William “Sandy” Darity | TED2020 | A Blueprint For Reparations in the US (ted.com)
With clarity and insight, economist and author William “Sandy” Darity discusses how the grievous injustice of slavery in the US led to the immense wealth gap that currently exists between Black and white Americans. He explains how reparations for descendants of enslaved people would work — and why it’s necessary that the US engage in this act of compensation and redemption to make progress towards true equality. (This virtual conversation, hosted by TED’s current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, was recorded June 30, 2020.)
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by TED.com editors on the home page. Original page link for TEDTalk.
Reading List for continued learning:
ARTICLE
“Resurrecting the Promise of 40 Acres: The Imperative of Reparations for Black Americans”
William A. Darity, A. Kirsten Mullen
Roosevelt Institute, 2020
The report that A. Kirsten Mullen and I prepared recently for the Roosevelt Institute significantly expands upon the argument we develop in our new book, From Here to Equality.
BOOK
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880
W.E.B. Du Bois, 1935
This is the book reading that inspired an extensive and ongoing revision of the narrative of the Reconstruction Era that had been advanced by the architects of the Lost Cause narratives of slavery, the Civil War and emancipation. Essential reading.
BOOK
Capitalism and Slavery
Eric Williams
Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1944
Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery is a systematic presentation of three critical hypotheses about slavery and the British West Indies colonial system: 1) Slavery produced anti-Black racism rather than vice versa, 2) British abolition of the slave trade was motivated by raw economic and political self-interest rather than humanitarian sentiment and 3) The colonial slave trade and slave plantations — especially the sugar plantations — fueled the British Industrial Revolution.
BOOK
They Were Her Property
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
Yale University Press, 2019
The definitive study demonstrating that there was no gender divide among white Southerners with respect to the brutality exercised by slave owners.
ARTICLE
“The Homestead Act: A Major Asset-Building Policy in American History”
Trina Williams Shanks
Center for Social Development Research, 2000
Shanks’ study demonstrates the foundational role played by the Homestead Act in shaping subsequent Black-white wealth disparities in the United States.
ARTICLE
“What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap”
William Darity Jr., Darrick Hamilton, Antonio Moore, Mark Paul, et al.
Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, Duke University and Insight Center for Community Economic Development, 2018
This study delineates and critiques an array of inaccurate, conventional beliefs widely held about the sources of Black-white wealth inequality in the United States.
BOOK
The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation
Daina Ramey Berry
Beacon Press, 2017
A study of how markets in human property established prices for black people both in life and death in America under slavery that never loses sight of the deep dehumanization associated with these transactions.
ARTICLE
“Reparations Are a Concrete Way to Address Systemic Racism and Inequality”
A. Kirsten Mullen, William A. Darity
Teen Vogue, 2020
BOOK
From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century
William A. Darity, A. Kirsten Mullen
University of North Carolina Press, 2020
