#10 - The Racial Wealth Gap: It's Our Turn Now

TRANSCRIPT

ADAM  0:01 

One great thing about America, it really is the land of opportunity. Everybody here has the chance to make it to the middle class. You just have to work hard and stick with it. So when we hear this stuff about black people still having way less wealth than white people? I don't know, seems like there's gotta be a reason, like, you know, they say maybe it's black families not staying together, or maybe something in the black culture, like relying maybe too much on the government. Maybe Black people are just not working hard enough.

TONY  0:32 

Hmm. Yeah, for sure. That's what people say. But people say a lot of stupid shit. Not true. What I know about our culture is that black people in America have been some of the hardest working and most determined people in the history of the world. You know, our enslaved ancestors persevered through horrific conditions than years of lynching and other forms of racial violence, often at the hands of the state. And today, we still exist within an oppressive system that's rooted in white supremacy. So yeah, the wealth gap is the natural result of a stacked deck that was designed to create unequal opportunities and outcomes. So to anyone who suggests that the gap is a byproduct of black people, just not working hard enough or making bad choices, you know, I call bullshit on that.

ADAM  1:15 

All right then.

ADAM  1:50 

So there's lots of different kinds of reparations, there's lots of different issues we look at. But really a key measure is what they call the racial wealth gap. So what is that? Right? Basically, it refers to the huge difference in resources that black families and white families in America have.

TONY  2:07 

Not just money,

ADAM  2:08 

Exactly, money is a big part of it. But that's just part of it. The racial wealth gap is a key topic for reparations, because those dollar amounts that we look at are a measure that we can see today of all those years, you were talking about of injustice in our country, all kinds of added up. And it really is the elephant in the room in these discussions. The shocking difference today, between the wealth of the average black family and the average white family in America, I mean, it's it's insane. It's not, not like double the amount or triple the amount

TONY  2:41 

Not even five times the amount.

ADAM  2:43 

Exactly, the average white family in America has 10 times the financial resources of the average black family. And like you said, we're not just talking about money, we're not just talking about the income folks have, although that's an issue too. So. But wealth refers to everything that you own, minus all of your debts. And black people just have way, way less resources. So really, we need to ask, Why do white people have so much more wealth than black people? The short answer is, it's a long and very nasty history, like you were saying, you know, our country has created a segregated and racist system, where most black people have had no chance to ever create or build wealth. And meanwhile, over and over, our government has given out a golden goose to white America. So today, we'll go deeper into how this extreme inequality came about, and how we've all been brainwashed to believe a bunch of false myths that are used to somehow justify it,

TONY  3:39 

So we're excited to be joined today by Mehrsa Baradaran, a professor at UC Irvine law school, and a leading expert on the racial wealth gap. She's the author of The Color of Money, which is the definitive book on the origins of the gap and why it hasn't gone away. Professor burradon has some great ideas for making reparations to black Americans, in essence, using some of the same approaches that helped white America build its wealth in the first place. Later, we'll dive into one of her key proposals. So she spoke to us about wealth and how it extends way beyond just how much money you have.

MEHRSA  4:16 

Wealth is about assets, right? I mean, obviously, you know that, but it's not it is also about where you live, where your kids go to school, your social, your social capital, your neighborhood, how policed you are, you know, the racial wealth gap explains, you know, COVID outcomes, environmental outcomes, you know, explains Flint water crisis that explains over policing. It's like, you know, where George Floyd was murdered was in a redlined zone. It was at a food desert.... It's an environmental hazard. And those are not coincidences.

ADAM  4:47 

So how did we get to this extreme inequality? We really need to back up a little because there's a whole lot of history that has added up over time to get us where we are now. Let's go all the way back to the 1860s, most black people in America were just coming out of enslavement. And the vast majority of black folks had nothing at all. We had the criminal system of sharecropping in the south, where basically black people were forced to work and just make no money at all. It was just this total scam. And you also had the convict leasing system where all these bogus laws were written that made it a crime to do just about - basically just being black was a crime. They could throw people in jail, and then force him to work for free,

TONY  5:26 

which sounds a whole lot like being enslaved.

