We Must Reduce Racial Inequity in the Distribution of Wealth
Reducing the racial inequity in the distribution of wealth
in the United States is an important task. Black people have on average a tiny
fraction of the wealth and income of white people, and the difference is due
largely to racist policies the history of which is exhaustively detailed by Darity
and Mullen[i].
Black people today inherit less than
white people do on average, and they have a harder time accumulating wealth
during their lives because they are paid less on average than white people at
every occupational level. This problem will not solve itself anytime soon. Some
kind of action is needed.
Reducing Inequity Through Reparations
We cannot undo the racist policies of the past, but we can
reduce their effects in the present by adopting policies designed to make it easier for
black people to accumulate wealth. Among those policies are reparations.
Reparations are cash payments or services that would be provided for black
people as a way of making the wealth accumulation playing field more level in
our country. Reparations would be paid
for by the federal government out of tax revenue, and a detailed and reasonable
proposal for reparations has been laid out by Darity and Mullen.[ii]
Alternatives to Reparations
The
moral case for reparations is unassailable, but politically, the idea has
one great weakness, which is that it ignores class differences and consequently
leads to the false idea that in order for black people to prosper, white people
as a group must give something up. Talking in terms of reparations leads people
to think that in order to level the playing field, all white people must
suffer, and of course, that generates opposition. Many white people say, “We
didn’t own slaves; we didn’t redline black neighborhoods; we didn’t lynch
people or terrorize them. Why should we pay?”
We can approach this problem in a different way if we
remember that we
live in a time of enormous inequality. We live in a time in which the wealth gap
between the richest white people and the poorest is at least as great as the
gap between the median white person and the median black person. Most of the
wealth of our society is owned by a small, upper class. In such a society, a
graduated, progressive income tax system can guarantee that most of the money
to pay for reducing the inequity in the distribution of wealth would come from
people who now have substantial wealth and substantial incomes. Most white
people would not suffer. In fact, they would benefit.
We can design policies that will have the effect of reducing
racial inequity while also reducing class inequity. If we focus on increasing
the fairness of our society generally, we will inevitably reduce the gap
between black and white people because black
people, being overrepresented among the poor and the working class in this
country, will benefit disproportionately.
Focusing on fairness in our society in this way meets Ibram
Kendi’s definition of an antiracist policy. In his book entitled, How to be
an Antiracist[iii],
Kendi defines
a racist policy as “any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity
between racial groups,” and he defines an antiracist policy as “any measure
that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups.”[iv]
What then can we do to reduce unfairness in our society and
thereby reduce the inequity between black and white people in the distribution
of wealth? A number of things have been
proposed, and here are a few of them.
Create Public Trust Funds for All Children
William
Darity and his colleagues have proposed that a publicly funded trust fund would
be set up for each child that is born in the United States, and the
amount in the fund would vary from $500 for children from well-to-do families
to $50,000 for children from poor families. Trust funds of this kind would be
especially beneficial for black children because black families have on average
only about 10% of the wealth that white families have, but the funds would also
benefit poor, white children.
Raise the Federal Minimum Wage to $15 or More
An
article published by the Economic Policy Institute shows that raising the
minimum wage would have a strong effect on the incomes of black workers, and
that would increase their ability to save and build wealth. Black workers are
overrepresented in minimum wage jobs, and in addition, black people are
concentrated in states that have very low minimum wages. So, an increase in the
minimum wage would help to reduce the wealth gap between black and white
people.
Provide Publicly Supported, Affordable Child Care
The
lack of affordable child care is one of our country’s largest barriers to economic
equity. Affordable child care would make it possible for many women to go
to work or to go to school to improve their skills and thereby increase their
incomes. Affordable child care would also make it possible for working women to
raise their living standards and to save money thereby increasing their wealth.
Thus, affordable child care would benefit working class families of all races,
but because black people are more likely than white people to be poor, black
people would benefit disproportionately, and the gap between them and white
people would be reduced.
Let’s Make Everyone’s Life Better
This article has described a few of the alternatives to
reparations for reducing racial inequity in the distribution of wealth in the
United States. They are not the only alternatives. Others might include
creating a decent, national health care system, providing a reasonable supply
of affordable housing or providing a guaranteed, annual income. All of these
proposals have the advantage of providing an alternative to the narrative that
says that any effort to improve the lot of black people must inevitably worsen
the lot of white people.
We can make everyone’s life better!
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