I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Friday, June 4th.

We talked on Wednesday's show after the commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre about the controversy

that broke out there last week over reparations for survivors and descendants of survivors

of the massacre. So much wealth was destroyed when the so-called Black Wall Street neighborhood

in Tulsa was targeted and destroyed that it has affected the prospects of specific people

who can be identified as individuals in Tulsa and have never been made whole.

Now, beyond centering the history for more public awareness, like was done this week, beyond a

ceremony and a lot of media conversation, what does Tulsa, what does America owe those

families in actual dollars and cents? We talked about that in terms of Tulsa on Wednesday.

Now we'll take it on nationally. Now here's part of the problem. Conventional approaches to closing

the racial wealth gap have only worked to a

limited degree. Here's President Biden acknowledging an example of that in his speech in Tulsa

on Monday. Shockingly, the percentage of Black American homeownership is lower today in America than when the Fair Housing Act

was passed more than 50 years ago. Lower today. That's wrong. And we're committed to changing that.

So the president is proposing a new program to help black Americans buy homes.

It's one of several measures he announced in his Tulsa speech, intended to close the racial

wealth gap.

We'll talk about some of the others with our guest, Andre Perry, from the Brookings Institution

in just a minute.

But equity in a home, think about it, is just one example of the gaping wealth disparities that simply

shouldn't exist anymore or certainly shouldn't be as big as they are if the civil rights laws

and affirmative action and other measures instituted way back in the 1960s were working well

...