://www.epi.org/blog/black-white-wage-gaps-are-worse-today-than-in-2000/">has grown in recent years</a>. Fueling these disparities, as well as building on them, is the structural racism that reparations could be designed to address.</p>
<p>Unionization can be a tool to rebalance labor relations and can <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4300995/">diminish this racial gap</a>, <a href="https://cepr.net/report/black-workers-unions-and-inequality/#five">studies have shown</a>. But union membership in general – and among Black workers in particular – has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/01/22/workers-are-fired-up-union-participation-is-still-decline-new-statistics-show/">declined in recent decades</a>. And a weaker labor movement is associated, studies show, with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/663673">greater racial wage disparity</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black members of the Domestic Workers Union Members march down a road in protest." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Unionization can help reduce the racial wage gap.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/domestic-workers-union-members-picketing-news-photo/534275792?adppopup=true">Joseph Schwartz/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Another tool to rebalance labor relations is worker-owned cooperatives, which have a <a href="http://johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/newsroom/7396.php">long tradition in African American communities</a> as <a href="https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/faculty/jessica-gordon-nembhard">economist Jessica Gordon Nembhard</a> has noted. From early on, she points out, “African Americans realized that without economic justice – without economic equality, independence and stability … social and political rights were hollow, or actually not achievable.” Gordon Nembhard’s work also shows that such cooperatives were often fought and ultimately destroyed because they were so successful in empowering African American communities. </p>
<h2>A ‘more permanent’ solution</h2>
<p>Some in the labor movement are beginning to link reparations with union rights. Labor <a href="https://dsgchicago.com/">lawyer Thomas Geoghegan</a> has suggested that the proposed Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a bill before Congress that would strengthen workers’ rights and weaken anti-union right-to-work laws, should be viewed as “a practical form of Black reparations.” He argued in <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/160530/labor-law-reform-racial-equality-protecting-right-organize-act">an article for The New Republic</a> that wealth redistribution through union membership is “more permanent and lasting than a check written out as Black reparations, however much deserved, and far more likely to get a return over time.”</p>
<p>While there is considerable disagreement about the profits employers should be able to make from the labor of their employees, there is little disagreement about the wrongness of practices like outright <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/">wage theft</a> – which today takes the form of employers not paying part or all promised wages or paying less than mandated minimum wage. Even those who rarely worry about employers making too much profit would for the most part likely agree that wage theft is wrong. Agreement on this matter takes us back to slavery, which might be considered the ultimate wage theft.</p>
<p>Addressing the ongoing legacy of slavery and systemic racism requires not only economic solutions but also improving labor relations and protecting workers against wage discrimination, disempowerment at work, and violations such as wage theft that <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/">disproportionately affect workers of color</a>.</p>
<p>Reparations that fail to pay attention to improving labor relations may not achieve economic equality. The reparations paid to Israel by Germany, for instance, have not helped to achieve economic equality – the Israeli economy is still, alongside the U.S.’s, among the <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2015/05/21/news/economy/worst-inequality-countries-oecd/">most unequal in the developed world</a>, with the richest 10% of each country’s population earning more than 15 times that of the poorest.</p>
<p>Simple monetary payouts are not, I believe, sufficient to solve the problem of racial inequality. Wage theft can again serve as the example here. While repaying stolen wages – as <a href="https://apnews.com/article/76a9403fe9dc4c2daf8a52c38e16284c">New York state did in 2018</a> by returning $35 million to workers – is commendable, repaying stolen wages does not in itself change the skewed relationships between employer and employee that enable wage theft in the first place. Greater empowerment of working people is needed to do that.</p>
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<h2>Benefiting others as well</h2>
<p>So while redistributing money can be part of the solution, it may not go far enough.</p>
<p>Tying reparations to the improvement of labor relations – which can happen through the empowerment of working people or the promotion of <a href="http://www.usworker.coop/home">worker-owned cooperatives</a> – would not only help those most affected by wealth and employment gaps, Black Americans, it would also <a href="http://www.co-opsnow.org">benefit others who have traditionally been discriminated against</a> in employment, such as women, immigrants and many other working people. </p>
<p>Improving labor relations would address systemic racial discrimination where it is often most destructive and painful: at work, where people spend the bulk of their waking hours, and where the economic well-being of families and by extension entire communities can be decided.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joerg Rieger is supporting the work of worker cooperatives, including the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development, which is hyperlinked at the end of the piece. He is not on any of their boards and he is not receiving any remuneration.</span></em></p>Rebalancing labor relations so that workers are empowered would be an effective way to address racial wealth disparities and atone for the legacy of slavery, a scholar argues.Joerg Rieger, Professor of Theology, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1627522021-06-30T12:14:54Z2021-06-30T12:14:54ZCritical race theory: What it is and what it isn’t<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408729/original/file-20210628-27-g6yv82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C2995%2C2043&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Lyndon Johnson signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which aimed to do away with racial discrimination in the law. But discrimination persisted.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CivilRightsAct5Things/2bb46ead55594550b57e184e605c75e8/photo?Query=(renditions.phototype:horizontal)%20AND%20civil%20rights%20U.S.%20Johnson&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=72&currentItemNo=10">AP file photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>U.S. Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana sent a <a href="https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017a-3f65-d283-a3fb-bf6f99470000">letter</a> to fellow Republicans on June 24, 2021, stating: “As Republicans, we reject the racial essentialism that critical race theory teaches … that our institutions are racist and need to be destroyed from the ground up.” </p>
<p>Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor and central figure in the development of critical race theory, said <a href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/2105/22/cnr.04.html">in a recent interview</a> that critical race theory “just says, let’s pay attention to what has happened in this country, and how what has happened in this country is continuing to create differential outcomes. … Critical Race Theory … is more patriotic than those who are opposed to it because … we believe in the promises of equality. And we know we can’t get there if we can’t confront and talk honestly about inequality.” </p>
<p>Rep. Banks’ account is demonstrably false and typical of many people publicly declaring their opposition to critical race theory. Crenshaw’s characterization, while true, does not detail its main features. So what is critical race theory and what brought it into existence? </p>
<p>The development of critical race theory by legal scholars such as <a href="https://www.law.nyu.edu/news/DERRICK_BELL_MEMORIAM">Derrick Bell</a> <a href="https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/kimberle-w-crenshaw">and Crenshaw</a> was largely a response to the slow legal progress and setbacks faced by African Americans from the end of the Civil War, in 1865, through the end of the civil rights era, in 1968. To understand critical race theory, you need to first understand the history of African American rights in the U.S.</p>
<h2>The history</h2>
<p>After 304 years of enslavement, then-former slaves gained equal protection under the law with passage of <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xiv">the 14th Amendment in 1868</a>. The 15th Amendment, in 1870, guaranteed voting rights for men regardless of race or “<a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xv">previous condition of servitude</a>.” </p>
<p>Between 1866 and 1877 – the period historians call “Radical Reconstruction” – African Americans began businesses, became involved in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Radical-Reconstruction">local governance and law enforcement and were elected to Congress</a>.</p>
<p>This early progress was subsequently diminished by state laws throughout the American South called “<a href="https://www.crf-usa.org/brown-v-board-50th-anniversary/southern-black-codes.html">Black Codes</a>,” which limited voting rights, property rights and compensation for work; made it illegal to be unemployed or not have documented proof of employment; and could subject prisoners to work without pay on behalf of the state. These legal rollbacks were worsened by the spread of “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Jim-Crow-law">Jim Crow</a>” laws throughout the country requiring segregation in almost all aspects of life.</p>
