Today’s movement for reparations places as much emphasis on the racist public policies of the 20th century, which denied black Americans opportunities to build wealth and left them vulnerable to all manner of economic exploitation, as it does on the crimes of slavery.
.......
Slavery and Jim Crow not only excluded generations of black Americans from benefits and opportunities enjoyed by white Americans; it also exposed them to the most predatory features of our capitalist system. It turned black people’s earnest attempts to build wealth the American way — through property ownership — into an opportunity for others to profitat their expense.
If we ever hope to repair the damage racism has done to America, and address the dividends it continues to pay to white Americans, we cannot simply open to black Americans previously closed doors of opportunity or merely provide some form of compensation for past injustices. We must also work to dismantle the laws and policies that sanction the continued extraction of property and resources from black communities.
If we ever hope to repair the damage racism has done to America, and address the dividends it continues to pay to white Americans, we cannot simply open to black Americans previously closed doors of opportunity or merely provide some form of compensation for past injustices. We must also work to dismantle the laws and policies that sanction the continued extraction of property and resources from black communities.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.