by Zona Douthit
[This article in the Sept 2020 issue of Friends Journal examines how Quaker and upper-strata North Americans keep wealth in their own families and perpetuate patterns of sharp disparities in wealth across racial and class divides in the US and the UK.]
Dear friends, do you think you’ll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? —The Epistle of James 2:14 (The Message Bible)
I had a paternal great-great-something grandfather in the eighteenth century who bequeathed his slaves to his wife in his will, and a beloved maternal grandfather who belonged to the Klan in Oklahoma and might have even participated in bombings during the Tulsa race massacre in 1921. I have considered myself “not racist” for many years, but then I am privileged not to have to think about racism all the time. Four hundred years of slavery and structural racism are a burden that all white Americans must acknowledge and affirmatively seek to repair, but the sticky question is how to pay for those reparations.
Personally, I have long struggled with the concept of reparations for slavery and racism. How much would it cost? Where would the money come from? How much is enough? Whom would it benefit? How would it be paid out? How much easier it might have been to appease my white conscience if each slave had actually received 40 acres and a mule. Then my white conscience might be able to get away with thinking: They had a chance to be just like us, or what more do they want?, or my white conscience’s personal favorite: My ancestors came here with nothing. Of course, those justifications cower when they come face to face with the monster that is structural racism.
Ibram X. Kendi, director and founder of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, historian, and author of the mind-bending bestseller How to Be an Antiracist, says: “The most threatening racist movement is not the alt right’s unlikely drive for a white ethnostate but the regular American’s drive for a ‘race-neutral’ one.” He urges his readers, Black and white, to be antiracist, rather than non-racist. “[A]s with ‘not racist,’ the color-blind individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to see racism and falls into racist passivity.”
“An antiracist is someone who is supporting antiracist policy by their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.” Kendi says you have to work at being an antiracist like you have to work at overcoming an addiction. “To be antiracists is a radical choice in the face of history, requiring a radical reorientation of our consciousness.” We all must “knowingly strive to be antiracist.” It is not enough to say, “I am not racist,” or “I don’t care what color someone’s skin is.” Those attitudes are—my attitude has been—harmful because it is an attempt to abnegate personal responsibility for the structural racism our history and society have created.
I truly believe in my heart that I harbor no ill will toward anyone based on their race or country of origin, but Kendi has made me realize that what I believe is not enough. I have to do something about racism. Passivity feeds racism. Antiracism is my personal responsibility, and it is time to do something radical.
We have all been parties to racial inequality—even nice, liberal people. For a succinct history of how our government gave advantages to those of European descent and affirmatively held back Black Americans, read ”Reparations Need to Be Part of the Conversation about Racial Justice” by Nichole Nelson in the Washington Post (June 29, 2020). Racist policies and laws have explicitly and implicitly deprived Black people of the opportunity to build wealth. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Black Americans’ household income is 30 percent less than that of white, non-Hispanic households. The typical white family has a net worth ten times greater than a typical Black family.
Economists Darrick Hamilton and William A. Darity Jr. wrote in an article for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review:
[W]ealth is iterative: It provides people with the necessary initial capital to purchase an appreciating asset, which in turn generates more and more wealth, and can be passed from one generation to the next.
They found that race is a stronger prediction of wealth than class. Shockingly, they cite numerous academic studies, going all the way back to Milton Friedman in 1957, that conclude this disparity is due to differences in intelligence and diligence among the races. How could academic journals print articles like that? The answer is easy: structural racism. For example, they cite a 2015 study that attributed the wealth gap to Blacks’ and Latinos’ investing in “low-return” assets like housing instead of “a more diverse asset portfolio.” Did the author of that study mean to say that poor people were better off investing in the stock market than putting a roof over the heads of their families?
Hamilton and Darity conclude:
[I]nheritance, bequest, and in vivo transfer account for more of the racial wealth gap than any other behavioral, demographic, or socioeconomic indicator. Access to this non-merit-based seed money is not based on some action or inaction on the part of the individual, but rather the familial position into which they are born.
Furthermore, Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, defines white privilege as “an invisible package of unearned assets.” Inherited assets are a conspicuous example of “unearned assets.” History proves that whites have overwhelmingly benefited from inherited assets.
I am an estate planning attorney and a baby boomer. By 2030, some experts have calculated that the baby-boomer generation might leave their millennial heirs as much as $68 trillion. Even if that estimate is wrong by half, it will represent one of the greatest wealth transfers ever, akin to Genghis Khan splitting his empire between his four sons. However, that flood of wealth will not be distributed equally. Most of the wealth transfer will go from the top tier to their well-educated, successful, adult offspring.
I have worked with many nice people to help them establish a plan for the future, and I know that people have an almost instinctive need to leave their heirs whatever they have accumulated in their lives, even if their bequest will be excess wealth to their heirs. When I ask—and I always do—“Would you like to leave something to charity?” with rare exceptions that usually include my Quaker friends, the clients purse their lips, seeming uncomfortable that I asked, and shake their heads no. Even the Quakers want to leave a legacy mostly to the “family” of Quaker organizations and even then it’s usually only a small percentage of their total estates. I know how radical my proposal below will seem; it was hard for me to accept.
My radical proposal to address reparations for slavery and discrimination is to leave most or all of your estate to organizations that directly promote racial equality and justice rather than to your well-educated, successful, adult offspring.
I devoted 18 years to raising my son which I know resulted in his being the healthy, intelligent, educated, and happy man he is today. He graduated from college with no debt. He makes more than a “good” living, as does his accomplished wife. They live in a beautiful home, and their children will go to excellent schools. I am confident I have done the best I could for him. The money in my estate will not be life-altering for him; it would be excess wealth.
However, if I give most of my estate to organizations that directly benefit Black people and causes, my money could substantially change many lives. If thousands and thousands of us did it, reparations would happen without the need for public debate or a political movement or a congressional vote. It would be a matter of personal responsibility.