If the US were to seriously tackle the racial wealth gap and all the injustices past and present that have led to today's economic inequalities, it might not actually start with preparations, but with something much simpler, a full reckoning of our history the truth. Truth commissions can be the starting point for much broader national reform and a national effort to deal with the enduring legacies of past violence and current violence. Kerry Wiggham is a professor at Binghamton
University's Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention. He also runs a similar center at the Auschwitz Institute. He points out that truth commissions are a relatively new phenomenon, a lot newer than ideas about reparations or restitution. They're the first step and what scholars call transitional justice away for countries to deal with their own large scale human rights abuses.
It's built on four different pillars. Truth is the first of those pillars, and it's often positioned as first because it becomes a sort of prerequisite for dealing with some of those other pillars, like justice and reparations and guaranteeing non recurrence. The first one happened in Argentina in four to investigate the quote disappearances of thousands of people, including children and infants, during the country's military dictatorship. It started
where most truth commissions start. An independent body investigates what happened. It identifies the victims and all the forms of violence that occurred against them, and then it asked those harm to tell their stories. This is important because changes the historic record and often reveals atrocities perpetrators have tried to keep hidden. In the end, Argentina's Truth Commission led to
a series of reforms. Truth commissions have since been used across Africa and Latin America, and in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. Some US lawmakers think America is long overdue. In February, Representative Barbara Lee and Senator Corey Booker reintroduced a bill that would set up a truth commission in the US. The resolution, if passed, would urge the establishment of United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation.
Here's Congresswomanly talking about the bill last summer during a virtual event. We call ours truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation, not reconciliation, because there's really nothing to reconcile. There's no no value in four hundred and one years of ago of a two d fifty plus years of slavery, and so we call it trail formation. I asked Carry about
what a truth commission in the US could accomplish. There is still the reality that many white Americans have a difficult time understanding how slavery was directly connected to, for instance, mass incarceration and police brutality today. Or it could help explain how slavery is connected to today's racial wealth gap. But it's not an easy process and it won't magically fix all inequality, especially if it doesn't go deep enough.
And that's not the only challenge. In the US. Even the idea of something like a truth commission faces a lot of resistance from people who don't want to dwell on the past. They say that it's so far in the past that having a truth commission will only highlight and and sustain the divisions that are already present, that really what we need to do is turn the page
and look towards the future. The reality Carry says is that the people who are saying those things, who are eager to move on, they tend to be the people who have benefited throughout history and for them the status quo is working. The data shows that the median white family has ten times more wealth than the average black family. One of the drivers of that wealth gap is redlining.
When it comes to understanding financial inequality in this country, economists often point to the absence of African American generational wealth see the Black mag Ota Plai the White mag Who. Many of the Bedrock policies, in fact, that ushered generations of Americans into the middle class were designed to exclude
African Americans. It's much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee an annual income, for instance, to get rid of positive It's really intended as much to terrorize people in a physical sense as it is to kind of deprive them of the opportunity to gain equality through economic standing. It's a trend propelled not just by economic forces, but by white racism and local white political and economic power. Welcome back to the Paycheck. I'm
Jackie Simmons and I am Rebecca Greenfield. This is our last episode this season. Our goal going into this was to understand a bit more about the racial wealth gap. It's been fifty years since the end of segregation in Jim Crow. Why has an economic inequality between black and white Americans budge at all? It brought us back to slavery and everything that grew out of that system. And the truth is that as a country, the United States has never really reckoned with slavery or any of the
racist violence and oppression that followed. We have created a narrative of denial. We've created a narrative that says we're not going to talk about the mistakes we make. I think it's because we've become such a punitive society. We think if we own up to our mistakes, something bad is going to happen to us. We're gonna get punished. And I'm not doing these projects because I want to punish America. I want us to be liberated from the
change that this history has created. That's Bryan Stevenson. He's a lawyer and the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. In three years ago, this month, he opened the first memorial to the thousands of black Americans killed in racial terror lynchings from the end of
the Civil War up to nineteen fifty. The museum and the memorial in Montgomery and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in ten in Washington, d c our steps toward correcting the historical record in the US, but also universities, media companies, and investment banks are increasingly owning up to the ways they participated in
or benefited from the slave trade. Earlier this spring, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the city of Charlottesville can go ahead and remove statues of Confederate soldiers, an effort that's happening around the country. But there are plenty of people who choose to ignore this part of America's history and how it connects to the present. On the other hand, there's also people like my Bloomberg colleague, Claire Stuff. It's the easiest thing to do is not to say something.
