Authors to discuss book on reparations for slavery descendants

Published March 8, 2021

William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen will discuss their highly acclaimed new book, “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the 21st Century,” during a virtual event on March 11 presented by the UB Center for Diversity Innovation in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The free event, which will take place from 3-4:30 p.m., is co-sponsored by the Office of Inclusive Excellence and the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy in the School of Law. Register to receive the link to attend the event.

Darity is Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics, and director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. His research focuses on inequality by race, class and ethnicity, stratification economics, schooling and the racial achievement gap, North-South theories of trade and development, skin shade and labor market outcomes, the economics of reparations, the Atlantic slave trade and the Industrial Revolution, the history of economics and the social psychological effects of exposure to unemployment.

Mullen is a folklorist and founder of Artefactual, an arts-consulting practice, and Carolina Circuit Writers, a literary consortium that brings expressive writers of color to the Carolinas. She was a member of the Freelon Adjaye Bond concept development team that was awarded the Smithsonian Institution’s commission to design the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

In the book (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), Darity and Mullen make the most comprehensive case to date for economic reparations for U.S. descendants of slavery. The book opens with a stark assessment of the intergenerational effects of white supremacy on black economic well-being, and then looks to both the past and the present to measure the inequalities produced by slavery.

The authors use innovative methods that link monetary values to historical wrongs to assess the literal and figurative costs and provide a detailed roadmap for an effective reparations program, including a substantial payment to each documented U.S. black descendant of slavery.