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A man kneels and raises his fist in the air during a march and protest to mark the Juneteenth holiday at the Martin Luther King Jr.
So we saw really from 1619 until 1968, when the last of the civil rights legislation was passed saying you could no longer discriminate against Black Americans, Black people being denied access to the primary wealth-building tools, homeownership, federally financed loans, the G.I. Bill to be able to purchase housing that white Americans use to build their wealth.
I think a lot of the times when we have these discussions about, well, let's give scholarships and let's pay for Black people to go to college — one, the facts show that Black people with a college degree still earn less than white people, still have less wealth than white Americans who have a high school degree.
On the conversation about reparations at the time of emancipation
We are often taught in this country that Black people are emancipated and then everyone is on an even footing.
President Lincoln was assassinated and he was replaced by his vice president, Andrew Johnson, who was a Southerner who was a white supremacist and who believed, like many white Americans at that time, that Black people were deserving of nothing after slavery, that they should be grateful for their freedom.