ADAM  5:29 

It sure does. Yeah. And they've said that for a lot of people, that situation was actually worse than it was under slavery with his convict leasing system is horrific. So black people at the time, had no money, no way to make money and forget about saving. And at the same time, white Americans were getting massive help from the government, getting land cheap and easy. And you had these homestead acts throughout the 1800s, where the US government gave out lands that were of course, stolen from indigenous peoples throughout the country, and basically throwing the land at white people to help speed up the takeover of the continent,

TONY  6:05 

like free or practically free. Right?

ADAM  6:07 

Exactly. And Mehrsa has actually said that this was about 10%, of the total acreage of the United States was was given away at that time, to millions of white families. And they also say, you know, a huge number of white Americans today can trace their family wealth back to those giveaways of the 1800s.

TONY  6:25 

Yeah, just imagine how the situation would be different today. If that, you know, if that land had been spread around more, you know, more equally,

ADAM  6:32 

you get to the turn of the 20th century, and the government throws even more obstacles into black people's paths. Were at the time, you know, most black people were still in the south and facing just daily terror and violence and Jim Crow discrimination, all aspects of life or being controlled, there was this system that just absolutely prevented black people from building wealth. Right. And, you know, once in a while, against all odds, you know, some black people did make some money and had successful businesses, but you know, as soon as they saw big success, guess what happened? Right? Their gains were snatched away by government sanctioned violence.

TONY  7:08 

Well, yeah, we know what happened because we, you know, we're familiar now with the, you know, Bruce's Beach, you know, situation here in Southern California, and a thriving, you know, beachside resort that was just hijacked, you know, ganked by, you know, the government under some eminent domain bullshit. And, you know, obviously, the Tulsa race massacre, which was another example of a thriving, you know, Black Enterprise that was just, you know, burned asunder.

ADAM  7:33 

Yeah, a whole black city.

TONY  7:35 

So, you know, deeper into the 20th century, the gap continues to grow, we witnessed a housing boom, for white people that was largely spurred by, you know, several different government programs. Right, there were the new New Deal programs, there was the GI Bill, and we discussed in prior episode how the GI Bill went to very few black folks, especially in the south, only a handful of black folks here and there. And then most renal, particularly to this episode, the Federal Housing Administration, the FHA, which created a fund to ensure home loans. These were easy loans, low down payments, low interest rates, very favorable payment terms.

TONY  8:16 

And it was a game changer, right blue collar workers who were previously shut out of the home buying game could now buy home and create a pathway to wealth. Yep, big catch. Not surprisingly, black people were excluded from these opportunities. Moving on further into the into the century, there was an explosion of, of the suburbs. Now at this point, the European immigrants and Italians, Irish and other immigrants were able to cross over basically in you know, allowed into the club, where previously they had been excluded. Right? They weren't considered white, they were not considered Right. Right. But magically they they they were able to, you know, lighten up and become wider be deemed white. Not so much for black folks, right, who were still excluded from them.

TONY  9:01 

Mehrsa, explained how the suburbs built wealth and helped create the American middle class. But only for those who are allowed to live there.

MEHRSA  9:08 

You create Levittown or whatever Scarsdale or whatever, and you give loans to the white people. And that, you know, and and the Italians and the Irish and that's when they became white, by the way, right? Because they weren't before that. Yep. And Jewish people and everyone else who wasn't just like Polish and German everybody. So they're, they would have been paying $50 a month for a tenement house with rats and disease. And now they're paying $35 a month for a mortgage. And they're appreciating in value and they have a park, they have a school, they have a tax base is all of those taxes go into the school and that that community.

TONY  9:42 

At the same time that this is going on the federal government created obstacles to black wealth. One very instrumental tool was redlining. Yeah, we've talked about that before. In essence, again, government created color coded maps of every metropolitan area in the country. Neighborhoods with or near high concentrations of black people were coded red, and therefore considered too risky to insure home loans. In fact, there's there's a line in the FHA underwriting manual the time that said, quote, incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities.

