Tackling The Racial Wealth Gap: William Darity's Plan For Reparations

A newly energized push for reparations for descendants of enslaved people. We dig into specific proposals and examples of reparations already in place.

William Darity, professor of public policy, African and African American studies and economics and director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. Co-author of “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century." (@SandyDarity)

Carlous Hall, Rosewood Family Scholarship recipient. His grandmother Mary Hall Daniels was the oldest living Rosewood Massacre survivor, and died in May 2018.

Brookings: "Black reparations and the racial wealth gap" — "... Data from the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances (the most recent available) indicate that Black Americans possess 2.6 percent of the nation’s wealth while constituting 13 percent of the population."

Roosevelt Institute: "Resurrecting the Promise of 40 Acres: The Imperative of Reparations for Black Americans" — "Today’s black-white wealth gap originated with the unfulfilled promise of 40 acres in 1865."

The Economist: "The economics of reparations" — "In a survey last year 29% of Americans supported the idea that the government should make cash payments to black Americans who were descendants of slaves—twice the share that agreed in the early 2000s."

Washington Post: "After reparations" — "Ever since Morgan Carter was a little girl, her grandmother would tell her a story. It was about an old mill town, deep in the backwoods of north Florida — a place where black people did well for themselves."

Gainesville.com: "Longest-living Rosewood survivor: ‘I’m not angry’" — "For much of her life, Mary Hall Daniels was a spokesperson for a tragic event she could barely remember."

The Atlantic: "The Case for Reparations" — "Clyde Ross was born in 1923, the seventh of 13 children, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, the home of the blues."

NPR: "'From Here to Equality' Author Makes A Case, And A Plan, For Reparations" — "When slavery ended, the disenfranchisement of African Americans did not. Discrimination continued in jobs, housing, education — barriers that have contributed to the staggering economic inequality that persists in the country today."