I’ve spent the last 5 weeks reading several dozen articles on racism and public policy. I came to this issue only lately and have a lot more learning to do. But the basic conclusions seem clear (short thread):

For the sake of basic human decency, racial justice, and the healing of the country, we need substantial reparations, official apologies for historical injustices against Black Americans, and major changes in ongoing American institutions and how people think and act.

The history of white appropriation of Black wealth in the US is horrific and even worse than I had understood (ranging from slavery to Jim Crow to Tulsa/Rosewood/ Wilmington, to housing laws, to the GI bill and so on).

We have consistently built white wealth and destroyed or taken away black wealth. It is well known that wealth has a strong intergenerational component in families, so past thefts have real impacts today.

Some discrimination is due to “tastes” (Becker) or “statistical” (Arrow/Phelps) discrimination. but institutions, rules, laws, social customs make it possible for discrimination to exist even if no one is actually choosing to discriminate.

Stratification economics offers a very fruitful way to think about these issues. Race-blind does not mean race-fair.

I recommend great writing by @drlisacook, @SandyDarity, @DarrickHamilton, @TrevonDLogan, @dashching @CamilleBusette @andreperryedu @SociologistRay
(apologies to those left off the list).