Reparations: Closing The Racial Wealth Gap

According to a study done by an organization called “Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies”, the median Black wealth is expected to fall to zero by the year 2053. This is a crisis. In DC, White households have 88 times the wealth of a Black households. Nearly 90 percent of all WEALTH in DC is held by white families.  DC has the biggest racial wealth gap in America and the largest unemployment gap between black and white households.

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White households on average had a net worth of 284,000 and Black households a median net worth of 3,500 dollars.

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If we know that white people have more wealth due to the racial oppression of Black people, then Black people should be given wealth to close the gap.

Addison will fight to distribute one-time payments of 300,000 dollars to every Blackhouse hold over a span of 15 years.

 

The amount of 300, 000 dollars was chosen because according to the most recent data, the median net worth of white households in DC was 300,000 more dollars than Black households.

For this legislation, “Black” refers to descendants of Black people who were enslaved on USA’s soil and survived Jim Crow. 

 

Addison will also fight for the Black Wall Street Act that he wrote. The Black Wall Street Act will allow Black people to control the economic development in their neighborhoods. Every ethnic group should have the right to control the economic development in their neighborhoods.

 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that one of the main reason's many Black neighborhoods remain poor is due to non-Black people from outside Black neighborhoods, owning the building and businesses in Black neighborhoods.  He mentioned how non-Black people who own these businesses and buildings take their profit and bring it back to their non-black neighborhoods without reinvesting it into the Black neighborhood that they profit from. Billions of dollars are removed through the Black community and transferred to these non-Black communities.

Those billions of dollars could go to improving schools, roads, and fixing the dilapidated  infrastructure in low income Black neighborhoods, as well as bringing new businesses to the community. 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: 

"The problem that we face is that the ghetto is a domestic colony that’s constantly drained without being replenished. And you are always telling us to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps, and yet we are being robbed every day. Put something back in the ghetto"(King 1967)

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"The Northern ghetto had become a type of colonial area. The colony was powerless because all important decisions affecting the community were made from the outside. Many of its inhabitants even had their daily lives dominated by the welfare worker and the policeman. The profits of landlord and merchant were removed and seldom if ever reinvested." (King 1966)

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Those billions of dollars that are drained from our community could go to improving schools, roads, and fixing the dilapidated infrastructure in low-income Black neighborhoods, as well as bringing new businesses and affordable housing to the community. 

 

The Black Wall Street Act will keep the money flowing into our community, ensuring that the majority of contracts going to building owners and business owners operating in a Black neighborhood, are going to those who are Black and live in that neighborhood.  The Black Wall Street Act will allow the Black community to control the economic development and housing in Black neighborhoods, opposed to wealthy white real estate developers.

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Studies have also shown that having Black owned businesses reduces youth crime due to adding jobs and Black business owners acting as mentors and role models within the community.

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