Reparations Daily (ish) Vol. 24
Reparations Will Not Solve Racism. A look back at Raj Chetty's Groundbreaking Research
Happy Monday! I hope you all had a great weekend.
Today’s Hot Takes section discusses one of the most surprising statistics I’ve ever come across.
I was reading this opinion piece in the New York Times (also linked below) about “Lost Einsteins,” which highlights research conducted by one of my favorite academics, Raj Chetty, and others, which found that children at the top of their 3rd-grade mathematics class are much more likely to become inventors, only if they come from high-income families. Conversely, high-scoring children from low-income families, particularly those of color, are unlikely to become inventors.
The researchers called for policies that would provide low-income students of color with strong math scores with greater exposure to innovation at a young age through mentoring programs, internships, and social interventions since many of these students go unrecognized in their schools because they are often not aiming to identify talent in the same way better-resourced schools are.
The research and opinion piece are both worth examining, but seeing Raj Chetty’s name spurred me to revisit my pinned tweet since 2018, which is another New York Times piece titled ‘Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys.’
It is a stunning piece, with a stunning interactive graphic to match, that highlights one of the most important pieces of recent research (in my opinion). It also pushed me to think about a world where a large enough reparations package was given to close the racial wealth gap and what that world would look like. Head to the Hot Takes section to hear more.
Some articles you might want to check out today include:
This Black News Channel segment features Dr. William Darity of Duke University on the reparations ballot initiative in Detroit. The anchor, Charles Blow, asks a good question: Is what they are proposing in Detroit really reparations when most of its taxpayers are Black?
John Oliver makes the same case for reparations (though he specifies housing) that thousands of other Black people have made before him, and Huff Post calls it “one of the most compelling cases for reparations yet.”
This Washington Post piece covers how white students in a small town in Michigan held a “slave trade” on Snapchat where they “sold” their Black schoolmates. As a result, the city is now ensnared in a debate over critical race theory.
With radical love,
Trevor
National News
Huff Post: John Oliver Makes One Of The Most Compelling Cases Yet For Reparations
Fox News: Trump slams Critical Race Theory as ‘flagrant racism’ that has ‘no place’ in our country
Inc: Black Entrepreneurs Are Raising Record Amounts of Venture Capital in 2021
New York Times: How Racist Is America?
New York Times: We Are Leaving ‘Lost Einsteins’ Behind
NBC: Republicans newly alarmed by critical race theory see bans as 'more of a preventative'
PolicyLink: Transcending the Barriers of Whiteness Fireside Chat
Regional News
Black News Channel: Detroit City Council Approves Adding Reparations to the Ballot for Its Residents
Washington Post: It started with a mock ‘slave trade’ and a school resolution against racism. Now a war over critical race theory is tearing this small town apart.
San Francisco Chronicle: Could reparations make for fairer juries?
Milwaukee Courier: It’s Time for America to Pay What They Owe
The Denver Gazette: Denver Mayor Hancock leading national reparations effort for African Americans
9 News: Hancock leading national reparations effort for African Americans
WUWM: Censorship Scholar On Book Bans And Critical Race Theory
Axios: Critical race theory founders respond to GOP attacks
Washington Post: The culture war over critical race theory looks like the one waged 50 years ago over sex education
CNN: Rarely-seen photos tell the story of America's Black Civil War soldiers
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Whitefish Bay's library removed a sign addressing systemic racism after community complaints, including from a former Milwaukee Buck
NBC 12: City of Richmond to declare racism as public health crisis
Hot Takes
When Raj Chetty and his team at Opportunity Insights published this paper titled ‘Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective,’ the paper was covered in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Vox.
The groundbreaking study combined Census Bureau data on race with IRS tax returns, which allowed the economists to track individuals’ earnings over many years and tie them to their parents’ earnings.
Here are a couple of its noteworthy findings:
Black Americans experience dramatically lower upward mobility than white Americans do — a difference that appears to be driven largely by significant economic disadvantages among black men.
Black men born to wealthy families are less economically successful than white men. In fact, white boys who grow up rich are likely to remain that way, but Black boys raised at the top, are more likely to become poor than to stay wealthy in their own adult households.
Black and white women born into equivalently wealthy families enjoy basically the same economic outcomes (the authors attribute the fact that the gap is much larger between Black and white men to the larger gaps in “high-school dropout rates, college attendance rates, occupation, and incarceration” being substantially larger for men than for women.”
Within low-poverty areas, black-white gaps are smallest in places with low levels of racial bias among whites and high rates of father presence among blacks.
And perhaps the most surprising finding was that in 99 percent of neighborhoods in the United States, black boys earn less in adulthood than white boys who grow up in families with a comparable income. What are the implications of this?
It means that virtually nowhere in the U.S. do Black boys grow up to earn as much as their white counterparts, even when they grow up in the same neighborhood, go to the same schools, and come from similar family backgrounds. So, whether you are the Black son of a fast-food worker or LeBron James, the findings show that race factors into America's racial wealth and income gaps. But, as stated in the New York Times piece, the research clarifies that there is something unique about the obstacles black males face.
I think there is a common misconception among the general public around reparations and racism. Some think that those in favor of reparations believe that we think it is a cure-all for racism when the data literally proves that is not the case. Moreover, even if we close the racial-wealth gap, racism will still exist, and there is a case to be made that there may be a strong backlash from some white people when some of this power and wealth is shifted.
So what to do?
The researchers leave us with this, “reducing the Black-white gap will require efforts that increase upward mobility for Black Americans, especially Black men.” Some solutions they propose include:
Mentoring programs for Black boys
Efforts to reduce racial bias among white people
Interventions to reduce discrimination in criminal justice
Efforts to facilitate greater interaction across racial groups.
Reparations for Black Americans are needed and owed for a myriad of reasons outlined by several authors. If you need a refresher, check out Ta-Nehisi Coates’ ‘The Case for Reparations.’ Though racism and its impact on Black people, particularly Black men, will still be alive and well, especially in the labor and housing market.
This research is a painful reminder that our call should not solely be reparations to close the racial wealth gap but reparations that seek to dismantle the white supremacist structure that has caused centuries of racial harm.
That is the only way forward.