The American Economic Association held its annual conference last week, and featured the latest work of Duke University professor of public policy Dr. William “Sandy” Darity. He’s the leading Black economist on Black wealth and reparations.  His 2020 book, “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century,” has shaped all the conversations about reparations to the descendents of Africans who were stolen from their homes and enslaved in the US.

Crunching the numbers, the economist reckons that it will cost between $13 and $14 trillion to repair the financial harm of excluding Black Americans from full citizenship in the US for some 247 years.  Darity says that the racial wealth gap that persists to this day for those whose ancestors were enslaved must be remedied by raising the level of Black assets to a level sufficient to match the average net worth of white Americans.

According to Marketwatch, Darity insists this is the “central task” of a just reparations policy that could produce the material conditions for full citizenship for Black Americans.

By Darity’s calculations, the racial wealth gap exceeds an average of $300,000 per person, and there are about 40 million Black Americans who are the descendants of enslaved Africans.

Ending slavery, according to Darity, didn’t lead to an equal and even playing field in which any Black person was able to compete fairly. The end of the Civil War left those formerly enslaved mostly without education and with few if any assets. These people were promised 40 acres of land by the federal government, but due to factors including Southern outrage and weak political will to do right by the Freedmen, the plan never materialized.

From the period of Reconstruction onward, Black people were barred from participating in or benefiting from federal government programs that led to the creation of significant wealth. Programs starting with the Homestead Act of 1862 that provided citizens with 160 acres of land, the G.I. Bill, which gave veterans of World War II and the Korean War money for college and housing, and numerous U.S. Department of Agriculture programs which enabled farmers to use government grants and loans to support and grow their businesses.

Marketwatch reports that Darrity explained that a reparations program of this magnitude “could finally lead to closure on the harms and damages of the nation’s racial history,” and would mean that Black Americans would have no further claims for any race-specific government restitution.

While there is some debate about how to discern who is eligible, Darrity believes recipients of reparations should have to prove they have at least one ancestor who was enslaved in the United States. Those in dispute want Black immigrants to the U.S. to be likewise eligible, as they may have also faced racial discrimination in the country.  Recipients would also need to have self-identified as Black or African American for a dozen years before the reparations plan was approved.

According to Darity, the reparations plan might not involve monetary transfers in order to reduce the risk of inflation. Endowments, trust funds, or annuities are examples of less liquid assets that could be used to supply the money. The payments could be dispersed over a number of years, but no more than ten. The cash should be completely under the control of the eligible recipients.

H.R. 40, which has been proposed in the House of Representatives several times and would create a $12 million commission to research and recommend reparations for African Americans, is still not moving forward in Congress. President Joe Biden reportedly supports “a number of components of the bill, including the funding and the proposal for a study,” according to the White House.