And I think a lot of what this country is going through and has been going through over and over and over again, often stems from the fact that white people are ignorant of their own actions and ignorant of their families past actions. Claire's white. She grew up in Chicago, but her parents were from the South, and they took her to visit relatives on a big plantation in Mississippi. Called Codsworth. If you've seen the movie The Help, well
that's Codsworth. It was originally owned by a man named James Z. George, who was a U. S. Senator, colonel and the Confederate Army during the Civil War and also my great great great grandfather. Also he owned many slaves. Claire wanted to learn more about James E. George. Not only did he own slaves, he fought hard to preserve white supremacy even after the Civil War ended. She learned that he was a pioneer and crafting some of the very first Jim Crow era legislation that kept black people
from voting. He also created the Understanding Clause, which required people to be able to read or understand the Constitution, that effectively removed tens of thousands of black people from voter rolls. Claire wrote about her journey in an essay for an online magazine called The delic Court Review. I wanted to talk to her about why she felt it was important to tell her family story and what it
was like to reckon with their past. Hi, Claire, Hey, Jackie, Obviously I know you and we've been colleagues for for years now, but you know, until I read your story about your family's history and about Codsworth. I didn't really know that much about you or about your family in their history. Why did you decide to write about Coatsworth and what you called the two sides of Coatsworth in
your peace? I think you have to understand just how unusual and rarit is for a family too still in present day own, and not just own, but live in a plantation that the same family has lived in since before the Civil War. So there's that. But then also, my grandmother died before I was born, and my middle name is her name. Her name was Vernon, which is also very unusual if you're a woman, and Colts was the only connection, aside from my name, that I had
to her. But then as I started actually researching the past of who was James E. George? Who owned it? And what did he do? And what does it really mean to own slaves? That was when I realized that whatever feelings I have towards my grandmother and any living relatives is separate from how I feel about what my great great grandfather did d fifty sixty years ago. I'd like to know what are your first memories of Codsworth?
So I knew that This was a house that my family had had for a really long time, and I remember thinking it was really cool. It was like this relic from the past. All the furniture was over a hundred years old, all the floorboards creaked. I could run around the grass, which wasn't the meticulously kept suburban lawns that I was used to. And I was really into horses when I was a kid, so I brought all my plastic horses and played with them in the front
yard of Codsworth. The other memory that I have was that there was this small sort of rectangular shack behind the house and off to the side that I think is the last remaining structure that had been slaves quarters. And I wasn't allowed to go inside because it was structurally unsound and it was full of wasps nests. So I never went inside, and I could never really even peek inside because I couldn't get close enough to it.
But I remember knowing that it was there. So you went back to Cotsworth with your dad in what was
your biggest takeaway from that trip? It's interesting to visit something that you saw as a child and then revisited again as an adult, because things that seemed huge and almost unknowable, are as an adult probably much smaller and more easier to comprehend than when you're a kid, And so visiting it when I was young, I didn't really understand the context of coats Worth, and my dad and I went down there because I had started to become interested in writing about it and researching it, so I
asked him if he would go with me. And that's when I realized that at what I had sort of romanticized as a child, or even or just focused on, you know, how big the house was, how expansive the land was, the fact that she had cows, it was really cool when I was six, was actually, in reality quite sad. It was a relic of the past in more ways than one. But then also looking at the the former slaves quarters, I realized how poignant it was that they were still there. I have to ask about
the slave quarters. Did your family tell you about the slave quarters? Did they How much did they talk to you about that part of the plantation? I probably asked what it was when I was six. I don't remember, but I remember. I do know that when I returned as an adult, I new to look for it, so I must have known that it was there. How did you have a conversation about the use of that space? I mean, what did you give you an opportunity to talk with your family or your dad about what had
happened there. The one thing that I have never fully understood about my family and Codsworth is the house and land is still meaningful to my family, even people who don't live there, but they don't like to talk about what it means to have owned a plantation in Mississippi
before the Civil War. So while my dad and relatives never shied away from admitting that, yes, obviously my great great great grandfather owned slaves, they didn't know much beyond that because their parents never told them, and their parents never told them, and so they just left it at that, like, obviously that happened. But then the Civil War came along and then we didn't have slaves anymore the end, And I thought, well, I think there's probably much more to that.
