In good times and bad, the black unemployment rate is typically double the white unemployment rate, says economist Valerie Wilson, who directs the Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
But if you look at the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the black unemployment rate is 16.7%, which is higher than the white unemployment rate of 14.2% but not close to double.
"Black Americans are approximately 13% of the nation's population but hold closer to 2.6% of the nation's wealth," says William Darity Jr., the Samuel DuBois Cook distinguished professor of public policy, African and African American studies and economics at Duke University.
Darity and his wife, the scholar Kirsten Mullen, recently wrote op-eds in the Philadelphia Inquirer and Newsweek arguing that the COVID-19 crisis in black communities is integrally related to their deficit of wealth.
Darity and Mullen, who are authors of a new book called From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-first Century, argue that the COVID-19 death rate in black communities further strengthens the case for addressing the racial wealth gap through a reparations program.
