Duke University Professor Pushes for $14 trillion Reparations Program for Blacks
Jose Nino
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On April 18, 2023 Duke University professor William Darity appeared on an episode of Dr. Phil to talk about his plan to give reparations to blacks that are descendants of slaves.
Darity, is the co-author of the book, “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century,” in which he advocated for an ambitious reparations program.
“The first condition is that reparations should be paid to Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States,” he stated. “The second is, how much should be paid? The amount should be dictated by the disparity in wealth between Black and White Americans, which at the current moment amounts to in excess of $840,000 per household.”
Darity’s “objective” is to “eliminate the racial wealth gap in the United States,” highlighting that this “would require an expenditure of $14 trillion, which would be distributed evenly across the 40 million Black American descendants of U.S. slavery. That would be approximately $350,000 per person.”
“Where would that money come from?,” Dr. Phil inquired.
“Money would be paid by the federal government,” Darity responded. “It would be paid by the federal government in the same way in which the federal government has met the expenses that were paid out for the purposes of trying to deal with the great recession and also, most recently, with the economic downturn associated with the great pandemic.”
Several members of the panel that challenged Darity’s plan.Â
Political writer Joshua Ferguson offered his take: “First of all, the U.S. government doesn’t have money. All of their money comes from taxes. To say you’re not going to take it from people today, you’re right. You’re going to take it from future generations. That’s what’s going to happen.”
Civil rights activist Bob Woodson was also critical of the plan, “I cannot think of any group of people who have been made wealthy by just transferring money to them.”
“There has never been a point in the United States history where Black and White incomes were equivalent,” Darity replied. “But I’m not talking about income, anyway. I’m talking about the wealth disparity.”
“There is a substantial history of the United States government providing financial assets to white citizens, when it did not provide similar assets to Black citizens. Let’s go back to the period in which there was a promise made of 40 acre land grants to Black Americans,” he continued. “At the same time, when that promise was not fulfilled, the U.S. government gave one and a half million White families in the United States 160 acre land grants in the western territories, under the Homestead Act of 1860. That was a transfer that has resulted in the situation in which 45 million living white Americans are continuing to be beneficiaries of those land patents.”
Darity continued defending his concept by asserting, “No one ever says that there’s going to be mismanagement of funds when we’re talking about the distribution of reparations payments to other communities.”
There’s every reason to be skeptical of reparations due to the potential for all sorts of fraud and graft occurring. However, reparations, at their core, are all about punishing white people while rewarding non-whites at their expense. It’s the policy holy grail of the anti-white mob and it’s a policy that should be thoroughly opposed by any serious right-wing movement.
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