Racial Wealth Gap
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Systemic racism has denied Black Americans the capital, land, and wages that are owed to them. Following the Civil War, the Freedmen’s Bureau ultimately failed to provide reparations for slavery to protect long-term wealth building, and all subsequent efforts to remedy the damage caused by discrimination have been thwarted. The result of that discrimination, endorsed by federal, state, and local governments, can be seen and felt in a wealth gap whereby the average white family has roughly 6.7 times the wealth of the average Black family. Consequently, calls for reparations for these harms have never gone away. When aldermen in Evanston, Illinois,