A blueprint for reparations in the US | William "Sandy" Darity

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2020

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

With clarity and insight, economist and author William "Sandy" Darity discusses how the grievous injustice of slavery in the US led to the immense wealth gap that currently exists between Black and white Americans. He explains how reparations for descendants of enslaved people would work -- and why it's necessary that the US engage in this act of compensation and redemption to make progress towards true equality. (This virtual conversation, hosted by TED's current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, was recorded June 30, 2020.)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Elise Hu, you're listening to TED Talks Daily.
0:07.2	The racial injustices at the heart of America's past and present have exploded into a serious reckoning this year.
0:14.1	An economist William Sandy Darity has made racial equality, notably through reparations, central to his work.
0:21.9	In his TED 2020 conversation with Ted's current affairs curator, Whitney Pennington Rogers,
0:27.4	Sandy gives us the context we need to really understand what reparations in the United States
0:32.4	would mean. This context about the racial wealth gap is really eye-opening, and he makes a convincing case about how reparations could help heal the nation.
0:44.7	We are really pleased to have William Sandy Dherty as our guest today. Welcome, Sandy.
0:50.7	Thank you for having me. I'd like to begin with a personal story. My grandmother was the daughter of a woman who was the child of persons who were enslaved on Rose Hill Plantation in North Carolina. And as a consequence, my sister and I are the fourth generation removed from slavery.
1:15.0	My grandmother also lived in a town in North Carolina called Wilson, which was a tobacco stapling center.
1:23.1	She lived in a town that was characterized by the classic pattern that's featured in many,
1:29.2	many southern towns in the United States.
1:31.8	There was a railroad track that ran between the black side of town and the white side of town
1:37.5	as an act of separation that was emblematic of the Jim Crow period in the United States.
1:44.7	There was a point at which I wanted to go and see a movie.
1:49.8	Happened to be a Disney movie, after all, an old Disney movie called Darby O'Gill and the Little People.
1:56.9	But it was being shown at the white theater in Wilson, North Carolina.
2:02.0	And my parents refused to let me go because they said, we would be compelled to sit in the balcony.
2:08.7	And they viewed this as an indignity that they were not going to stomach.
2:13.0	And so I wasn't able to go.
2:14.7	I was very hurt because I really wanted to see this movie, but I also came to
2:19.8	realize, as I grew a bit older, that this was an indignity that was relatively minor in a social
2:26.2	context in which lynchings and white massacres had become quite routine. So I would like to
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