Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

Chapter 14 sees the return of Racist Baby, this time speaking with the author about reparations. Harriot argues that reparations would address the fact that the labor of enslaved people made America an economic superpower, a fact from which the Black American community has yet to profit.

According to the Brookings Institution, in 2016, the average white family’s net wealth was $171,000, whereas the average Black family’s net wealth was $17,150. This is not just due to slavery or Jim Crow or incarceration: It’s also the result of widespread, systemic theft of resources for Black people by white people. Segregation took the tax money paid by Black and white citizens and gave a bigger portion to the white community. In South Carolina, all taxpayers would pay for white public colleges, but no Black colleges received taxpayer money, even though the majority of taxpayers in the state were Black.

Additionally, white people had access to monetary benefits like the GI Bill after World War II, which allowed white servicemen to get very favorable loans to buy a home and to go to college for free. Black servicemen were not given those loans, and almost all of the colleges in America were white and segregationist.