ADAM  10:19 

It's amazing when you look at some of those maps with a bunch of different colors. And basically, the very worst color red was predominantly black neighborhoods, you know, the best color green? it was, you know, lily white, waspy neighborhood or whatever. And then you have all these different variations with, you know, how many immigrants are there, are there Jewish people. And it was this really just blatant Nazi shit that the government was doing.

TONY  10:42 

The government was doing, it wasn't just, you know, private citizens, you know, transacting business. This was government backed government sanctioned government promoted.

ADAM  10:50 

Right. In fact, it's really sad. But Adolf Hitler, one of his key inspirations was the way our government handled race in the first half of the 20th century.

TONY  10:57 

Yeah, how frightening is that? Right? So the upshot of all that was that black people couldn't get a loan for homes and neighborhoods on the rise. Right? And then we're caught in this in this really, you know, vicious cycle where, you know, we were restricted to live in certain areas, those areas of those neighborhoods were deemed less attractive, precisely because we live there. And properties only lost value as a result of that. Alright, so as Mehrsa told us, various government agencies and the Supreme Court treated black people with contempt and undeserving of benefits afforded white people.

MEHRSA  11:30 

When you look at the the neighborhoods, right, that that a lot of black and brown communities, but black communities especially live in, it's always been this sort of ghetto, ghettoized system. And the ghetto is I'm using the word purposefully because it's a purposeful segregation of a group of people in a enclosed spaces for the purpose of like, you know, corralling. There's this case called Euclid. And this is a 1934 Supreme Court case where they were talking about zoning, and they were putting apartment buildings in this one place and keeping single family homes and the Justice Justice Sutherland says those people like a pig in a barn yard, you know, they were talking in those ways, like we don't want to, it's about the children, we don't want to pollute the children. And it's whose children who gets to count as a child, right? So when you talk about as a child, like, some schools are good, some schools are bad, those kids go to those schools and these kids go to these schools, that that's the fundamental harm of the wealth gap to me, because you're saying my kid deserves safety and nurture. And some kids

TONY  12:32 

don't. Right? Don't. And I don't

MEHRSA  12:35 

want my kid near those kids. I mean, that is the truth of it. That's the truth of it. And it's blatant. It wasn't some under a subconscious thing.

ADAM  12:44 

So our government had these massive programs for the better part of 200 years, giving out all these different golden geese to white Americans, all these properties that were made easy, if not free, then cheap. Mortgages is brand new thing, right? And, and the wealth started building and building and building for white people only.

ADAM  13:04 

And through all these policies, our government also created full legal segregation in America, North and South, East and West, which we still mostly have today. One thing that really jumped out at me from nurses book is one of the side effects of these housing policies was our government basically ensured that anti black racism would keep growing by equating black people with lower property values by making that actual law. So white people become genuinely afraid when they see a black person move in next door. It's like, oh, shoot, I'm going to lose money. Now. There goes my property value and all this wealth I built up in my house.

TONY  13:41 

Yeah, well, the tagline was, you know, there goes the neighborhood, right?

ADAM  13:45 

That's exactly where that came from. Yeah, absolutely. You know, so we have this this genuine fear and hatred that just gets added on to what was already there because of these housing policies. So what do we see right we see restrictive covenants, which is where you know, it's built into the deeds of all these houses in the suburbs and elsewhere that basically only people with the so called Caucasian race that is, can't can own the house and you also have mob violence and just all this this crazy, crazy behavior that happens when black people try to move into a different neighborhood.

TONY  14:21 

Well and Adam, a crazy sidenote about the restrictive covenants is that they're still on the books today. Right even even though they're no longer enforceable, they are still documented, you know, which is which is sickening on the one hand, but on the other hand, I'm actually a little glad about that, not not glad, but but, you know, that goes to, you know, a couple of the points that are you know, we're, you know, big on here, pay the tab, which is truth telling and reckoning

ADAM  14:50 

Yeah, let's not sweep it under the rug.