<p>Grassroots struggles for civil rights were constant in post-Civil War America. Some historians even refer to the period from the New Deal Era, which began in 1933, to the present as “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/91/4/1233/710119">The Long Civil Rights Movement</a>.” </p>
<p>The period stretching from <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a> in 1954, which found school segregation to be unconstitutional, to the <a href="https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/aboutfheo/history">Fair Housing Act of 1968</a>, which prohibited discrimination in housing, was especially productive. </p>
<p>The civil rights movement used practices such as civil disobedience, nonviolent protest, grassroots organizing and legal challenges to advance civil rights. The <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691152431/cold-war-civil-rights">U.S.’s need to improve its image abroad</a> during the Cold War importantly aided these advancements. The movement succeeded in banning explicit legal discrimination and segregation, promoted equal access to work and housing and extended federal protection of voting rights. </p>
<p>However, the movement that produced legal advances had no effect on the increasing <a href="https://heller.brandeis.edu/iere/pdfs/racial-wealth-equity/racial-wealth-gap/roots-widening-racial-wealth-gap.pdf">racial wealth gap</a> between Blacks and whites, while school and housing segregation persisted.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408735/original/file-20210628-27-17gz3en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young Black man on a skateboard pushes his son in a stroller on a sidewalk past blighted buildings in Baltimore." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408735/original/file-20210628-27-17gz3en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408735/original/file-20210628-27-17gz3en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408735/original/file-20210628-27-17gz3en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408735/original/file-20210628-27-17gz3en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408735/original/file-20210628-27-17gz3en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408735/original/file-20210628-27-17gz3en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408735/original/file-20210628-27-17gz3en.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The racial wealth gap between Blacks and whites has persisted. Here, Carde Cornish takes his son past blighted buildings in Baltimore. ‘Our race issues aren’t necessarily toward individuals who are white, but it is towards the system that keeps us all down, one, but keeps Black people disproportionally down a lot more than anybody else,’ he said.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/AmericaDividedAmericanMomentsPhotoGallery/7e9800eca46d437b8b82eb9a54614b67/photo?Query=(renditions.phototype:horizontal)%20AND%20Divided%20America%20Black&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=76&currentItemNo=37">AP Photo/Matt Rourke</a></span>
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<h2>What critical race theory is</h2>
<p>Critical race theory is a <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/a-lesson-on-critical-race-theory/">field of intellectual inquiry that demonstrates the legal codification of racism in America</a>. </p>
<p>Through the study of law and U.S. history, it attempts to reveal how racial oppression shaped the legal fabric of the U.S. Critical race theory is traditionally less concerned with how racism manifests itself in interactions with individuals and more concerned with how racism has been, and is, codified into the law. </p>
<p>There are a few beliefs commonly held by most critical race theorists. </p>
<p>First, <a href="https://youtu.be/GLcg6jyg3zk">race</a> is not fundamentally or essentially a matter of <a href="https://youtu.be/wuaSnYtvsdU">biology</a>, but rather a <a href="https://youtu.be/sA5MJqlmtZs">social construct</a>. While physical features and geographic origin play a part in making up what we think of as race, societies will often make up the rest of what we think of as race. For instance, 19th- and early-20th-century scientists and politicians frequently described people of color as intellectually or morally inferior, and used those false descriptions to justify oppression and discrimination. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who devised the term ‘critical race theory,’ explains what it is – and isn’t.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Second, these racial views have been codified into the nation’s foundational documents and legal system. For evidence of that, look no further than the “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/electoral-college-slavery-election-2020-race-and-ethnicity-government-and-politics-0ef97970a86255bf89c897838fcdb335">Three-Fifths Compromise</a>” <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/legal/docs2.html">in the Constitution</a>, whereby slaves, denied the right to vote, were nonetheless treated as part of the population for increasing congressional representation of slave-holding states. </p>
<p>Third, given the pervasiveness of racism in our legal system and institutions, racism is not aberrant, but a normal part of life. </p>
<p>Fourth, multiple elements, such as race and gender, can lead to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039">kinds of compounded discrimination that lack the civil rights protections</a> given to individual, protected categories. For example, Crenshaw has forcibly argued that there is a lack of legal protection for <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/413/142/1660699/">Black women as a category</a>. The courts have treated Black women as Black, or women, but not both in discrimination cases – despite the fact that they may have experienced discrimination because they were both. </p>
<p>These beliefs are shared by scholars in a variety of fields who explore the role of racism in areas such as education, health care and history. </p>
<p>Finally, critical race theorists are interested not just in studying the law and systems of racism, but in changing them for the better.</p>
<h2>What critical race theory is not</h2>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, giving his version of what critical race theory is.</span></figcaption>
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<p>“Critical race theory” has become a catch-all phrase among legislators attempting to ban a wide array of teaching practices concerning race. State legislators in <a href="https://legiscan.com/AZ/text/SB1532/id/2390101">Arizona</a>, <a href="https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Acts/FTPDocument?path=%2FACTS%2F2021R%2FPublic%2F&file=1100.pdf&ddBienniumSession=2021%2F2021R">Arkansas</a>, <a href="https://legislature.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sessioninfo/2021/legislation/H0377.pdf">Idaho</a>, <a href="https://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills211/hlrbillspdf/2087H.01I.pdf">Missouri</a>, <a href="https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewBillDocument/2021/1523/0/DRH30167-TC-22">North Carolina</a>, <a href="http://webserver1.lsb.state.ok.us/cf_pdf/2021-22%20ENR/hB/HB1775%20ENR.PDF">Oklahoma</a>, <a href="https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess124_2021-2022/prever/4325_20210504.htm">South Carolina</a>, <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/87R/billtext/html/HB03979E.htm">Texas</a> and <a href="http://www.wvlegislature.gov/Bill_Status/bills_text.cfm?billdoc=SB618%20INTR.htm&yr=2021&sesstype=RS&i=618">West Virginia</a> have introduced legislation banning what they believe to be critical race theory from schools. </p>
<p>But what is being banned in education, and what many media outlets and legislators are calling “critical race theory,” is far from it. Here are sections from identical legislation in <a href="http://webserver1.lsb.state.ok.us/cf_pdf/2021-22%20ENR/hB/HB1775%20ENR.PDF">Oklahoma</a> and <a href="https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=HB0580">Tennessee</a> that propose to ban the teaching of these concepts. As a <a href="https://www.memphis.edu/philosophy/people/bios/david-gray.php">philosopher of race and racism</a>, I can safely say that critical race theory does not assert the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(1) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;</p>
<p>(2) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously;</p>
<p>(3) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual’s race or sex;</p>
<p>(4) An individual’s moral character is determined by the individual’s race or sex;</p>
<p>(5) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;</p>
<p>(6) An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What most of these bills go on to do is limit the presentation of educational materials that suggest that Americans do not live in a meritocracy, that foundational elements of U.S. laws are racist, and that racism is a perpetual struggle from which America has not escaped.</p>
<p>Americans are used to viewing their history through a <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199541430.001.0001/acref-9780199541430-e-3300">triumphalist lens</a>, where we overcome hardships, defeat our British oppressors and create a country where all are free with equal access to opportunities. </p>
<p>Obviously, not all of that is true.</p>
<p>Critical race theory provides techniques to analyze U.S. history and legal institutions by acknowledging that racial problems do not go away when we leave them unaddressed.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand what’s going on in Washington.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-most">Sign up for The Conversation’s Politics Weekly</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Miguel Gray does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of race and racism explains what critical race theory is – and how many people get it wrong.David Miguel Gray, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Affiliate, Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of MemphisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1514592021-03-15T12:55:42Z2021-03-15T12:55:42ZWhat Alexander Hamilton’s deep connections to slavery reveal about the need for reparations today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388869/original/file-20210310-14-dhalie.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C11%2C3828%2C2144&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alexander Hamilton publicly opposed slavery, but research reveals he was also complicit in it.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://dmedmedia.disney.com/disney-plus/hamilton/images?">Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alexander Hamilton has received a resurgence of interest in recent years on the back of the smash <a href="https://hamiltonmusical.com/new-york/home/">Broadway musical</a> bearing his name.</p>
