US economy

Reparations? Yes, but …


This article is part of David Leonhardt’s newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it each weekday.

Several top-tier Democratic presidential candidates went to Charleston, S.C., this weekend to speak at an event on black economic empowerment. I was there, and I was fascinated by a nationwide poll of black Americans that was done as part of the event.

In the poll, people were given a list of 14 economic policies and asked how much they thought each would help the black community. The list was full of progressive ideas: paid leave and better workplace benefits; a higher minimum wage; a federal jobs guarantee; stronger laws against discrimination; reparations for descendants of slaves; and more.

On a straight up-or-down basis, a majority of black Americans favored every one of the 14 policies. But there was a fairly wide gap in how much they thought each would help. At the top of the list were a higher minimum wage, stronger discrimination laws and better workplace benefits and training. About 70 percent of respondents said each of those would help “a great deal.”

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At the bottom of the list: Slavery reparations. Second to last: a federal jobs guarantee. Only about half of respondents said each would help a great deal.

What’s going on here? To me, it’s a reminder that black Americans, as a group, don’t have the same political opinions as the most liberal parts of the Democratic coalition. On many issues, black Americans are more moderate — or perhaps more pragmatic.

I, too, am in favor of slavery reparations. (I’m not so enamored of a federal jobs guarantee.) But I don’t think reparations are likely to happen in a country divided by race and racism. I do think many other policies — policies that would disproportionately benefit black Americans — are politically feasible, including many of the policies that top the poll’s preference list.

So maybe it’s time for a little less focus on the 2020 candidates’ precise views on reparations — a frequent subject of social media chatter and reporters’ questions — and a little more focus on other ways to reduce the nation’s unconscionable racial wealth gap.

For more …

  • Guy Molyneux, Mario Brossard and Corrie Hunt — who conducted the poll,for the Black Economic Alliance — have much more on black Americans’ economic views. Only 17 percent say it is “very easy” or “somewhat easy” to achieve the American dream today

  • Emily Badger of The Times asks, “Can the racial wealth gap be closed without speaking of race?”

  • Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, who were both in Charleston, have each proposed policies that would substantially narrow the racial wealth gap. Among other things, Warren has housing and education plans, while Booker has a housing plan and a “baby bonds” plan.

  • Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote the definitive article on reparations, in The Atlantic, five years ago and was recently interviewed on The New Yorker Radio Hour about its impact.

  • My colleague David Brooks has explained why he changed his mind and now supports reparations.

  • A big reason that many black voters support Joe Biden, at least for now, is “the politics of pragmatism,” Theodore Johnson wrote in The Washington Post. “When it comes to presidential races, black voters, perhaps more than any other demographic, vote not for what might be gained but according to what might be lost.”

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