HuffPost, June 8, 2020: Why The U.S. Needs To Do Reparations Now
What’s truly needed is a big-picture rethink of U.S. policy at every level, she told HuffPost in an interview by phone and in follow-ups over email this week.
In her 2017 book “The Color of Money,” Baradaran lays out how, over centuries, policymakers wrote Black Americans out of the economic system — and how policies blocking Black people from obtaining mortgages, land and credit created an immense wealth gap between Black and White Americans that persists to this day. In her book, Baradaran says that after slavery was abolished, Black Americans held just .5% of all the wealth in the U.S. Today, the number is barely higher, at about 1%.