<p>But alongside tales of his role in the Revolutionary War and in forging the early United States, the spotlight has also fallen on a less savory aspect of his life: his apparent complicity in the institution of slavery. Despite being a founding member of the New York Manumission Society, which sought gradual emancipation of New York’s enslaved population, Hamilton benefited from slavery – both personally and by association.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A U.S. $10 bill" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388900/original/file-20210310-17-1lrlr2x.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anti-slavery, but not anti-wealth from slavery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/front-and-back-side-of-the-new-ten-dollar-bill-news-photo/144085127?adppopup=true">Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.nicolemaskiell.com/">historian of early America and Northern slavery</a>, I study how Colonial-era figures like Hamilton fit into America’s long history of enslavement, and <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/big-history/">how slavery fueled networks of power</a> that have lasted through the ages.</p>
<h2>A life entwined with slavery</h2>
<p>By Hamilton’s time in pre-revolutionary America, wealthy Northerners like him not only benefited from and propagated slavery, but enjoyed centuries of generational wealth built on the labor and lives of enslaved people. </p>
<p>Hamilton’s father-in-law had among the <a href="https://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-local/article/Churchill-Remove-slave-owner-Philip-Schuyler-s-8333274.php">largest slaveholdings in the North</a>. His <a href="http://www.schenectadyhistory.org/families/hmgfm/schuyler-1.html">mother-in-law</a> was the daughter of <a href="http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/mssc/vrm/h3succession.htm">Johannes Van Rensselaer</a> and <a href="https://www.friendsofclermont.org/the-livingstons">Angelica Livingston</a>, both members of two of the largest slaveholding families in the North.</p>
<p>Hamilton’s early years in the Caribbean were also marked by slavery. He was born on the British West Indies island of Nevis in the 1750s into a <a href="https://www.history.com/news/alexander-hamilton-slavery-facts">household that held slaves</a>. By age 11, he was working as a <a href="https://columbiaandslavery.columbia.edu/content/ambition-bondage-inquiry-alexander-hamilton-and-slavery">clerk</a> for Beekman & Cruger, a firm based in New York that traded enslaved people and other commodities – like food products and wood for shipbuilding – that fed the slave economies. </p>
<p>After Hamilton moved to New York in 1773, he remained closely tied to slaveholding elites. His sister-in-law’s <a href="https://parks.ny.gov/historic-sites/schuylermansion">house, where he was married</a>, was served and maintained by enslaved people. The <a href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-23ac-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99">house where he died</a>, belonging to his close friend William Bayard Jr., was also <a href="https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9RZN-NKJ?i=69&cc=1804228">staffed by enslaved people</a>. </p>
<h2>Views on reparations</h2>
<p>Today’s debate about <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/17/slavery-reparations-house-committee-debates-commission-study/6768395002/">reparations for slavery</a> dates back to Hamilton’s era. Except in the past, reparations were <a href="https://wwwnet-dos.state.nj.us/DOS_ArchivesDBPortal/RevWarDamages.aspx">actively sought out</a> by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-was-a-time-reparations-were-actually-paid-out-just-not-to-formerly-enslaved-people-152522">owners of enslaved people</a>.</p>
<p>Some Loyalists – those who opposed the American Revolution – received <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/niagarasettlers/revolutionary-war-claims/revolutionary-war-claims-1">compensation from England</a> for losses during the war.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/loyalists/book-of-negroes/Pages/introduction.aspx">“Book of Negroes”</a> was a register of over 3,000 escaped enslaved people who were evacuated from New York by the British as part of wartime commitments of freedom for service. It was compiled by British Commander Sir Guy Carleton as a safeguard against compensation claims by former slaveholders for the loss of what they considered their property. </p>
<p>Northern elite slaveholders sought and sometimes received reparations for <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Documents_Relating_to_the_Foreign_Relati/5a4TAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=schuyler+reparations+revolution&pg=PA973&printsec=frontcover">losses they experienced during the Revolutionary War</a>. Reparations ranged from restitution for the loss of enslaved people who escaped and gained freedom behind British lines to compensation for the expense of maintaining property (which included enslaved people) that were <a href="https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:50257767$2i">commandeered by Revolutionary forces</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/09/19/loyalist-property-confiscation">Hamilton himself represented</a> at least 44 Loyalists in lawsuits related to seizure or use of <a href="https://www.raabcollection.com/american-history-autographs/hamilton-trespass-act">property, which sometimes included enslaved people</a>, during the war. However, he objected to the <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-18-02-0317">return of runaways to their former enslavers</a>. </p>
<p>Those on the Patriot side – who supported the Revolution – also received restitution for enslaved people they lost during the war. The Rhode Island General Assembly <a href="https://www.sos.ri.gov/assets/downloads/documents/Black-Regiment.pdf">passed an act</a> in 1778 that said since enslaved people were “deemed the Property of their Owners … Compensation ought to be made to the Owners for the Loss of their Service.”</p>
<h2>What is owed?</h2>
<p>But what of compensation to the descendants of formerly enslaved people for their ancestors’ free labor? </p>
<p>Since the mid-20th century, in Western Europe and the U.S., reparations to oppressed people have taken <a href="https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/BASICP%7E1.PDF">several forms</a>: on an individual basis, within an institution or across an entire country. They’ve taken monetary and nonmonetary approaches, and pertained either to <a href="https://guides.library.umass.edu/reparations">slavery alone or to slavery and its aftereffects.</a></p>
<p>Some of these modern reparations have historical precedent as well, such as when Britain <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/work_community/transcripts/peters_harris.htm">compensated some Black Loyalists in the 1780s</a> for unpaid labor provided during the war. </p>
<p>There is also the American Civil War’s Field Order No. 15 issued by Union Gen. William Sherman in 1865. It is popularly remembered as promising “<a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/shermans-field-order-no-15">40 acres and a mule</a>” to formerly enslaved people freed along the coast of Georgia – though it was <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/the-truth-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule/">quickly overturned and did not originally include a mule</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Protesters hold signs calling for reparations for U.S. slavery" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388897/original/file-20210310-15-ct79wt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Georgetown University students demand a reparations fund in 2019 to atone for the school’s ties to slavery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/students-at-georgetown-university-protested-for-the-school-news-photo/1179276294?adppopup=true">Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In recent years, universities and other institutions with ties to slavery have <a href="https://www.wm.edu/sites/lemonproject/">undertaken initiatives</a> to uncover past atrocities, or <a href="https://gather.ptsem.edu/princeton-theological-seminary-announces-plan-to-repent-for-ties-to-slavery/">established scholarships</a> for descendants of enslaved people and other underrepresented groups. </p>
<p>Some cities, including <a href="https://www.cityofevanston.org/government/city-council/reparations">Evanston, Illinois</a>, and <a href="https://www.theroot.com/a-liberal-north-carolina-town-has-unanimously-voted-to-1844389058">Asheville</a> and <a href="https://durhamnc.gov/4092/Racial-Equity-Inclusion-Division">Durham</a> in North Carolina, are establishing their own approaches to reparations, and are working to define guidelines for the use and distribution of funds. </p>
<h2>Reparations through representation</h2>
<p>While <a href="https://guides.library.umass.edu/reparations">numerous organizations and government bodies</a> debate how reparations should take place in the modern era, “Hamilton” the musical provided real <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jun/07/broadway-race-diversity-hamilton-theater-stage">opportunities for actors of color</a> to advance in a historically underrepresented field.</p>
<p>Yet the show is not without its critics, specifically as it relates to the exclusion of <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Haunting-of-Lin-Manuel-Miranda/Ishmael-Reed/9781576879245">historical people of color</a> who populated the world of Alexander Hamilton. These include noted spies <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/hercules-mulligan">Cato</a> and <a href="https://www.biography.com/political-figure/james-armistead">James Fayette</a>, Black brigade fighter <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/people-african-american-history/colonel-tye-1753-1780/">Col. Tye</a> and antislavery activist William Hamilton, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23181809?seq=1">purported to have been Alexander’s son</a> with a free Black woman.</p>
