What’s the injustice?

In nearly every dimension of American life, people of color remain at a systemic disadvantage.

Most quality of life metrics show deep and abiding disparities between America’s white residents and its residents of color. In health, wealth, and educational achievement Black Americans continue to lag behind other racial groups. Today, the gap between U.S. black and white homeownership rates is larger than it has been in three generations and overwhelming racial disparities exist at every stage of the criminal legal system. The evidence is overwhelming: Black, Latino, and Indigenous Americans are more likely to be poorer and sicker, more likely to be incarcerated and killed by police, and less likely to achieve upward class movement than their white counterparts.

These injustices aren’t an accident, they are by design. Each one points to the legacy of centuries of exclusion, neglect, and disinvestment — born of human bondage, America’s original sin. They exist, explicitly or by default, to keep alive a vicious legacy that has long blocked Black, Latino, Indigenous, and other Americans of color from the blessings of liberty. The author Ta-Nehisi Coates summarizes this painful truth: “America begins in black plunder and white democracy, two features that are not contradictory but complementary.”

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