admitting he pressured the pbs show finding your roots to omit news about one of his ancestors who held more than two dozen people inry. on facebook he wrote we deserve neither credit nor blame for an ses tors and the degree of interest suggests we are grappling with the terrible legacy of slavery. it is an exam first nation worth continuing. i m glad my story, however indirectly will contribute to the discussion. i don t like that the guy is an ancestor, but i m happy that aspect of history is being talked about. here to talk about it ses yat professor of english and africana studies. also thomas seg are ru professor of history and sociology from the university of pennsylvania and raul reyes, attorney and contributor for msnbc.com. i made the claim at the end of the last segment that the political economic social life
we with wouldn t have the wealth that the united states has. we wouldn t have industrialization. we wouldn t is have just charlottesville, but detroit, charlotte, new york. when you say we wouldn t have the wealth. if you would like to see, you can look at the existing wealth gap. le the median household wealth for white households being 13 times that of black households. $141,000 to $11,000. you can close the gap but they grow on themselves. is that the argument for reparation? i was going to say it s not just individual families. part of the early 24th century reparations movements was to get damages from private corporations. now we have universities that have financially benefitted from slavery. so it s the systema tirkstic,
racial reconciliation. there is so much we don t know about slavery. it was astonishing to me when the film 12 years a slave came out and people revealed how little they knew. the ways in which black families are literally broken. basic tinges we should understand about slavery. most americans have either been denying or that there ises a collective amnesia that s structural educational and intergenerational. i think one of the beggest things we as a nation don t know about slavery, we think of slavery based on what we learned in school certain movies. 1970s roots . we with think of oh slavery as an institution that benefitted the south and perpetuated their culture. think of et this way. slavery drove the economic performance of the north. at that time it fuelled of the world. in the northeast at that time massachusetts, rhode
mind sets that persisted. we look at the creation of social security. it left out most african-americans because it excluded agricultural and domestic workers. later onnen when we were creating unemployment insurance and the g.i. bill that was left to the states. this the south, again, many african-americans were discriminated against and left out. we saw it perpetuated with housing district manager thagss throughout the 60s. it s not just the institution of slavery. it s a mindset that s persisted in the country when we have codified into law anti-discrimination policies. slavery, we think of segregation of the offspring of slavery. if you think about slavery end ending 1865 and seg fwrags being codified in the law they are directly linked of the off spring. i don t know how we want to say it. but you are pointing to the long history of racial oppression and also the responses on behalf of african-americans to fight that. it does start with slavery.
one minute? i want to follow up and bring it together. sure. tom said about the legacy of slavery. what s interesting about the response by ben affleck is who owns the property of slairy meaning who owns the ep memory? an african-american descendant of enslaved african-americans can t shrug off the legacy of slavery the way in which somebody like ben affleck can. it was disowning he is own family legacy and also not acknowledging both the privilege he inherited by bu the way in which white privilege works in the present and black disadvantage works many the present. that s the bigger issue. there are other models like edward wl ball in his investigation of his slave holding family in his book and the whitney plantation. there are way this is which certain white americans are trying to understand the link between blacks and whites americans, slavery as a project of reare kovry recuperation and