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<p>Historical and contemporary representation in popular tales like “Hamilton” is increasingly being used as a step toward correcting the imbalances from slavery’s legacy. And the key questions posed within the musical’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gnypiKNaJE">Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story</a>” number are some of the same questions being asked within the reparations movement today. </p>
<p><em>This article was updated to clarify the nature of compensation sought and received by Loyalists and to ensure James Fayette is noted by his chosen name.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole S. Maskiell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Even Colonial-era abolitionists like Alexander Hamilton enjoyed centuries of generational wealth built from slavery.Nicole S. Maskiell, Assistant Professor of History Peter and Bonnie McCausland Fellow of History, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1546332021-02-18T13:44:58Z2021-02-18T13:44:58ZI interviewed 48 bankrupt Americans – here’s who they blame for their financial troubles<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384581/original/file-20210216-21-a5jhhz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C26%2C4354%2C2877&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Preventing home foreclosure is one reason middle-class people may declare Chapter 13 personal bankruptcy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com.mx/detail/foto/foreclosure-for-sale-sign-in-front-of-house-imagen-libre-de-derechos/157328426?adppopup=true">fstop123/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection had an 18% bankruptcy rate – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/10/capitol-insurrectionists-jenna-ryan-financial-problems/">twice as high as the national average</a> – according to a Washington Post investigation. A quarter of the rioters had been sued by a creditor, and 1 in 5 faced losing their home to foreclosure. </p>
<p>As a scholar of American political economy who focuses on <a href="https://twise.people.amherst.edu/">middle-class economic precarity</a>, I found this discovery unsurprising.</p>
<p>Since 2017 I have interviewed 48 Americans going through <a href="https://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/bankruptcy/bankruptcy-basics/chapter-13-bankruptcy-basics">Chapter 13 personal bankruptcy</a> – the kind of bankruptcy primarily filed by people making above-median income or trying to save a home from foreclosure – and watched about 500 bankruptcy court proceedings. When talking about their bankruptcies with my research participants, I also touched on their life histories and politics. </p>
<p>Most did not blame the government or America’s lack of social safety net for their troubles. Instead, they blamed the “entitlement” of others for ruining things for “hardworking Americans.” More often than not, I found, <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/42029701">the “entitled” Americans they had in mind were members of minority groups</a>.</p>
<h2>Who’s on welfare? Not me</h2>
<p>This kind of racialized blame was most explicit among white, middle-aged Trump supporters, who comprised about one-third of my research participants. </p>
<p>In 2017, I interviewed a white mechanic and father of three from Utah who had filed personal bankruptcy after taking out payday loans to get treatment for his suicidal teenage son. His insurance covered only group therapy, so he paid US$5,000 out of pocket to send his son to a specialized treatment facility. </p>
<p>After listening to his story, I asked the mechanic – I’ll call him Greg – what he saw as the biggest challenges facing America. </p>
<p>“What drives me crazy is these people saying they need reparations from the Civil War,” Greg said, asserting that slavery was generations past and criticizing the idea that anyone today could feel entitled to compensation. </p>
<p>“That’s the problem with today’s society, kids especially: entitlement,” he concluded. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384583/original/file-20210216-17-8f85zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Chapter 13 filing with calculator and gavel." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384583/original/file-20210216-17-8f85zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384583/original/file-20210216-17-8f85zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384583/original/file-20210216-17-8f85zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384583/original/file-20210216-17-8f85zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384583/original/file-20210216-17-8f85zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384583/original/file-20210216-17-8f85zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384583/original/file-20210216-17-8f85zd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A personal bankruptcy form.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com.mx/detail/foto/bankruptcy-petition-for-individuals-with-imagen-libre-de-derechos/1286514050?adppopup=true">JJ Gouin/iStock via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I heard a similar sentiment from “Amy,” a white retail manager and mother of two from eastern Massachusetts. </p>
<p>Speaking of the shoplifters at her job, she said, “I tend to find that it’s the young welfare moms who do” it most, asserting that “most of the time they’re of the Black and Puerto Rican ethnicity.” </p>
<p>Amy told me she had previously relied on rent subsidies and other social services. But she didn’t seem to consider herself a “welfare mom.” </p>
<p>“All the time that I’ve worked and accomplished stuff in my life … and I can’t get assistance when I need it,” she said.</p>
<p>While white Trump supporters were more likely to identify people of color as undeserving recipients of government welfare, they weren’t the only ones. Some people of color in bankruptcy also invoked racial stereotypes about people who manipulate the system to gain an unfair advantage, albeit in a subtler fashion.</p>
<p>“I’ve never been on welfare, I have no illegitimate kids, I’ve never collected some food stamps. Why don’t I get rewarded for behaving better?” said a woman I’ll call Jennifer, a Black administrative assistant who was filing personal bankruptcy to save her condo in central Massachusetts from foreclosure. </p>
<h2>All in the family</h2>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.uscourts.gov/statistics/table/bapcpa-2d/bankruptcy-abuse-prevention-and-consumer-protection-act-bapcpa/2019/12/31">250,000 people undergo Chapter 13 bankruptcy every year in the United States</a>. Scholars find that <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691162966/american-insecurity">debt is anxiety-provoking</a> but that undergoing bankruptcy does not seem to create awareness of middle-class precarity or calls for a more robust American safety net. </p>
<p>But personal bankruptcy is actually part of America’s patchwork public-private safety net. </p>
<p>Each year, Americans get rid of <a href="https://www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/bapcpa-report-2019">more than $100 billion</a> in debt by filing for bankruptcy because the federal government says they do not have to pay it back. Research shows this debt-relief system <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504219830674">disproportionately benefits white Americans</a>, contributing to the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/">increasing wealth gap between Black and white people</a>. </p>
<p>My research participants would likely bristle at the idea they were receiving a handout. They saw themselves as hardworking people who’d unfairly fallen on hard times while everyone else – particularly women, minorities and millennials – got an undeserved handout. </p>
<p>These narratives are part of something I call the Archie-Edith dynamic, referencing the 1970s sitcom “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1974.tb00353.x">All in the Family</a>.” The protagonist of the show was a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096516002882">“lovable bigot,” Archie Bunker</a>, who railed against social change and political correctness. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sOnTZipv03M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Archie Bunker is openly racist in this clip from ‘All in the Family.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I started looking into Archie Bunker after interviewing a white manager at a logistics company in eastern Massachusetts who actually called himself “Archie Bunker” in our conversation. This “Archie” partly attributed his bankruptcy to being overlooked at work because “females and minorities” were being promoted instead. </p>
<p>In the TV show “All in the Family,” Archie often succeeds in steamrolling the more moderate views of his wife, Edith. In real life, I found that the financially precarious Archie Bunker types often persuade others to go along with, or at least give credence to, their racialized explanation of economic strife. </p>
<p>For example, when I asked “Patty,” a white medical transcriptionist in bankruptcy, whether she felt social programs in the U.S. were abused, she said she hadn’t “been around people that have abused the system.” </p>
<p>But then “Patty” brought up her husband, a general contractor. </p>
<p>“He’s worked with some Hispanics who are not legal, but somehow they are able to pull off and collect money from the system,” she said, with agitation. “That’s a form of entitlement to me! You know?”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154633/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tess Wise does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Few middle-class Americans undergoing Chapter 13 bankruptcy blame the government. They portray themselves as hardworking victims and resent others for taking more than their fair share.Tess Wise, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1462732020-09-24T12:24:58Z2020-09-24T12:24:58ZHomes in Black and Latino neighborhoods still undervalued 50 years after US banned using race in real estate appraisals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359615/original/file-20200923-20-soexi9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C3847%2C2492&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Real estate prices are still related to a neighborhood's racial composition, despite laws prohibiting the explicit consideration of race in appraisals. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Racial inequality in home values is greater today than it was 40 years ago, with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y42pKiIIJBU">homes in white neighborhoods appreciating $200,000</a> more since 1980 than comparable homes in similar communities of color. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spaa033">new research on home appraisals</a> shows neighborhood racial composition still drives unequal home values, despite laws that forbid real estate professionals from explicitly using race when evaluating a property’s worth. Published in the journal <a href="https://academic.oup.com/socpro">Social Problems</a>, our study finds this growing inequality results from both historical policies and contemporary practices. </p>
