When the Black Power movement was in ascendency in the Civil Rights movement, Dr. King was asked what the role of white people was in the movement. King responded with an angry voice, “What do you do when you see someone stuck in a hole? You help him out of the hole.”

Racism hurts white people. Not in the way Charlie Kirk said, but in the sense that hurt people hurt people. White supremacy denies white people of their essential humanity. This is no small thing. Racism has hardened the hearts of white people, egregiously limiting their capacity for compassion, empathy, and love. This is a tragedy. We need to recognize that white people espousing racism or being silent in the face of it are hurting bigtime. 

The US was built on white supremacy. This shouldn’t be a controversial statement. White supremacy wiped out a native population of tens of millions, enabling white people to take over rich “virgin” (uncultivated) land (and yes, their descendents are owed reparations as well). White supremacy enslaved 10 million Africans (killing who knows how many), treating them worse than livestock for centuries. 

The bottom line: The current median household wealth per white household in the US is $285,000. The median wealth per Black households is $40,900. Thus the current racial wealth gap is $244,100 a ratio of 7 to 1. This gap is directly attributable to white supremacy and is the objective measurement of white privilege. 

True reparations for enslavement of Black workers alone at minimum wage, according to ChatGPT, would range from $150 trillion to $800 trillion in 2025 dollars. This doesn’t include what would be owed for Jim Crow discrimination. Clearly, such a debt is unpayable. On the other hand, ChatGPT estimates today’s value of the promised but never delivered 40 acres-and-a-mule would be about $180,000.

The much maligned DEI and affirmative action programs, which are sometimes associated with reparations, hardly address the wealth gap at all. There have been many proposals to substitute programs for cash payments – free education, subsidized housing, etc – but, however well-meaning, few come close to promising authentic equality. A comprehensive analysis of such alternatives is available here: https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/media/exec-summary-ca-reparations.pdf. Another great resource is from the Movement for Black Lives: https://m4bl.org/policy-platforms/reparations/  

One compelling possibility would be to pay Black households for the housing discrimination they suffered after World War II when the Federal Housing Authority built the white-only suburbs like Leavitt Town and Westlake (see Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law). Since the housing segregation was a relatively recent program of the Federal Government – many of us were alive at the time – that government  should pay all Black households (as determined by census) the wealth difference, call it $250,000,  This is a miniscule amount compared to what the Black population is actually owed, but it is a doable amount. For those who think this amount is insufficient, let’s consider it a down payment.

There are currently about 18 million Black households in the US. Hence the total cost of this program would be 4.5 trillion, or 63% on the 7.2 trillion federal budget. However if the amount was paid out over ten years and distributed on a needs basis, with the neediest getting the money first, the annual amount would be 450 billion, or 6.26% of the federal budget, about half the net interest on the federal debt, about half the amount for the bloated military. A tax on the many corporations and banks that profited from slavery and/or housing discrimination would be an appropriate source. 

In order to get to the place where such reparations might be feasible, we will need to challenge white supremacy vociferously and ferociously. We need to persuade our white working class siblings that not only would joining such a struggle give them back their full humanity, it would increase their material well-being by unifying the working class to effectively fight the billionaire class. Clearly the racial divisions are the primary factor in keeping wages and working conditions down and profits of billionaires up. 

We will also need to make sure that the true history of the role of white supremacy is taught in our schools and our families, contradicting the current trend of minimizing its role. White people need to take responsibility for our history.

Obviously, no reparations program will happen overnight. There are steps that can be taken now that could help, such as making Washington, DC a state, eliminating the Electoral College, proportioning votes in the Senate according to population. We could start by persuading Congress to pass the original Conyers Bill, HR 40, establishing a Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, introduced every year since 1989, most recently in January 2025 by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, but never passed. 

Convincing masses of white people to support reparations may be the best way to break the stranglehold of white supremacy on our society – as well as giving Black families back at least some of the resources of which they’ve been historically deprived.