From “Dropout to Doctorate: Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice” By Terrence Lester, PhD
In 2014, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s article “The Case for Reparations” went viral. Published in The Atlantic, it detailed the egregious injustices faced by Black people, including mistreatment, land theft, and strategic exclusion from homeownership. He writes, “From the 1930s through the 1960s, black people across the country were largely cut out of the legitimate home-mortgage market.” He makes the case for reparations by detailing how systemic racism has historically contributed to the exclusion of wealth for Black people. He reveals that “the income gap between black and white households is roughly the same today as it was in 1970,” largely due to continuing unjust practices. To illustrate this, Coates introduces the work of Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New York University, who found that from 1955 to 1970, only 4 percent of White children and a staggering 62 percent of Black children in America were raised in impoverished neighborhoods. Sharkey noted, “A generation later, the same study showed, virtually nothing had changed. And whereas whites born into affluent neighborhoods tended to remain in affluent neighborhoods, blacks tended to fall out of them.” Coates examines redlining to illustrate how barriers to homeownership and land access have historically prevented wealth accumulation in Black communities.