<p>In the 1930s, the federal government institutionalized a process for evaluating how much a property was worth. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/28/redlining-was-banned-50-years-ago-its-still-hurting-minorities-today/">Often called redlining</a>, this process used neighborhood racial and socioeconomic composition to determine home values. Homes in white communities were deemed more valuable than identical dwellings in communities of color.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y42pKiIIJBU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Redlining has been illegal for 43 years – but it is still depressing the value of Black and Latino neighborhoods.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Legislative action in the late 1960s and 1970s prohibited this practice. But the law allowed appraisers to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spaa033">use past sale prices to determine home values</a>. Our research shows how using old, race-based sale prices ensured appraisers continued to define homes in white neighborhoods as worth more than similar homes in Black and Latino communities. Racism was baked into the system.</p>
<p>Real estate professionals compound these historical inequalities by assuming communities of color <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649218755178">are undesirable</a>, even when real estate demand suggests otherwise.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>For most U.S. families, their home is their greatest asset. As their home appreciates in value, <a href="https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/what-we-get-wrong.pdf">their wealth increases</a>, enabling them to fund their retirement, their children’s college educations or unexpected expenses like large medical bills.</p>
<p>The racial inequality in home values and appreciation rates has <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2012/12/10/how-home-ownership-keeps-blacks-poorer-than-whites/#4e3d27cc4cce">created a large and increasing racial wealth gap</a>. On average, U.S. <a href="https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2020/09/21/housing-cost-residential-segregation-unfair-advantages-whites-and-unfair-punishment">white families have 20 times more wealth</a> than families of color. Our research identifies increasing racial inequality in home values as a key reason this gap persists and has doubled since 1980. </p>
<p>These growing gaps don’t affect just homeowners. They also affect renters. Since 1980, real estate prices have risen <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/06/us-house-prices-are-going-to-rise-at-twice-the-speed-of-inflation-and-pay-reuters-poll.html">far faster than inflation</a>, <a href="https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/places-where-pay-raises-dramatically-trail-home-price-gains/">incomes</a> and prices of <a href="https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/four-ways-todays-high-home-prices-affect-larger-economy">consumer goods like food or clothing</a>. As a result, housing costs now make up a larger proportion of residents’ expenses. </p>
<p>Families who have historically owned homes in white neighborhoods can afford these increased costs because their appreciating home values have expanded their relative wealth. But for everyone else, high housing costs are a burden. For many renters, high housing costs combined with stagnant wages have created an acute and worsening <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/insider/housing-evictions.html">affordable housing crisis</a>. Many struggle to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-evictions-superspreader.html">remain housed</a> – including during the pandemic – and very few can save enough to transition into home ownership.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young girl holds a bilingual sign reading 'no evictions/no desalojos' while being comforted by her sister" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359628/original/file-20200923-24-1d2i7yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 1 demand a moratorium on evictions during the pandemic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/aleandra-lara-stands-between-her-sister-julmeiris-lara-and-news-photo/1270122231?adppopup=true">Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finally, because the property taxes that pay for physical infrastructure, public services and other amenities are determined based on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/opinion/fair-housing-act-trump.html">real estate values</a>, the higher home values in white neighborhoods enable <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2019/07/15/469838/racial-disparities-home-appreciation/">better-funded schools</a>, libraries, parks and utilities – even <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0131-highsmith-flint-water-crisis-20160131-story.html">essential services like clean water</a>. </p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>Researchers are still investigating which governmental policies and industry incentives might eliminate <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/devaluation-of-assets-in-black-neighborhoods/">ongoing and severe inequalities</a> across the U.S. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418781774">housing market</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">Reparations for those hurt by racist federal housing policies</a> and <a href="https://financialservices.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=403835">new legal standards for property appraising</a> are proposals that could make important first steps toward equity. But fully addressing racism in real estate will require reshaping the very foundations of the U.S. housing market.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146273/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research shows homes in white areas have appreciated $200,000 more since 1980 than similar homes in nonwhite areas – a result of both old racist housing policies and modern real estate practices.Junia Howell, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of PittsburghElizabeth Korver-Glenn, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of New MexicoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1314352020-03-20T12:12:31Z2020-03-20T12:12:31ZWe are entering a recession – but what did we learn from the last one?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315322/original/file-20200213-11044-1kmgqeu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Families recovered from the Great Depression much more quickly than the Great Recession.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/great-depression?agreements=pa:77130&phrase=great%20depression&sort=best#license">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the coronavirus <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/healthcare-facilities/prevent-spread-in-long-term-care-facilities.html">continues to spread around the world</a>, it is abundantly clear that <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard/2020/03/08/covid-19-and-the-economy-as-seen-from-a-technology-investment-conference/#709bcd214fc7">the global economy is entering a recession</a> – the first we’ve seen since 2008.</p>
<p><a href="https://money.cnn.com/2014/08/27/news/economy/ben-bernanke-great-depression/index.html">Some officials have compared</a> the last period of economic decline – also know as the Great Recession – to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=tGiktQc6yWMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Great+Depression+best+scholar+treatment&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiVluLug6foAhUSVN8KHUzZDBEQ6AEwA3oECAQQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">the Depression</a>, which began in 1929. </p>
<p>Yet it is clear that these two downturns differed not only in severity but also in the consequences they had for inequality in the United States.</p>
<p>Though the Depression was <a href="https://money.cnn.com/news/storysupplement/economy/recession_depression/">bigger and longer than the Great Recession</a>, the decades following the Great Depression substantially reduced the wealth of the rich and improved the economic security of many workers. In contrast, the Great Recession exacerbated both income and wealth inequality.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7758/9781610447508">Some scholars</a> have attributed this phenomenon to a weakened labor movement, fewer worker protections and a radicalized political right wing.</p>
<p>In our view, this account misses the dominance of Wall Street and the financial sector and overlooks its fundamental role in generating economic disparities.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.kenhoulin.info">We are experts</a> in <a href="http://www.megantobiasneely.com">income inequality</a>, and our new book, “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/divested-9780190638313">Divested: Inequality in the Age of Finance</a>,” argues that inequality from the Recession has a lot to do with how the government designed its response.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315323/original/file-20200213-10995-wgcxbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315323/original/file-20200213-10995-wgcxbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315323/original/file-20200213-10995-wgcxbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315323/original/file-20200213-10995-wgcxbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315323/original/file-20200213-10995-wgcxbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315323/original/file-20200213-10995-wgcxbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315323/original/file-20200213-10995-wgcxbt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Great Recession exacerbated a persistent wealth gap in the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/great-recession?agreements=pa:77130&phrase=Great%20Recession&sort=best#license">Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Depression</h2>