TONY  14:51 

No, no, let's you know, you can go and do research and look and see men, instilling documents that are on the books, you know, restrictive covenants barring a The owners from selling to to black folks.

ADAM  15:02 

And so meanwhile black people are caught in this crazy vicious cycle, right where, you know, the the wealth gap keeps getting worse. And there's just no way out. And so Tony asked Mehrsa about this, when we talked to her.

TONY  15:15 

Black people were caught up in a vicious cycle, right. So we were forced to live in segregated areas, the values of homes in those neighborhoods declined precisely because black people were there. And as a result, we were largely denied the opportunity to gain access to the, you know, the most straightforward pathway to wealth creation and entree to the middle class. I mean, does that does that fairly accurate? I mean, in terms of the cycle that the black people were were in are caught up in?

MEHRSA  15:43 

Yes, that's exactly. That's exactly right. And it was even worse than that, because you you're in this in this ghetto, you're paying 10 times as much. This is a part of the FHA, you know, stuff that we don't talk about the second part, which is consumer credit, the credit card is in the suburbs. And in the ghetto, you have installment credit, which is the most onerous, you're getting Repo Men and the early seeds of the civil rights movement. Was that right? Muhammad Ali talks about, you know, going taking furniture out as they were taking it back, right, that was a community protest. Right. So it was like everything compounding on that. And it was the jobs left white plate, the public transportation left the police the over policing. So it really was this cycle.

TONY  16:25 

Fast forward to the 2008 financial crisis, the worst economic crisis in nearly 80 years. It impacted the entire worldwide financial system, led to a great recession, cost many people their jobs, their homes, their life savings. So you know, it was rough for the United States as a whole, right? But it was cataclysmic for black people. As a group, we lost 53% of our overall wealth. Wow. And you know, Mercer, describe how the black community is always hit the hardest when things go bad.

MEHRSA  17:01 

Everyone would say like, when Wall Street gets a cold, Harlem gets the flu, right? That that is always the case. COVID Look at the PPP loans, anytime you have crisis or recession, the black community's always gonna get hit worse. And that that's just because of the topography of the racial wealth gap. That is what the wealth gap means is you do not have a buffer.

TONY  17:23 

One of the myths we were fed about that time was that the causes of this were, you know, bad choices by consumers, or especially poor people and black folks, that that's what led to the dino defaulting loans in the economy collapse, when reality was that it was a bunch of greedy banks, pushing bad home loans, and making a fortune while Americans lost their shirt.

ADAM  17:43 

Exactly. Yeah, I mean, it was it was often blamed on, you know, these, these loans with the special teaser rates that then had all these payments that came due, and people didn't know what they were doing. They couldn't afford it. They didn't know what they're getting into. But, you know, we've actually heard that lots of black people qualified for a regular straight up 30 year fixed mortgage. Yep. And they were steered into those bad loans by the banks to make more money. Super shady,

TONY  18:09 

Super shady. Right? Exactly. And banks profited, even when people defaulted on the loan. So banks didn't care about the customers one way or the other.

ADAM  18:21 

So today, we have anti discrimination laws on the books, but unfortunately, it's way too late. We live in a fully segregated society, the wealth gap is baked into our system. And we need systemic change for black people to ever be able to catch up.

TONY  18:36 

Yeah, so where do we go from here? You know, if we're serious about eliminating the wealth gap, and creating real change, you know, first we need to confront the myths that we've been fed and start telling the truth about some shit. Yeah, that always has to come first. Right, definitely. Right. So let's let's dig into the propaganda we've been told about race and wealth.

ADAM  18:56 

Yeah, definitely. And there's a few key myths about race and wealth that really all go together, something like this. America is the land of opportunity where everyone can make money and build wealth, first of all, and you know, white immigrants did this. They got to the middle class through hard work and determination, pulling themselves up by th eir bootstraps.

