Racial Inequality, Economic Dysfunction, and Reparations

Racism is a social mechanism that justifies, and helps make possible, a wide range of decisions. These occur in education, housing, finance, employment, and training. These decisions make possible and reinforce the wrongful accumulation of wealth by the beneficiaries of racism as a class. So racism...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Challenge (White Plains) 1995-11, Vol.38 (6), p.40-45
Main Author: America, Richard F.
Format: Magazinearticle
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
Compound interest
Economic benefits
Economic theory
Economics
Employment
Employment discrimination
Guilt
Human capital
Income
Income distribution
Interest rates
Noncitizens
Prejudice
Present value
Race
Racial discrimination
Racial inequality
Racism
Reparations
Restitution
Slavery
Social policy
U.S.A
Unjust enrichment
Wealth
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Summary:Racism is a social mechanism that justifies, and helps make possible, a wide range of decisions. These occur in education, housing, finance, employment, and training. These decisions make possible and reinforce the wrongful accumulation of wealth by the beneficiaries of racism as a class. So racism is an instrument for creating and maintaining economic dominance and unjust economic relationships. It has persisted because, among other reasons, it is beneficial to many people. The Theory of Restitution is based on the intuition that it is possible to: 1. reconstruct historic economic relations, 2. specify "fair" standards that were violated, 3. audit the historic pattern of transactions between the groups and compare the actual with the "fair" standard, 4. estimate the deviation from fairness, 5. designate that result as unjust enrichment, and 6. draw policy implications that will usually be in the form of lump sum or other redistributive income and wealth transfers.
ISSN:0577-5132
1558-1489
DOI:10.1080/05775132.1995.11471865