The interest and demand for reparations for America’s descendants of slavery (ADOS) is growing, as home ownership, education, and wealth gaps continue to grow, with evidence relating these gaps to the systemic racism and legalized oppression enslaved Africans and their families faced from 1619 to 1965. 

One need only look to St. Paul for a relevant example of legally sanctioned government actions that resulted in disproportionate harm to Black residents.​

From 1956 to 1968, local and state leaders seized by eminent domain, land upon which  hundreds of Black-owned homes and businesses in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood sat, to construct a new interstate corridor. At the time nearly 80 percent of St. Paul’s Black residents lived in the Rondo neighborhood.​

Björgvin Sævarsson, founder and CEO of the Yorth Group determined that the intentional routing of I-94 through the heart of Rondo resulted in a loss of at least $157 million by 2018 in intergenerational wealth being passed down from homeowners to their children and grandchildren.​

Rondo is just one local example of legally sanctioned, post-slavery actions taken across the United States that have left a legacy of Black exclusion educationally, socially and economically. Yet, Blacks remain the only group that has not received reparations for state-sanctioned racial discrimination, while slavery, Jim Crow and segregationist policies afforded some white families the ability to accrue tremendous wealth.​

Home ownership not only establishes a sense of place, community, and stability but multiple studies show it has been the most effective intergenerational wealth building strategy Americans have known.​

Research published by the California Housing Finance Authority (2023), suggests that discriminatory housing practices such as redlining, racial covenants, and predatory lending have disproportionately kept Black families from owning homes at the same rate as their white peers.​

In Minnesota, 77.5 percent of Whites own their own home, compared to just 30.5 percent of Blacks; the 5th worst homeownership gap in the United States. Not surprisingly, that gap corresponds to an equally abysmal wealth gap among Black and White Minnesotans.

The institution of slavery was a violent, hateful, wretched form of involuntary servitude. It was devastating to Black bodies, minds, families in ways we still struggle to find words to define. Slavery was also rooted in building economic wealth and prosperity for White people on the labor of enslaved Black people. 

The Atlantic reports that in 1860 ‘there were more millionaire slaveholders living in the lower Mississippi Valley than anywhere in the United States. Enslaved Black people  totaling nearly 4 million were valued at over $3.5 billion, greater than all manufacturing and railroads combined, and the largest single financial asset in the U.S. 

America not only failed to compensate descendent’s of enslaved people for the foundational labor that built America, but built systems to accelerate wealth accumulation by Whites. Sherman’s Special Field Order 15 (40 Acres & A Mule),   The New Deal (G.I. Bill & Social Security), the 1862 Homestead Act are just a few of the federal policies that further institutionalized wealth extraction and disinvestment from Black people and communities. 

Today, we address the symptoms of this systemic racism but investments to repair the harms of racism in ways that give power to Black people are largely void. Too often the solutions for disparate impacts in home ownership, housing and commercial property valuation, economic mobility, wages, business revenues are anchored in changing Black people, rather than uprooting the racist policies and the systems that upheld discrimination against descendent’s of slaves for the sake of building wealth for White people. 

Closing racial wage gaps, by paying Black workers the same thing their white peers in the same jobs earn would add more than $220 billion to the economy. Eliminating racist policies that withhold and extract wealth from Black Americans would add more than $300 billion to the economy. These are just two figures to consider as we examine the just, equitable and inclusive reparations that should be paid to America’s Descendent’s of Slavery.

To remedy harm caused by a punitive and exclusionary financial system, advocates have called for a number of practices under an umbrella of ”Credit Reparations” for Black communities: 

Cease or severely restrict use of credit scores and reports in employment, insurance, rental housing, and other non-credit purposes. 

Establish lending programs for Black borrowers at low or no interest for small businesses and home purchases (allowable as ‘special purpose credit programs’ under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act). 

Cancellation of consumer debts and elimination of banking fees for Black borrowers. Brookings Institution notes, “Public policy has created the Black–White gulf in wealth, and it will require public policy to eliminate it.” Historically, efforts to repay Black Americans for their decades of loss have rarely gained traction. But on January 4, 2023, the Saint Paul City Council voted to establish the Saint Paul Recovery Act Community Reparations Commission. The ordinance established a commission that will recommend ways for the city to make reparations to Black residents whose ancestors were enslaved.​

These efforts also follow the adoption of the 2021 Ramsey County Inclusive Economic Competitiveness & Inclusion Plan, which endorsed significant local and county housing investments and acknowledged the historic policies that extracted wealth from Black families, necessitating courageous policies to catalyze systemic equity building.  ​

Public sector entities can also look to the work done by Evanston, Illinois, which in 2021 became the first city to pass a reparations measure, providing $25,000 to direct descendants of Black residents who were affected by the city’s discriminatory housing policies between 1919 and 1969 (Sahan Journal, 2023).

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