It Is Time for Reparations

In a piece for the NY Times called What Is Owed, Nikole Hannah-Jones argues that because of its sanction of slavery and subsequent legalized racial segregation and discrimination, it is time for the United States government to pay its debt to Black Americans in form of reparations.

To summarize, none of the actions we are told black people must take if they want to “lift themselves” out of poverty and gain financial stability — not marrying, not getting educated, not saving more, not owning a home — can mitigate 400 years of racialized plundering. Wealth begets wealth, and white Americans have had centuries of government assistance to accumulate wealth, while the government has for the vast history of this country worked against black Americans doing the same.

“The cause of the gap must be found in the structural characteristics of the American economy, heavily infused at every point with both an inheritance of racism and the ongoing authority of white supremacy,” the authors of the Duke study write. “There are no actions that black Americans can take unilaterally that will have much of an effect on reducing the wealth gap. For the gap to be closed, America must undergo a vast social transformation produced by the adoption of bold national policies.”

This piece is one of the best things I’ve read this year. It is clear, focused, powerful, and persuasive. There is no amount of money that anyone could ever pay to make up for the 400+ years of absolute shit rained down on Black people by the United States of America and its precursors, but nevertheless, reparations are the only just and moral way forward for the United States.

P.S. Here’s the Duke study mentioned in the excerpt above: What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap. And the book containing a detailed plan for reparations mentioned by Hannah-Jones is From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century (ebook).

Update: Terry Gross interviewed Hannah-Jones on Fresh Air about reparations.

I think that reparations can’t just be any one thing. I think that you have to have targeted investment in Black communities and Black schools that have been generationally under-resourced. You certainly need to have a commitment to strong enforcement of existing civil rights laws, because reparations don’t do any good if you’re still facing rampant employment and housing and educational discrimination. But the center of any reparations program has to be cash payments. The only thing that closes a wealth gap is money.

• economics
• Nikole Hannah-Jones
• racism
• slavery
• Terry Gross
• USA

More on the mattress racket

I wrote a post the other day about how name-brand mattresses are a scam and lower-cost alternatives. In a 2009 interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, Josh Kosman provided one reason why mattresses are so expensive: private equity firms.

In the mattress industry, private equity firms bought Sealy and Simmons, the number one and number two brands by a mile. They stopped really competing against each other. They cut costs, and they raised the prices of the mattresses. They started focusing only on the top end and stopped even making mattresses really for middle-income people that cost less than $1,000. So basically simplifying this over time, as they bought Simmons and sold it to another PE firm three or four years later, and same with Sealy, the buyers — the sellers would make a lot of money, and the buyers felt, well, we can keep raising prices because there’s no competition. We own Sealy, and we own Simmons. It’s different firms, but they both have the same aim: to make a short-term profit, not to beat each other up on price. What happened over time was they couldn’t raise the prices anymore, and the prices were raised double the price of inflation, double the rate of inflation. They cut the beds in half, so you came up with no-flip mattresses. That cut their manufacturing costs, but it also…

…it also sent their earnings soaring, even though the beds don’t last as long. (thx, @gokari)

• business
• Josh Kosman
• Terry Gross

Live from February 1996

Roger Ebert just tweeted:

Terry Gross is re-running an interview with Gene Siskel and me on NPR’s “Fresh Air” today.

The episode isn’t up on NPR’s site yet, but a search of the archives turns up only one hit for Gene Siskel on Fresh Air:

Film Critics GENE SISKEL and ROGER EBERT join Terry Gross on stage in Chicago for a “live” audience version of Fresh Air. This was recorded in February 1996. The duo began their TV collaboration in 1975 on Chicago Public Television station WTTW. After two successful season, the program became a national PBS show. In 1981 it moved to commercial television.Their show is now known as “Siskel and Ebert” and is heard in 180 markets. Gene Siskel is film colmnist for the Chicago Tribune, and Roger Ebert is critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. “Siskel and Ebert” has been nominated for five national emmy awards. Ebert has recieved a Pulitzer Prize for film criticism.

I don’t know how people in the industry feel, but for me, the internet is the best thing that ever happened to radio.

• Fresh Air
• Gene Siskel
• movies
• radio
• Roger Ebert
• Terry Gross