Earl Lewis, Thomas C. Holt Distinguished University Professor of History, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Public Policy and director of the Center for Social Solutions, recently sat down with AP News to discuss reparations and other related issues.
"Slavery was in the past. It still has a legacy of fact. But we don’t have to stop at slavery. We can actually go into the era of Jim Crow and redlining, and the ways in which the federal government systematically discriminated against African American homeowners," Lewis said. "Or we can go to the G.I. Bill and how it disproportionately favored whites and was against African Americans and others who served. We can look at the ways in which the criminal justice system turned the 'War on Drugs' into mass incarceration that disproportionately affected African-Americans."
