American economic design reaped black labor while systematically preventing black wealth creation.

Evidence

Felix Haywood had every reason to think that once freedom came, the future for black people in America could be limitless. He was right about the power of black labor but wrong about its trajectory. Black Americans knew how to work, but the system was built to generate white wealth, and it would continue to do that, just using different forms of black financial exploitation. History reveals our addiction to reaping the benefits of black labor while simultaneously preventing black wealth creation, which also meant destroying what little wealth black people did manage to cobble together. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 475

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This states the core systemic claim that all subsequent repair depends on: the economy was deliberately architected to harvest black labor while foreclosing black accumulation, and Brown derives ‘accounting not charity’ from it.