Black taxpayers funded FHA subsidies from which they were excluded

Evidence

Most black Americans at the time could not tell the same story. In the middle of the last century, white homeownership was sped along by governmental tailwinds that increased the rate from less than half (45.7 percent) in 1940 to almost two-thirds (64 percent) by 1960. (Before the government provided subsidies through the Federal Housing Administration, most white Americans rented.) The black homeownership rate also increased during this time, from 22.8 percent to 38.4 percent, but black Americans largely did it without the subsidies enjoyed by whites, even as their taxpayer dollars helped pay for those subsidies. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1227

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The core reparations-as-accounting logic in one packet: black dollars subsidized whites who were then positioned to build wealth, a direct mechanism for the ‘harm’ claim, not just moral appeal.