<p>Reforms during the Great Depression restructured the financial system by restricting banks from risky investment, Wall Street from gambling with household savings and lenders from charging high or unpredictable interests.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/new-deal">The New Deal</a>, a series of government programs created after the Great Depression, took a bottom-up approach and brought governmental resources directly to unemployed workers. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the regulatory policies since the financial crisis that began in 2008 were largely designed to restore a financial order that, for decades, has been channeling resources from the rest of the economy to the top.</p>
<p>In other words, the recent recovery was largely focused on finance. Governmental stimuli, particularly a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/business/economy/10fed.html">mass injection of credit</a>, first went to banks and large corporations, in the hope that the credit eventually would trickle down to families in need.</p>
<p>The conventional wisdom was that banks knew how to put the credit into best use. And so, to stimulate economic growth, the Federal Reserve increased the supply of money to banks <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-federal-reserve-stimulus-20170710-htmlstory.html">by purchasing treasury and mortgage-backed securities</a>.</p>
<p>But the stimulus didn’t work the way the government intended. The banks prioritized their own interests over those of the public. Instead of lending the money out to homebuyers and small businesses at historically low interest rates, they deposited the funds and waited for interest rates to rise.</p>
<p>Similarly, corporations did not use the easy credit to increase wages or create jobs. Rather, they borrowed to <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/economics-stock-buybacks/">buy their own stock</a> and channeled earnings to top executives and shareholders.</p>
<p>As a result, the “banks and corporations first” principle created a highly unequal recovery.</p>
<h2>Who lost in 2009?</h2>
<p>The financial crisis wiped out almost three-quarters of financial sector profits, but the sector had fully recovered by mid-2009, as we covered in our book.</p>
<p>Its profits continued to grow in the following years. By 2017, the sector made 80% more than before the financial crisis. Profit growth was much slower in the nonfinancial sector.</p>
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<p>Companies outside of the financial sector were more profitable because they had fewer employees and lower wage costs. Payroll expenses dropped 4% during the recession and remained low during the recovery.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/business/daily-stock-market-activity.html?searchResultPosition=2">The stock market fully recovered from the crisis in 2013</a>, a year when the unemployment rate was as high as 8% and the single-family mortgage delinquency still hovered above 10%. </p>
<p>Median household wealth, in the meantime, had yet to recoup from the nosedive during the Great Recession.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-americans-economic-setbacks-from-the-great-recession-are-ongoing-and-could-be-repeated-109612">racial wealth gap only widened</a>, as well. While the median household wealth of all households dropped around 25% after the burst of real estate bubble, white households recovered at a much faster pace.</p>
<p>By 2016, black households had about <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/divested-9780190638313">30% less wealth than before the crash</a>, compared to 14% for white families.</p>
<p>As the government debates a stimulus package, officials can either decide to continue the “trickle-down” approach to first protect banks, corporations and their investors with monetary stimuli.</p>
<p>Or, they can learn from the New Deal and bring governmental support directly to the most fragile communities and families.</p>
<p>[<em>Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=upper-coronavirus-facts">Sign up for our newsletter.</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131435/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ken-Hou Lin receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Institute for New Economic Thinking. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Megan Neely does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While the Great Depression reduced inequality and closed the racial wealth gap, the Great Recession of 2009 did the opposite.Ken-Hou Lin, Associate Professor of Sociology, The University of Texas at AustinMegan Neely, Postdoctoral Researcher, Stanford UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1231382019-09-17T12:48:56Z2019-09-17T12:48:56ZReparations are essential to eliminating the substantial wealth gap between black and white Americans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292683/original/file-20190916-19068-igbrok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are among the 2020 presidential hopefuls in favor of reparations. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Election-2020-Debate/7d9da05d13d740eeaeb36b1586b95984/134/0">AP Photo/David J. Phillip</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Four hundred years ago, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html">America’s first enslaved Africans arrived</a> in Virginia. </p>
<p>Centuries later, black Americans have managed to accumulate some wealth, but it still pales in comparison to that of whites. This racial wealth gap is a result not only of the horrors of slavery but also policies – such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/jim-crow-18120">Jim Crow laws</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-wealth-equality-remains-out-of-reach-for-black-americans-111483">redlining</a> and <a href="https://www.naacp.org/criminal-justice-fact-sheet/">modern-day mass incarceration</a> – that followed. </p>
<p>The average white family with at least one working adult over 25 years old owned more than <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality">nine times as much total wealth</a> as a black one in 2016. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xhht0KcAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholar of wealth inequality</a> and its causes, I believe the promise of equal opportunity for all remains unfulfilled as long as this massive gulf persists. A <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/11/20690710/pete-buttigieg-douglass-plan-systemic-racism-black-voters">variety of proposals have been suggested</a> by Democratic candidates for president and others to close this gap, such as eliminating housing discrimination and making college free for all. </p>
<p>Two colleagues and I <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/473117/simulating-progressive-proposals-affect-racial-wealth-gap/">created an economic simulator</a> to model the impact of five of the most ambitious proposals. Our results show why reparations that directly target African Americans are likely the only way to eliminate it. </p>
<h2>Why wealth matters</h2>
<p>This wealth gap matters a lot because it means African Americans have far fewer opportunities to get ahead and less economic security. </p>
<p>Wealth is what allows families to start a business, send their children to college, switch jobs when new opportunities arise, buy a house and retire comfortably. It’s also what helps people get through unexpected financial hits, such as a layoff, medical emergency or simply a leaky roof. </p>
<p>Although whites generally have more wealth than every other racial and ethnic group, the gap between them and African Americans is particularly large. </p>
<p>For example, the average white family had <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality/">US$935,584 in wealth in 2016</a>, compared with $102,477 for blacks and <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/12/05/461823/job-not-enough/">$176,635 for Latino households</a>. </p>
<p><iframe id="Ptmg4" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Ptmg4/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Importantly, this gap between African Americans and whites persists <a href="https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/one-time-pubs/color-of-wealth.aspx">even when we account for education</a>. And the <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality/">gap worsens with age</a>. African Americans are much worse prepared for retirement, for instance, than whites are.</p>
<h2>Five proposals to reduce the gap</h2>
<p>My colleagues <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/about/staff/solomon-danyelle/bio/">Danyelle Solomon</a>, <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/about/staff/maxwell-connor/bio/">Connor Maxwell</a> and I put together a <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/473117/simulating-progressive-proposals-affect-racial-wealth-gap/">simulation model</a> to examine the effectiveness of five proposals offered by <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/11/20690710/pete-buttigieg-douglass-plan-systemic-racism-black-voters">Democratic candidates</a> and <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/ext/2016/01/28/130136/improving-americans-retirement-outcomes-through-the-national-savings-plan/">progressive experts</a> to close the racial wealth gap. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>The creation of “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cory-booker-wants-a-baby-bond-for-every-us-child-would-it-work/2019/08/15/35003f16-b88b-11e9-bad6-609f75bfd97f_story.html">baby bonds</a>,” which involve the government opening an interest-bearing account for every child born in the U.S. and adding new funds annually until the age of 18</p></li>
<li><p>Elimination of housing segregation and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/06/politics/kamala-harris-black-homeownership-plan-racial-wealth-gap/index.html">mortgage market discrimination</a> such as redlining</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/4/22/18509196/elizabeth-warren-debt-free-college">Making college tuition free</a> for everyone and eliminating existing student debt</p></li>