TONY  19:15 

Oh, wait, hang on a second. Whenever I hear that term, you know, it makes me think that I guess black people just didn't own any boots, right? Because whenever I hear about people pulling themsevles up by their bootstraps, it's always some white folks, you know, never hear about black bootstraps ever. Right? So yeah, so maybe boots just aren't a thing in the black community? I don't know.

ADAM  19:35 

Right? So. So part of the myth is also that if we have a racial wealth gap, it must be due to some problem with black people, whether it's making bad choices, whether it's laziness, whether it's relying on the government, you hear all this stuff. This bullshit is just constant in our culture. It's everywhere we look and turn whether it's you know, TV shows, movies, the news, all politicians of every party. You know, you never see depicted in our media black people confronting the mass of racism of our country. You know, instead you just see stereotypes and lies and, and it works its way in, you know, it's like we all breathe the same air. And like Mehrsa told us, there's so many ways that we're all affected by this stuff.

MEHRSA  20:18 

You have internalized racism, right? And if you're honest with yourself, we all it's the water, we swim it, some of us are more aware of it, we see it and we stop it. But you know, as a as a professor, or any, it takes all of it took when I was younger, right? When I was starting out, it took all of my energy not to treat my students differently.

TONY  20:39 

Mehrsa discusses in her book, how these myths have endured, despite being complete fabrications. You know, one aspect that's, you know, somewhat under the radar is, you know, government policies are often you know, quiet, right, a little hidden, not not right on the surface, or above the surface. One example is, all the houses and mortgages being for white people only. Last didn't explicitly state that in every instance, but the practices enforced it, right. So it creates this this disconnect, right, white people wonder like, well, what's, what's the problem? Black folks, right, everyone has equal access to live out the American dream, you know, just work hard strive make good decisions. And, you know, you can do like, like we've done, right. And on the other hand, black folks are, you know, made to feel like, What the fuck is up with that? Like, am I crazy? Yeah, the game feels rigged in so many ways. But yet, you know, we're told that we're playing on a level level field, like what's, you know, what's what's really going on? Right? Right.

ADAM  21:42 

Right. So it must really must be me. We claim to be the land of opportunity and democracy and equality and never have been, at all. And that's the huge disconnect that we all face, right, is that we're told one thing, and reality is a different thing.

TONY  21:55 

And we're talking about from from kindergarten on, right?

ADAM  21:58 

Absolutely, absolutely. Pledge Allegiance and take it from there.

TONY  22:01 

Land ofopportunity. And right, just strive work hard, you know, stay out of trouble. And you know, all is groovy.

ADAM  22:07 

Right? So as we've seen, the reality here is very different from the myth that we're told. And the white middle class did not just spring out of nowhere, it didn't just use bootstraps. It came from huge government assistance, whether it was the land grants, whether it was the cheap and easy mortgages, whether it was all these different ways to promote wealth building, especially through homeownership, which, by the way, is a great thing. I'm a big fan of the government, which technically is all of us, putting our resources together to do good things for each other. That's when it's supposed to be, you know, we're supposed to help people out and help people build wealth, you just kind of do it for everybody.

TONY  22:44 

Exactly.

ADAM  22:44 

Don't do it for one one member of your society. That's insane. So meanwhile, our government is also like you say, putting up these huge roadblocks to prevent black people from building wealth, not just you're not in the club, but we're also going to have these extra rules for you. So you can't even get started. Make sure you don't get in. Yep. And so Tony asked Mehrsa, about the huge double standard that white and black Americans face,

TONY  23:06 

There's a line in your book that I thought really captured that point where you say, black poverty has been viewed as a moral failing, whereas white poverty had been viewed as a systemic problem.

MEHRSA  23:15 

Yeah, yeah. And there's a quote by Martin Luther King, I think it starts the book that says, you know, if these numbers were given in the white community, you would call it a depression, it would have been a depression for hundreds of years, like, Great Depression, the unemployment numbers, the economic numbers, and it is it has been a depression. And there's been no real remedies. And that's the thing I was going after is the myth that, oh, we've tried these things we haven't we've not tried anything.

