Following nationwide protests across the United States in 2020 against police brutality, the push for federal recognition of Juneteenth gained momentum, with the U.S. Congress enacting legislation in the summer of 202l declaring June 19th a national holiday. The first anniversary of the federal holiday, celebrated on June 20 this year, is a moment for all Americans to honor the emancipation of enslaved African Americans following the end of the Civil War more than 150 years ago.

But Juneteenth also is an opportunity to take stock of congressional and state government efforts to account for the consequences of pervasive institutional racism before and after 1865 and evident still today. After all, the results of the brutal exploitation of enslaved African Americans to the systematic oppression in the Jim Crow South to today’s institutionalized racism are still evident in the disparate access to and outcomes in income, wealth, education, healthcare, jobs, housing, and criminal justice for so many Black workers and their families.

There is one initiative in Congress to establish a commission to study the effects of slavery and discriminatory policies on African Americans and recommend appropriate remedies, including reparations. Some cities and states are also working to address the need for reparations through piecemeal programs and initiatives. California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, for example, recently released its nearly 500-page report that says its findings have nationwide implications for the way the United States addresses reparations. And there are several more ways in which reparations could be handled by policymakers at the state and local levels.

Before examining those two reparations proposals, however, it’s first imperative to detail briefly why pervasive wealth inequality—the most telling consequence of the history, legacy, and enduring presence of systemic racism—persists for most African Americans. The reason: Over the course of U.S. history, the accumulation of wealth by the vast majority of generations of Africans Americans was categorically illegal (pre-1865) and then systemically and violently inhibited (post-1865) by Jim Crow laws, the exclusion of agricultural workers and domestic helpers from New Deal reforms, and sweeping housing-market redlining, among many other forms of institutional racism.

Read the full article about racial wealth inequality by Shanteal Lake at Equitable Growth.