<li><p>Creating universal <a href="https://www.edd.ca.gov/employers/calsavers.htm">retirement savings plans</a> that are low cost and low risk, which would disproportionately benefit families of color </p></li>
<li><p>Effective enforcement of <a href="https://consumerfed.org/press_release/consumer-advocates-from-around-the-nation-to-meet-today-congress-to-urge-stronger-consumer-financial-protections/">consumer finance regulations</a> to eliminate predatory interest rates and fees, and ensure <a href="https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/wall-street/?mkwid=so1a1I3xB%7Cpcrid%7C367767426195%7Cpkw%7Celizabeth%20warren%7Cpmt%7Cp%7Cpdv%7Cc%7Cslid%7C%7Cproduct%7C%7Cpgrid%7C71352540229%7Cptaid%7Ckwd-171777258%7C&pgrid=71352540229&ptaid=kwd-171777258&source=WFP2019-LB-GS-NAT&subsource=71352540229-elizabeth%20warren-p-367767426195&refcode=WFP2019-LB-GS-NAT&refcode2=71352540229-elizabeth%20warren-p-367767426195&utm_source=Google&utm_campaign=WFP2019-LB-GS-NAT&utm_term=elizabeth%20warren-367767426195&utm_medium=Search&gclid=CjwKCAjw5fzrBRASEiwAD2OSV9YLfobSgW2yMqkCaSQ9Z_kxMp_uvmT0c18_N1dG3Hf-qFB1z0u6sBoCzcYQAvD_BwE">equal access to affordable</a> financial products. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>We modeled how each plan would affect the earnings and savings of people starting out their careers in 2020, at age 25, until retirement 40 years later. Importantly, we used the broadest possible versions of these proposals in our model, which meant that the impact on the racial wealth gap would likely be larger than the actual plans put forth by the politicians. </p>
<p>We found that baby bonds led to the single largest effect. They would close 24% of the gap by the time people retire. The other policies had much more modest effects, with effective financial regulation having the smallest impact. It would only shrink the gap by 1.5%. </p>
<p>Even if all five proposals were enacted next year, blacks would still possess just 52% of the wealth owned by whites by by 2060, leaving a gap of more than $1 million.</p>
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<h2>A 400-year head start</h2>
<p>The proposals we simulated are progressive and disproportionately help African Americans, and there are good reasons to pursue each policy to help close the black-white wealth gap. </p>
<p>But every one of them also offers assistance to white families, who have a 400-year head start building wealth in America. Our research suggests to eliminate the gap altogether requires <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/business/economy/reparations-slavery.html">pursuing policies</a> that exclusively target African Americans and help them build up enough wealth to match that of whites. </p>
<p>In other words, some form of reparations – whether in the form of lump sum transfers or <a href="http://cas2.umkc.edu/ECON/economics/faculty/Forstater/688/Reading/Black%20Political%20Economy/EconomicsReparations.pdf">creating funds</a> that help blacks buy homes or start a business – needs to be part of the debate. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christian Weller is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, which published the simulation discussed in this article. </span></em></p>Several presidential hopefuls have offered proposals to close the racial wealth gap, from baby bonds to reparations. A simulation suggests policies short of direct aid to blacks won’t do the trick.Christian Weller, Professor of Public Policy and Public Affairs, UMass BostonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1141242019-04-24T10:46:15Z2019-04-24T10:46:15ZThe case for African American reparations, explained<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270556/original/file-20190423-175514-7mhri4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=92%2C92%2C3137%2C1595&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A racial wealth gap is persisting after centuries enslavement and systemic discrimination. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/white-miniature-man-standing-on-bar-1114748351?src=nI1DMmrIZnKSKoH4u3ekHg-1-26">Hyejin Kang/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the first time, most major <a href="https://www.axios.com/reparations-2020-presidential-candidates-02cce9ac-082e-4777-955b-33c8196e64c0.html">Democratic presidential contenders</a> are talking about whether the U.S. government should consider <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">paying reparations</a> to the descendants of African Americans who were enslaved and suffered from large-scale racial discrimination.</p>
<p>At least three of these candidates, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7n20uRuRtg">Sen. Cory Booker</a> of New Jersey, former San Antonio Mayor <a href="https://theweek.com/speedreads/834796/2020-presidential-hopeful-julian-castro-makes-clear-moral-case-slavery-reparations">Julián Castro</a> and <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/18/elizabeth-warren-reparations-1226589">Sen. Elizabeth Warren</a> of Massachusetts, support <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/40/text">the creation of a commission</a> that would study the impact of slavery and the <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312302412">Jim Crow discrimination</a> against black Americans that continued after emancipation. The commission would make recommendations about how to <a href="https://www.booker.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=901">compensate black Americans for those injustices</a>.</p>
<p>The question of whether the U.S. government should compensate the descendants of enslaved and oppressed African Americans has never gotten this much attention. Even former President <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/ta-nehisi-coates-obama-transcript-ii/511133/">Barack Obama</a> deflected this concept while he was in the White House. </p>
<p>As a sociologist who has <a href="https://sociology.tamu.edu/feagin-joe/">researched systemic racism</a> and <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/hblj20&div=6&id=&page=">reparations</a> for decades, I can explain why this issue appears to be gaining traction.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K7n20uRuRtg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Cory Booker explained in an interview with ‘The Root’ why he supports reparations for African Americans.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Long history</h2>
<p>A major justification for the government paying reparations <a href="http://ncobra.org">directly to individuals</a> or establishing other forms of compensation, such as <a href="http://ncobra.org">investment in majority-black communities,</a> lies in the harsh reality of the labor stolen from millions of enslaved people from 1619 to 1865. That justification extends to many more millions severely oppressed for the next century and a half – whether through racist segregation laws or informal discrimination authorities did nothing to stop.</p>
<p>Since 1619, when the first enslaved Africans were taken to <a href="https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/african-americans-at-jamestown.htm">Jamestown, Virginia</a>, the oppression of black people by whites has been embedded in America’s economic, political, educational and other institutions. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270327/original/file-20190423-15233-15a514b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270327/original/file-20190423-15233-15a514b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270327/original/file-20190423-15233-15a514b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270327/original/file-20190423-15233-15a514b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270327/original/file-20190423-15233-15a514b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270327/original/file-20190423-15233-15a514b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270327/original/file-20190423-15233-15a514b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270327/original/file-20190423-15233-15a514b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 18th-century newspaper ad announcing the sale of ‘250 fine healthy negroes.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Slavery-Auction-Advertisement/d8e6b371325646b38b8b35719fcb6177/84/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Slavery lasted for nearly 250 years, about 60% of U.S. history, including Colonial times. Counting the nearly century-long <a href="https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm">Jim Crow segregation of African Americans</a>, officially sanctioned racial oppression encompassed more than 80% of U.S. history to date. </p>
<p>The political scientist <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12151">Thomas Craemer</a> calculated the hours worked by enslaved black workers between 1776 and the official end of slavery. He estimates this uncompensated labor totaled between US$5.9 and $14.2 trillion in current dollars.</p>
<p>As I detailed in my book “<a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781351388603">Racist America</a>,” trillions more in wealth was effectively stolen from black Americans not just because of enslavement prior to 1776 but during the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Jim_Crow_s_Legacy.html?id=huyIoAEACAAJ">Jim Crow era</a> through <a href="https://prospect.org/article/black-workers-remember">employment discrimination</a> and decades of <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469622071/dispossession/">bureaucratic finagling</a> that caused them to lose farmland.</p>
<p>I estimate that the total cost to black Americans over four centuries of slavery, Jim Crow laws and more contemporary discrimination to be in the <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781351388603">$10-$20 trillion range</a>. That’s potentially as big as the nation’s <a href="https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-gdp-5-latest-statistics-and-how-to-use-them-3306041">annual economic output</a>.</p>