TONY  23:45 

So what do we do? Right, Mehrsa has some really great ideas for how America can start making amends. You know, and how, you know, we can begin to reverse the effects of massive government systems that prevented black people from building wealth. The answer really lies in huge government programs to turn that around, right? That's right. You know, things are so entrenched that sometimes it can seem impossible to get access to affordable housing to build wealth, right. So how do we get started? You know, Marissa has a really great proposal that she's come up with, and she calls it the Homestead Act for 21st century. And in a nutshell, the US government would use the same approach for black Americans that it did for white America in the 20th century, which was massive subsidies for homeownership.

ADAM  24:33 

So the way it works is like this, the government buys up a whole bunch of abandoned houses in distressed neighborhoods, very poor areas, and then sells them cheap to people who need them the most. And it does it by property grants with super low interest mortgages, and people's monthly payments would be much less than they're paying for rent now. And then people are able to build wealth, and the government also pays for much needed Home Improvements in these house as is, and it would really work just like the New Deal, like you said, Congress creates a homestead Trust, which buys up these houses, issues bonds.

ADAM  25:08 

So Mehrsa has all the financial details of this plan fully worked out and spelled out, which we will have included on our show notes. So people get these cheap mortgages, they pay them off, and maybe 10 or 20 years, and then the house is there's free and clear. And as Marisa points out, you know, this kind of action can transform a whole neighborhood, you know, by by changing the area from a high poverty area to a low poverty area. So quickly, all the cycles of suffering can be disrupted within one generation, she says

TONY  25:37 

like that,

ADAM  25:38 

exactly. So another part of it is where this would happen. And Marissa says we should focus on neighborhoods and small to medium sized cities that have really broken housing markets, what they call hyper vacancy, where there's just a super high percentage of abandoned homes, and you know, it's impossible to get a loan. So all the prices are really cheap. Yeah, and she says cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, buffalo, Philadelphia, there's lots of places that have areas that are really ready for this kind of program.

TONY  26:06 

Yeah, who, who would be included in this program? You know, we can we can already hear some folks, you know, wondering, well, you know, it's not fair to just, you know, give this to black people, there's some poor white folks who should also be included, so fine, but it won't be based on race, ethnicity, you know, if the goal is to repair harm to folks that were shut out of the housing market, because of descript discriminatory practices, then let's look at that as a criteria. Right? Let's Let's offer these homes under this new Homestead Act to folks that live in areas that were formerly red line, or are currently living in segregated areas. And if it helps, we can also add in, you know, an income, you know, factor to it, that folks that are making less than them, you know, surely in salary for that area. So it's not even about race.

ADAM  26:51 

Okay. Yeah. And, you know, it's always important when we're talking about these things to remember that, of course, there's lots of Americans who are suffering these days, especially, I mean, times are crazy hard, there's a lot of people who can't afford a home who need a place. And it's not just black people, of course, but you know, this topic that we're looking at here is reparations for black Americans. And it just so happens that, like you say, if you just look at redlined areas, black people were specifically targeted,

TONY  27:17 

frozen out,

ADAM  27:18 

and by the segregation program our country has always had, it's all it's all about race, and it's all about discrimination against black people. So, you know, I think it is important, like you say, to be smart, and you know, she's a law professor, and she's got great ideas for ways to make things actually happen in the courts and all that. But we should also keep in mind, you know, this stuff was disproportionately based on race and on black people.

TONY  27:40 

Right. Absolutely. You know, we can also, you know, imagine that some folks will wonder, like, how are we going to pay for this, right? Sounds sounds a hell of expensive, right? And are gonna pay for us the big, you know, the big, you know, how are we going to, it's like, alright, well, okay, fair question. But let's, let's get real about it. Right, our government always finds ways to pay for data wants to do take the trillions of dollars we spend on wars. Right, we find a way to fund that we fund that, right? And so, you know, we don't want to be, you know, glib about this and act as if money isn't an issue for sure it is, but but let's also understand that, you know, when we want to do something, we find a way to get it done.

