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America prides itself on being built on ideals like democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity, and equality – despite having amassed its wealth by oppressing and enslaving those deemed as the lesser race. Unpaid labor of millions of slaves, discrimination of equal access to housing, education and financial resources, as well as mass incarceration, are tangible examples of America’s shady dealings with black folks. These incidents and more are reason enough to consider reparations for the black community. The idea itself is not far-fetched; Germany paid $845 million in restitution for Jewish Holocaust survivors. The U.S. Senate even paid $200,000 to over 8000,000 Japanese victims of WWII. Since 1989 there have been attempts to pull together a commission to study reparations for African Americans, yet there is no backing and no follow-through.

According to a 2017 Quinnipiac poll, 49% of white Americans say black people face a lot of discrimination in the United States, compared to 87% of black Americans. Non-blacks argue that Americans living today are not responsible for slavery and taxes should not be utilized for compensation. TV One’s now cancelled morning daily news show NewsOne highlights the radical theory that slavery “should be seen as little more than an apprenticeship towards full, human civilization.”

At a minimum, this sentiment is evidence of how detached America is from the demoralization of persistent racial imbalance. Even the United Nations affirms that “compensation is necessary to combat the disadvantages caused by 245 years of legally allowing the sale of people based on the color of their skin” as a means of confronting its “legacy of racial terrorism.”

Sociologist Dalton Conley states “the one statistic that best captures the state of racial inequality in today is net worth.” After adding up everything we own and subtracting our debts, what’s left is very little in comparison to whites. There may be a difference in perspective or experience when it comes to equality, but numbers don’t lie. Formal slavery ended in 1965 and was replaced with systematic exclusion from programs that helped build middle-class wealth. Subsidization of a debt-free college education, low-cost mortgage programs and traditional processes of obtaining credit benefited white households but withheld from black families. Wealth is not just about having money; it is also about being able to plan and prepare for the future. Whites had a head start in the form of an intergenerational advantage of wealth accumulation.

There are many ways that America could attempt to right its wrongs – starting with the acknowledgment of maltreatment, rather than constant justification of it. Affirmative action was a mild attempt at inclusion that became a double-edged sword. In reality, there is no way to erase history, and it is doubtful that black Americans are looking for a handout. An essential element of black pride is the ability to overcome obstacles and supersede expectations. Most would bypass the idea of having our silence bought on issues that impact our lives. It’s safe to say blacks have lived with our fair share of disappointment and have a clear understanding that we are “owed” nothing. Take the target off our backs, and we’ll call it a wash.

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