Nearly every white American holds wealth tainted by racial discrimination

Evidence

After reading Part II, what white American could generally say they are truly innocent and have no tainted wealth? Your ancestors were not enslavers, but they could own property and begin to build wealth because they were white. They were not enslavers, yet they benefited from living in sundown towns across the country. Unless you are a Native American, your grandparent was an immigrant—and benefited from a system that at the time allowed legal discrimination against black people. As the PtSD Commission’s subcommittee considers payment options, reparations should not be paid for by black Americans. Nevertheless, anyone claiming to be exempt from contributing to a reparations fund should be able to make their case to the subcommittee. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 570

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘tainted wealth’ extends to all white Americans, not only slaveholding descendants — a redefinition of who owes.
• XREF: Resonates with the ‘inherited whiteness’ claim in 566 and the Scalia answer in 569; also ties to Whiteness of Wealth’s diagnosis.

Related

• Virtually no white American can claim genuinely untainted wealth (similarity 0.92)
• The whites most opposed to reparations benefited most from racialized systems (similarity 0.81)