At Reparation Generation, we seek to create a more perfect union to benefit every American. To achieve this, we must first face the truth: systemic racism harms all of us, and it is the direct cause of today’s wealth disparities between Black and White Americans. Research and stories alike have shown us how our nation systematically denied Black Americans equal opportunities to achieve homeownership, education, and entrepreneurship, among many other rights and pursuits—with consequences that persist today. While formal government reparations are the end goal, knowing our history compels us to act now to promote reconciliation and make the country we love more just, fair, and inclusive.
Our Detroit demonstration project did more than put wealth-building reparative transfers in the hands of people purchasing a primary home: it showed that Black Americans can reliably trace their ancestry to people formerly enslaved in our nation. Participants in our program easily identified and provided proof of their lineage using common genealogy research tools available today. The discovery of a stolen identity facilitates healing for the individual and begins the process of repairing our communities economically and emotionally. With our initiatives, we are demonstrating that reparations are both feasible to administer and, ultimately, capable of building long-term wealth for Black Americans and closing the wealth gap resulting from generations of systemic racism. Over time, we expect that our pursuit of justice and equity will drive economic and emotional repair among families, communities, and our greater society.
If Berkeley proceeds, it will be one of the few municipalities to directly grapple with the country’s legacy of enslavement.
Explore why California launched the first-in-the-nation task force to study reparations for Black people — and what reparations could mean for the state.
If acknowledgement is the first step toward acceptance, reparations for Black people in America has taken a major step forward.
A plan to remove Interstate 375 will not bring back the rich history lost when the area was razed to make way for the new road running through the center of Detroit in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Bryan Stevenson on Truth & Reconciliation…as being necessary before Reparation can be meaningful.
Cory Booker and others discuss how slavery, housing discrimination and centuries of inequality have compounded to create a racial wealth gap.
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
The Great Migration from the South and the rise of racial residential segregation strongly shaped the twentieth-century experience of African Americans. Yet, little attention has been devoted to how the two phenomena were linked, especially with respect to the individual experiences of the migrants.
‘Segregated By Design’ examines the forgotten history of how our federal, state and local governments unconstitutionally segregated every major metropolitan area in America through law and policy.
In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed. On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, it is finally time to tell our story truthfully.
More than a 100 years later, Germany formally recognizes the colonial-era atrocities committed against the Herero and Nama ethnic groups.
A nonprofit organization supporting the Black community in Kentucky said they received a “six-figure reparations payment” from a white American who recently discovered her ancestor enslaved people in the area.
A conversation with Dr. Shirley Weber, California’s secretary of state, who was a leader in starting the reparations process.
Wealth is the key to upward mobility and to creating a safety net for oneself and for generations to come. Our government and society have prospered off of Black Americans while systematically denying them the chance to secure their own futures. In this era when nearly $68 trillion in wealth will transfer from Baby Boomers to their children, it’s time to finally repay what is owed.
Homeownership was, and remains, the beating heart of wealth accumulation for the American middle class. Black Americans have been shut out of stability at every turn.
There is a widespread belief that reparations for Black people is too tough a pill to swallow for most Americans. This week, as we celebrate Juneteenth, we should recognize that there is a way to change the cultural attitude toward reparations—and it might already be occurring.
President Pro Tem Mary Sheffield’s resolution, which passed Tuesday without objection, aims to lay out a foundation to create a city task force or commission to design what reparations may look like for Detroiters and how to make it happen, whether through a committee or “higher level” entity at the state level.
Why hasn’t wealth inequality improved over the past 50 years? And why, in particular, has the racial wealth gap not closed? These nine charts illustrate how income inequality, earnings gaps, homeownership rates, retirement savings, student loan debt, and lopsided asset-building subsidies have contributed to these growing wealth disparities.
To create an economy that works for all of us, we need to address and understand racial wealth inequality.
New data from the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) show that long-standing and substantial wealth disparities between families in different racial and ethnic groups were little changed since the last survey in 2016; the typical White family has eight times the wealth of the typical Black family and five times the wealth of the typical Hispanic family.
A close examination of wealth in the U.S. finds evidence of staggering racial disparities. Gaps in wealth between Black and white households reveal the effects of accumulated inequality and discrimination, as well as differences in power and opportunity that can be traced back to this nation’s inception. The Black-white wealth gap reflects a society that has not and does not afford equality of opportunity to all its citizens.
After witnessing how the Great Recession influenced their predecessors, the financial and cultural values of millennials have changed. This has influenced the way brands and organizations have marketed to them.