And when you fully appreciated James E. George's significance with regard to Mississippi politics and shaping the outcome of black lives at that point in our history, what kind of introspection did that provoke? In you about race in America and especially as it relates to black lives today. I'm less upset by my direct connection to this then I am by the fact that I didn't know about it. You know, when I was an elementary school in high school, every year in history class we would learn about the
Civil War. Every year. I memorize the Gettysburg address in fifth grade, and I still haven't memorized. I think I've been to the battlefields. I've been to Gettysburg, I've been to Vicksburg. But I I don't think there's very much discussion among white people about white people's role in that.
And I don't really understand why, Because if you claim to want to make things better, and if you claim to disagree with all the stuff that has happened in the past, you know why, why can't you talk about it? You have a passage about this in your essay. Could you read it? America has lurched and fits and starts towards equality, But with every inch gained comes one side's declaration that things are fine. Now, that's enough, but it's not enough. The effects of what men like Jay Z
George did ripple through this country. Even now we encounter this truth again and again, but somehow we still managed to avoid facing it head on. I can't stop loving my family, and by extension, I'll always be fond of Coad's worth. But it's possible to care for something and know that what it stands for is deeply wrong. It's been a few years since you wrote that, does it
still resonate? You know? I don't love my grandmother because she died before I was born, but my dad loved her loves her still probably, and she in turn loved her parents, who loved their parents. So by extension, you could say that there has been love lasting through the generations.
And so someone that I'm connected to today is connected to someone is connected to someone who did love someone who owned slaves, And I think that is something that I've actually never really articulated before, and also something that I think is necessary for us to understand. There seems to be this feeling that in admitting your past wrongs here somehow admitting that everything about you in the past, or everything about your family in the past is bad
and terrible. You did this amazing thing, Claire, where you sought out descendants of people who were enslaved at Codsworth, one of them agreed to meet you. What was that like? In hindsight, Great Carlos is a lovely human being. He's really nice, funny, warm, But in the act of meeting him, and beforehand, I was definitely nervous. I had never met anyone under the pretext of the fact that my great
great great grandfather had enslaved his great grandfather. How do you start a conversation when that is the one fact binding you. Luckily, like I said, Carlos is nice and funny, and so he brought his wife Tie along and sort of diffused the initial awkwardness with warmth and humor, and we took it from there. One of you had suggested taking DNA tests after learning that you might be related
through James E. George. What happened was I, when I was researching about jez George, I heard this rumor, and I first heard it from the historian, the professor who had written the one biography about him, and he told me that none of the white people he had ever interviewed had mentioned this, but he had heard it from a number of black people, and he had heard that Jay Z George had fathered children with women that he had enslaved and when I first heard that, I thought, okay,
what do I do with that information? I can't ignore it, and I'm a journalist, so I'll just follow up on that rumor as I would if this were not my family, if it were someone else's family, How would I follow up on it? And the historians suggested that I reach out to this group that is called, I think the African American Genealogy Group of Carroll County, and they're on Facebook.
So I messaged several people who were people with the last name George, so ostensibly former slaves of James C. George from quotes Worth, and I asked them if they had heard that rumor, and a number of them said
that they had. And when I talked to Carlos, he said that while his immediate family had never talked about that necessarily, he had heard that rumor over time, and he said, you know, it would be great to be able to take a d DNA test and you know, put this room to rest one way or the other. And so I thought, all right, you know, all I can do is say yes. So we ordered DNA tests through twenty three and me and we took them and
it turns out that we are not related. What did it feel like when you first learned that you weren't related? What was your first reaction. A lot of people have asked me that, and a lot of people have asked, weren't you relieved that this terrible thing hadn't happened? And in the sense that I am glad that I know that my great great grandfather didn't grape Joe George's mother, Yes, obviously I'm glad that that did not happen, but I'm
well aware that I didn't answer the question fully. And also while we were waiting for the results was when I was doing more research and I learned about this understanding clause and his role in enshrining white supremacy in Mississippi. And so yeah, I guess that one answer is the easier answer, but I mean, it's hard to feel good about that knowing everything else. I will say that I took the DNA test without telling the rest of my family.