ADAM  28:22 

Yeah, like you were saying, our government spends just incomprehensible amounts of money on war, you know, the so called War on Terror. We ran a few numbers on that, you know, all the wars that we created in the Middle East since 2001. And basically, we as taxpayers have spent $7 trillion just on those wars. Wow. And with the result of what a lot of good profits for corporations and executives, the oil companies did great, you know, plus almost a million people were killed in the wars, a lot of PTSD, just horrifying cost. But basically $7 trillion of money as well. And which comes out to over those 20 some years. That's just about a billion dollars a day of our tax dollars.

ADAM  29:08 

So you know, what can we spend that money on? Let let's say we take just, you know, $1 trillion, and I just ran, I'm a numbers nerd. So I just ran a couple numbers on that, you know, if these houses Mehrsa's talking about in this program, which go for about $100,000 including repairs, you know, the houses themselves are cheaper, but let's say $100,000 per house. So take just 1 trillion. Comes out to 10 million houses.

TONY  29:33 

Wow.

ADAM  29:33 

And that's if you give them away right that's that's if you're not even counting people having a small mortgage or something. So 10 million houses. That's like houses for all of black America. Right? They're -

TONY  29:44 

At least a decent chunk of black Am erica.

ADAM  29:46 

Pretty good chunk. Yeah. And so you know, and that's just with a tiny fraction of the so called War on Terror. So yeah, don't get me started about how are we going to pay for it?

TONY  29:56 

Yeah. And don't don't get him started on math either. He said he said he was a math nerd. not a nerd nerd.

ADAM  30:02 

We asked Mehrsa some final questions about reparations and how everyone benefits when our society invests in helping the people who are most in need.

TONY  30:10 

Some people, some white people will certainly fear that they're going to lose out under any reparations plan, right? You're an economics expert. And you say that reparations isn't a zero sum game, but actually, everybody would benefit from that. So can you explain that for us?

MEHRSA  30:25 

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, you know, reparations, I think, is the moral sense of it. But the programs of financial programs are like the New Deal. They're just like, it's like dropping money. It's a incentive. So Keynesian spending makes money. We saw that during COVID. Like you, you spend, and I'm just saying routed here, we're already spending trillions to boost the economy. And the economic data shows if you give a bank a trillion dollars, they're gonna keep a lot of it and not invest it. If you give poor people a trillion dollars, that money is gonna go right into the economy. It's gonna be like a, like a jolt, right? We know this. We know this.

MEHRSA  30:59 

We knew that during the New Deal, if you give poor people money that boosts because you give someone a house and a job and broadband, think about all of the stuff that starts blowing, you get the kids in school, you have that that's the other investment that we're missing is the kids and the brilliance, the genius of these kids that we're just not educating, right? We're not We're not giving enough resources to like the future, right. Our new saw our future scientists or future like, you know, we're that that's the tragedy coming. I have three kids, I see it intimately. It's just such a tragedy. I mean, this is our future. All those kids are our kids. Those are our kids. And until we see that we're never we're not going to be a healthy country.

ADAM  31:44 

Wow. Well, two more quick questions, and we will let you get on your way. We really appreciate your time. So do you see any signs of hope you've described yourself as an eternal optimist. And obviously, throughout our history, you know, any attempt to overcome racial injustice has always met with violent resistance, like you say any black success has been met with violent resistance. Do you see signs of hope today? That things might be different and might be trending in different direction for our society?

MEHRSA  32:10 

Yeah, I think things are changing. I think there is a waking up that is happening. And I think it's not institutions, its people. And this is this is where I think my hope is, it is in people that are sick of doing things that way and people whose hearts are opening to each other. And really just and this is I'm not saying this in like a milquetoast way I'm saying this in like, you know, like, the way Baldwin talks about love, or, you know, Gandhi or Mandela, or, you know, Martin Luther King talk about love. And what they mean by love isn't like romance and diamond rings, it is like, love of each other. This is the all those kids are my kids, that kind of love, there's no other option. And that kind of love is revolutionary, and it does happen in people. And I think that I've started to see a lot more of not enough yet. But that kind of love.

