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Slavery made the US wealthy, and racist policies since have blocked African American wealth-building. Can we calculate the economic damage?
Sources:
Introduction
https://theconversation.com/slavery-in-america-back-in-the-headlines-33004
https://www.civil-war.net/census.asp?census=Total
1.
1.5 million pounds in 1790 and 2.25 billion pounds in 1859, based on Empire of Cotton, by Sven Beckert (2014) pgs. 104, 106
77% based on: Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power, by Gene Dattel (2009)
https://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/161/cotton-in-a-global-economy-mississippi-1800-1860
Joshua Rothman, email correspondence, 2015
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economics-of-the-civil-war/
https://abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abraham-lincoln-in-depth/abraham-lincoln-and-civil-war-finance
48.3% in 1860 according to Gavin Wright, Slavery and American Economic Development (LSU Press, 2006, paperback 2013) [personal communication]
2.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=jlasc
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/dc_emancipation_act/
https://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/slavery_in.PDF
The Politics of Despair: Power and Resistance in the Tobacco Wars. Tracy Campbell, 2015
7% based on: Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, Vol. 4. 1979.
3.
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html
70-80%, according to: https://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/#ii-a-difference-of-kind-not-degree
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2010-08-05/html/CREC-2010-08-05-pt1-PgS6836.htm
https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/lui.pdf
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=jlasc
4.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-249.pdf
Dime based on: https://www.insightcced.org/uploads/CRWG/LayingTheFoundationForNationalProsperity-MeizhuLui0309.pdf
https://newsreel.org/guides/race/whiteadv.htm
$59 trillion: https://activistteacher.blogspot.com/2013/01/calculated-minimum-reparation-due-to.html
$15 trillion: National Legal and Policy Center, https://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-reparations-black-farmers/2010/02/21/id/350458/
$25 trillion: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-11/23/047r-112399-idx.html
Martin Luther King: https://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2014/07/mlk_s_case_for_reparations_included_disadvantaged_whites.html
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