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.