From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century

by William A. Darity, A. Kirsten Mullen

Overview

Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. At several historic moments, the trajectory of racial inequality could have been altered dramatically. Perhaps no moment was more opportune than the early days of Reconstruction, when the U.S. government temporarily implemented a major redistribution of land from former slaveholders to the newly emancipated enslaved. But neither Reconstruction nor the New Deal nor the civil rights struggle led to an economically just and fair nation. Today, systematic inequality persists in the form of housing discrimination, unequal education, police brutality, mass incarceration, employment discrimination, and massive wealth and opportunity gaps. Economic data indicates that for every dollar the average white household holds in wealth the average black household possesses a mere ten cents.

In From Here to Equality, William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen confront these injustices head-on and make the most comprehensive case to date for economic reparations for U.S. descendants of slavery. After opening the book with a stark assessment of the intergenerational effects of white supremacy on black economic well-being, Darity and Mullen look to both the past and the present to measure the inequalities borne of slavery. Using innovative methods that link monetary values to historical wrongs, they next assess the literal and figurative costs of justice denied in the 155 years since the end of the Civil War. Finally, Darity and Mullen offer a detailed roadmap for an effective reparations program, including a substantial payment to each documented U.S. black descendant of slavery. Taken individually, any one of the three eras of injustice outlined by Darity and Mullen--slavery, Jim Crow, and modern-day discrimination--makes a powerful case for black reparations. Taken collectively, they are impossible to ignore.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469654980
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	03/03/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	424
Sales rank:	199,926
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

William A. Darity Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics at Duke University.
A. Kirsten Mullen is a writer, folklorist, museum consultant, and lecturer whose work focuses on race, art, history, and politics.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Argued powerfully with quiet passion, this compelling case for reparations rests on a deep historical account of missed chances to remedy slavery, Jim Crow, and deep discrimination, and thus [to] overcome profound barriers to economic equality. Focusing on the immense racial wealth gap, the book's detailed program demands attention and adjudication.—Ira Katznelson, author of When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in America



An extraordinary accomplishment and a brilliant and provocative contribution to the current debate on reparations. From Here to Equality provides a genuinely novel and thoughtful solution that will propel this evolving, international political movement.—Craig Steven Wilder, author of Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities



Darity and Mullen present—with brilliant erudition—evidence that will catalyze the coming transformation of American moral values.—Eugene Richardson, MD, PhD, chair of the Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice

Editorial Reviews

A worthwhile compendium on an extremely important topic.—Library Journal



This book underscores slavery's deleterious impact on descendants of America's four million enslaved persons emancipated in 1865. . . . [The authors] propose that Congress institute reparations for Black persons who can document that they had at least one enslaved ancestor in the US after the formation of the republic. . . . Part history, part economics, and part advocacy, this book will appeal to a broad readership.—CHOICE



A timely and vital contribution to national discussions about reparations. . . . [Darity and Mullen] force readers to confront how anti-Black racism has and continues to impede the financial well-being of African Americans and provide a blueprint for addressing these injustices.—Black Perspectives

From the Publisher

03/01/2020

"The Case for Reparations," an article by Ta-Nehisi Coates that appeared in the Atlantic in 2014, sparked a fresh look at reparations for slavery in the United States. Darity (public policy, Duke Univ.) and writer and folklorist Mullen build on the arguments by Coates by laying out a comprehensive case for reparations in hopes this book will spark further public discussion and congressional action. They compile evidence of the economic disparities wrought by slavery and the continuing effects of Jim Crow on African Americans today. Darity and Mullen consider the possibilities of a nonviolent end to slavery and the alternatives for compensating slaveholders. The last two chapters include responses to common arguments against reparations and a proposal for how reparations would be carried out in practice, including updated monetary estimates from past studies, a congressional investigation, and a National Reparations Bureau. VERDICT Although this history is well covered in other books, such as Edward E. Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told and Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, and the arguments for reparations are not new, this is a worthwhile compendium on an extremely important topic.—Kate Stewart, Arizona Historical Soc., Tuscon

Library Journal

2020-01-13
A strong and unusually comprehensive case for making economic reparations to African Americans for the injustices of slavery as well as legal segregation (Jim Crow) and "ongoing discrimination and stigmatization."

In this thoughtful scholarly assessment of a controversial issue, economist Darity and folklorist Mullen provide overwhelming evidence of "the pernicious impact of white supremacy" and propose a detailed program of monetary reparations, to be paid by Congress, to perhaps 40 million black descendants of slavery. "For black reparations to become a reality," they write early on, "a dramatic change in who serves as the nation's elected officials must take place, both in Congress and in the White House." By chronicling racial injustices since the nation's founding, the authors hope to "rejuvenate" discussions of the need for action to reverse "gross inequalities between blacks and whites." Slavery's "hothouse effect," they write, created "vast national wealth." It spurred shipbuilding and other industries, created the need to feed and clothe millions of enslaved blacks, and provided laborers to work plantations and help build railways and subsidize universities. After slavery, blacks continued to experience job discrimination, attenuated wealth, confinement to unsafe and undesirable neighborhoods, inferior schooling, dangerous encounters with the police and criminal justice system, and a social disdain for the value of their lives. "A variety of metrics indicate that, even after the end of Jim Crow, black lives are routinely assigned a worth approximately 30 percent that of white lives," write the authors," who also detail the negative impacts on black lives of federal highway construction, urban renewal, and gentrification. They consider arguments for and against reparations and examine complex possible methods of financing and making reparations (from lump sums to payments over time) that might, at the outside, cost trillions of dollars. Though academic in tone and approach, and therefore unlikely to reach a large audience of general readers, the authors are convincing in their arguments.

Essential to any debate over the need for and way to achieve meaningful large-scale reparations.

Kirkus Reviews

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