<h2>Wealth accumulation</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.thehoya.com/students-endorse-reconciliation-fee-gu272-referendum/">Georgetown University students</a> recently voted in favor of a new “reconciliation fee” they would pay that would fund reparations to the descendants of 272 enslaved people sold in the 19th century to pay off the school’s debts. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thehoya.com/viewpoint-vote-no-gu272-referendum/">Opponents of this reparations</a> effort, which would require support from the university’s board to take effect, voiced two common arguments against it: Slavery happened too long ago and not all white Americans have slave-owning ancestors. <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/hblj20&div=6&id=&page=">Similar arguments are now commonplace</a>.</p>
<p>The assumption that those debts are owed by and to people now deceased ignores all the money, property and other wealth white Americans alive today inherited from their forebears, including slave owners and many others responsible for depriving blacks of economic and educational opportunities through discrimination. The latter included white overseers, sheriffs and merchants. </p>
<p>Most whites can trace their roots back at least three generations, with many going back <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781134474691">between four and 20 generations</a>. That’s longer than most African Americans have had, at least officially, fairly equal <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality/">socioeconomic opportunities</a> – at most for two generations.</p>
<p>This argument also ignores the benefits white people reaped from the large-scale discrimination suffered by African Americans whose <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781134474691">labor was underpaid or stolen</a> for most of U.S. history. Millions of people, <a href="https://blogs.library.duke.edu/magazine/2012/01/12/in-their-own-words/">many still alive</a>, endured brutal violence and economic discrimination under legal segregation.</p>
<p>What’s more, <a href="http://www.nahbclassic.org/generic.aspx?sectionID=734&genericContentID=42728">housing equity</a> – what homeowners possess after subtracting their mortgages – is a main repository of U.S. family wealth. Philosopher <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=j3R-8PG4ZXYC&hl=en&oi=sra">Jonathan Kaplan</a> and political scientist <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Jl1GAuQAAAAJ">Andrew Valls</a> argue that the decades-long <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/KAPHDA">housing discrimination</a> that stopped most African Americans from building significant home equity justifies the payment of major reparations. </p>
<p>White-implemented government home-ownership programs after World War II, including <a href="https://books.wwnorton.com/books/When-Affirmative-Action-Was-White/">mortgage programs for veterans</a>, discriminated on a large scale against blacks. These government programs enabled many millions of white families to move into the middle class. The children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of these whites have since <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sox086">inherited wealth</a> due to the ensuing growth in the value of that housing.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270275/original/file-20190422-28113-1vr48mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270275/original/file-20190422-28113-1vr48mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270275/original/file-20190422-28113-1vr48mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270275/original/file-20190422-28113-1vr48mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270275/original/file-20190422-28113-1vr48mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270275/original/file-20190422-28113-1vr48mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270275/original/file-20190422-28113-1vr48mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270275/original/file-20190422-28113-1vr48mf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Blacks couldn’t buy homes after World War II in upwardly mobile communities like Levittown, Pennsylvania.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-AP-A-PA-USA-APHS266845-Civil-Rights-Int-/fabfcf9e9abd4ae194c7e20c11618b4b/3/0">AP Photo/Bill Ingraham</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In contrast, black families usually endured <a href="https://books.wwnorton.com/books/When-Affirmative-Action-Was-White">housing discrimination after World War II</a>. They were unable to obtain mortgages and were barred by <a href="http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1920s1948-Restrictive-Covenants.html">restrictive covenants</a> from buying homes in white areas where housing values rose.</p>
<p>Today’s wealth gap between white and black Americans is substantially the result of government-supported housing and employment discrimination. The median net worth of black families is less than <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/recent-trends-in-wealth-holding-by-race-and-ethnicity-evidence-from-the-survey-of-consumer-finances-20170927.htm">15% of that of white families</a>, according to the Federal Reserve. </p>
<p><iframe id="GhcbJ" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/GhcbJ/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Congress responds</h2>
<p>Lawmakers have been reckoning with this question to some degree for two decades. <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/21/house-democrats-debate-reparations-1283460">Members of the House</a> have introduced the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/40/text">Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act</a> in every Congress since 1989, albeit without much support. </p>
<p>Both chambers of Congress passed resolutions that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/21/reparations-slavery-2020-democratic-candidates">officially apologized for African American enslavement</a> and <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/hres194/text">centuries of black oppression</a>, beginning with the House in 2008. </p>
<p>A year later, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/senate-concurrent-resolution/26/text">the Senate version</a> included a disclaimer suggesting a lack of interest in paying reparations: “Nothing in this resolution (A) authorizes or supports any claim against the United States or (B) serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States.”</p>
<p>This reluctance seems puzzling in light of the fact that the U.S. government successfully pressured postwar German governments to pay Holocaust survivors $927 million – worth $8.84 billion today – in compensation as part of the <a href="http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/collections/personalsites/Israel-Germany/Division-of-Germany/Pages/Reparations-Agreement.aspx">1952 Luxembourg Agreement</a>.</p>
<p>And after the passage of a 1998 reparations law, the U.S. government also modestly compensated some <a href="https://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/history/civilact.html">82,000 Japanese Americans</a> who were discriminatorily incarcerated as “enemy aliens” during World War II with $20,000 payments made to each surviving person who had been detained.</p>
<p>To be sure, broad public support for reparations has yet to materialize outside Congress either. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.dataforprogress.org/polling-the-left-agenda">latest polling</a> indicates that <a href="http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/misc/usapolls/us160502/Point%20Taken/Reparations/Exclusive%20Point%20Taken-Marist%20Poll_Reparations%20Banner%201_May%202016.pdf#page=4">most Americans still oppose paying reparations</a> that would compensate African Americans for the centuries of <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2105%2FAJPH.2016.303251">life-shortening racial discrimination</a> and exploitation they and their ancestors endured.</p>
<h2>More diversity</h2>
<p>Perhaps the best explanation for why Democrats angling for the presidency increasingly support reparations is simple. </p>
<p>It’s their base. </p>
<p>Nearly half of voters who <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-2018-primaries-project-the-demographics-of-primary-voters/">cast ballots in 2016 Democratic primaries</a> were nonwhite, and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/08/for-the-fifth-time-in-a-row-the-new-congress-is-the-most-racially-and-ethnically-diverse-ever/">Congress is more racially and ethnically diverse</a> than ever before.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270334/original/file-20190423-15206-sw5oaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270334/original/file-20190423-15206-sw5oaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270334/original/file-20190423-15206-sw5oaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270334/original/file-20190423-15206-sw5oaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270334/original/file-20190423-15206-sw5oaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270334/original/file-20190423-15206-sw5oaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270334/original/file-20190423-15206-sw5oaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270334/original/file-20190423-15206-sw5oaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Congressional Black Caucus during a January 2019 swearing-in ceremony that included a record 55 members.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/New-Congress/78a70bec78aa4447b199d14e1e4a2ec8/34/0">AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The growing importance of black, Latino and Asian American voters and leaders reflects the dramatic demographic changes underway in the U.S. <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Racist-America-Roots-Current-Realities-and-Future-Reparations-4th-Edition/Feagin-Ducey/p/book/9781138096042">Americans of color</a> are now a majority in California, Texas, Hawaii, New Mexico and the District of Columbia. </p>
<p>By the 2020s, <a href="http://www.africanamerica.org/topic/rise-of-latino-population-blurs-us-racial-lines">whites are likely to become a minority</a> in Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, New York and New Jersey. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/">By the 2040s</a> whites will likely be a minority overall, and soon thereafter most voters will be people of color.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joe R. Feagin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thanks to demographic and political changes, Democratic contenders are addressing this issue for the first time.Joe R. Feagin, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.