MEHRSA  33:03 

It's just like a tipping point, it's really, you don't need everybody, you need just a little bit and then you start changing, you start breathing together. And I think we're at we're at a point, we've been at a point where we actually as a world have to start breathing together, or else we're all going down. And so it's either either we start to understand that we are like an IRL connect together, all connected, or we're just gonna blow ourselves up. And that's just a stupid thing to do. Because we are such a great species. Like if we're going to Anthropocene, like let's do this, right, right, let's let the earth heal and let us all heal each other. But first, like, repair.

ADAM  33:43 

That's fantastic. Well, Professor, you really have a gift for tying things together very politically, we really appreciate that. Very last question. Quick Tips for our listeners, if folks are hearing this and want to get involved in fighting, housing, segregation, fighting some of the continuing problems that we've had for stuck for so many decades in this country, what are some ways our listeners can get involved? Right off the bat?

MEHRSA  34:04 

I say use your talents. Use your passion, use your skills, don't you know not It's not everyone's fight is not the same fight. But as long as you stay true, and like have the integrity that I'm in this fight, use your own skills, like I'm just a writer and a reader. So I'm going to read and write my way, but I'm not going to be the builds are not going to like build homes, like you know, but if you build homes, go build homes, right? If you are an artist, a poet who can inspire people do that. If you can beautify spaces, you know, go do that. If you can heal hearts go be with the children. I mean, there really are so many places for people to act. out one, it's not one thing. There's so many things.

TONY  34:44 

Thank you so much. We can't, thank you so much. We know how busy you are with your family and your work and all that. So taking so much time to deal with us and be in conversation. Really, really a pleasure. Thank you.

ADAM  34:54 

Thanks so much. Mehrsa.

MEHRSA  34:55 

Take it nice to meet you. Thank you.

TONY  34:57 

Be well.

TONY  35:02 

So that was a lot, man, you know, Mercer is this deep, some deep shit she dropped, she's got a lot to say a lot to say, you know, in a different in different aspects. I mean, there's the technical sort of, you know, economic side of it right. And the number is, you know, based on her background, but there was also some deep like spirituality or Yeah, yeah, you know that that was just, you know, I thought was really, really, really, you know, powerful. The way that she kind of brought brought those two aspects together.

ADAM  35:30 

Yeah, totally. I mean that, you know, spirituality and just ethics doing the right thing is so often missing from conversations about paying and economics and stuff. But it's great to know that she's not only a law professor, but an expert in banking and economics. She's, she knows the shit she's talking about. She definitely does. And when she says that, you know, something can be done, it can be done.

TONY  35:51 

It's really incredible, amazing how long lasting these racial myths can be. Right? The power of those, yes. And how clueless you know, many folks, you know, white and black, frankly, about the apartheid housing system that, you know, built America. So reparations in this context is really just saying, look, let's give some other folks a chance to build wealth, give Black people a turn with the golden goose and live out the American dream. It's it's that time.

ADAM  36:22 

Yeah. And a great example of that we got from Mehrsa, which is the modern day Homestead Act, right, which can help us reverse the legacy of housing segregation and poverty that was intentionally created by the government over centuries. Again, we will have a detailed description of her plan the Homestead Act for the 21st century in the show notes. And this is just one idea. You know, Mehrsa has got other ideas. Lots of people have some great ideas on how we can address the housing inequality. There are definitely big things our government can do. We just have to get them motivated and get that started.

TONY  36:53 

Yeah, we need to have a collective will to repair the damage that's been done. So we'll give Professor Baradaran the last word here. At the end of her book, she says we're at a crossroad. We're at a pivotal point in our country's history. And we have a choice we can either keep embracing our history of racism and spiraling downward, or we can you know, learn how to move forward together. So to quote, "the sooner Americans recognize that the fate of black America is tied to the fate of white America, the faster it can achieve true democracy and shed the weight of historic injustice."