The Racial Wealth Gap's Solution?

                As explored in previous posts, racial wealth inequality is a huge problem in America and is getting worse every year. The key to solving this problem is recognizing that racial wealth inequality cannot just be fixed by solving racial income inequality. To be sure, proposals to reduce income inequality in general by raising tax rates on the rich would surely slow or even halt the expansion of the wealth gap. But the gap that already exists would still be present.

                One proposal that specifically addressed race is in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ recent article for The Atlantic, The Case for Reparations. The long article was on the cover of the magazine and revitalized the idea of reparations to African-Americans for mistreatment. Coates’ reparations are not only for slavery, but for the discrimination and hate African-Americans suffered in living memory. He enumerates the long indignities that kept them in poverty before the 1960s, including lynching, Jim Crow laws, redlining, and whites-only neighborhoods, all of which worked together to keep Black Americans in a caste of poverty which they remain in to this day. Coates cites Israel’s reparation payment from Germany after the Holocaust as an example of reparations, for where reparations were more just a monetary payment but an admission of remorse. Coates does not specify in this article how reparations should be paid, or even if they should be restricted by race and not just poverty, but puts forth that reparations should involve a moral reckoning and is not just a bill to be paid. (Coates 2014)

 Redlined housing districts, from a map on the online version of Coates' article showing exactly where and how black neighborhoods were denied loans (Coates 2014)

                Some people object to reparations on the grounds that it would single out African-Americans while ignoring the poor of other races.  There is some reason to this, as Hispanics and Native Americans especially are also presently in race-based poverty.  But a larger part of this is recognizing the sources of this wealth inequality that keeps some races richer than others.  The interconnectedness of structural racism in this country must not be underestimated.  I have circled around this in previous posts, but now I realize that the racial wealth gap is not the source of racial inequality today, but one of its outcomes. To solve the gap, we need to recognize the history of white supremacy in America before we can end the gap.

But just recognizing why the gap exists does not really solve anything. In my view, a non-race-based program to help the poor must be instituted. If just giving money does not work out, perhaps it could be similar to the Works Progress Administration or Civilian Conservation Corps of the New Deal, where poor people were given money for work with enormous new government improvement programs.  If wealth inequality in general decreases, then the wealth inequality by race will as well, especially with the increasing racialization of America’s wealth. The only reason that racial wealth inequality cannot away by itself is because there are still reasons for it to exist.

Works Cited

Coates, T. (2014, June). The Case for Reparations. The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/