I did that because if I told them before I took it, I wouldn't know what the answer was and I wouldn't know what to tell them. So I was going to wait until I had the results, so that I would only have to tell them once. So I told them, and because the result was that we weren't related, I think they were like, okay, that answers that. Yesterday and we were talking, you said that your family react to it in a way most people would react. Tell
me more about that. Well, I assume they read it, but they've never said anything to me about it, which I take to mean they didn't hate it, but they may not have totally loved it. And I've also never asked them. It's a two way street, but it's out there, and I told it because I felt a responsibility too. And what do you say to white people who say, well, I never I don't have a direct connection to slavery. You know, my parents came here only in you know,
year X and had nothing to do with it. And I've traced my past, so therefore I don't feel accountable. What do you what do you say to that? I think that's the easy answer. But I think if you only look at your family and that ends, if you're missing a lot. Right, I've lived my whole life in America. I would say that I have an above average understanding of American history, but only when I decided to sit down as a side project and really research reconstruction in
my family's history. Did I really learn about this? Has anyone else in your family reckoned with this history at all? So you know, my dad is retired now and he lives in Florida, and one of the projects that he came up with to keep himself occupied during the pandemic was he is working on this book about his family.
It's not going to be publicly published. It's like this book that he's putting together with pictures and anecdotes about this far, stretching as far back in history as he can and going sort of as wide as he can. He's including my mom's side of the family and my step mom, my husband's side of the family. And he'll publish it on snapfish or something like that and print five copies or something and give it to people for presents. Hopefully I'm not ruining future Christmas gifts for people, So
just acts surprised when you open it. So he's been doing this, and he told me the other day we were talking um that he had just finished the page on James C. George and he said he had put in the information that I had found about this understanding clause and what he had done, but he wasn't really sure how he felt about it. And it's in there for now, but maybe if he needs to revise the book later, he would leave it out. And I said, I think he should keep it in. And I don't
know what hell decide. I guess I'll find out when I opened my future Christmas present in a year or something like that. But he has thought about it at least, and I think it's a good sign that it's in the first draft. So you gave birth to your first
child last year, Yeah, in a pandemic, little little Kate. Right, So how did all of this research into your family and to Codsworth make you think about the kind of conversations you're going to have with little Kate down the road that maybe your own family didn't have with you about these topics. I may not ever take her to Codsworth, or maybe I will, but it probably would be one time, one trip two we're all Mississippi to see where she's from.
Maybe she'll be twelve or thirteen. Kate will grow up as a generation even further removed from this past than me, And in some ways that's how it should be. I think the only way we can move forward is to
actually move forward. But I will tell her about her family, and when I tell her about who would now be her great grandmother's side of the family or her great great great great grandfather, I will tell her all of this and she'll grow up learning about it, and she won't have to spend, you know, six months, nine months of her life researching it to find out. Claire was able to learn a lot about her family's history going back centuries. That's something most people can't or won't do.
When I think back to my family's story of land lost in Ease, Texas, where it all began, there's a lot my research didn't yield. So, for instance, I never figured out about my great great grandparents migration from Tennessee to Texas. I also didn't know how they lived as slaves and then as free people. I did, however, manage to track down the original deed to my family's land
with the help from Jason, a listener in Ohio. So, Jackie, I'm wondering, having gone through this process in a more personal way, what gives you hope Spending months diving into the causes and consequences of the racial wealth gap. It could feel dark. It's just such a big problem with no simple solutions. No, there's not. But let's be honest. We might not get to closing the racial wealth gap anytime soon. And if I'm totally honest, I'm not even
hopeful we'll get there in my lifetime. There is one underlying thread that ran through my research, and that's resilience. I don't think we talk about that enough. It's resilience that keeps black people proud and thriving in our own ways. Take my cousin Yolanda and Dallas. She walked away from our family's land in Kilmur. She's now trying to develop another hundred acres of land in a town nearby, land
that her family initially acquired after slavery. My cousin had to tell me, he said, your grandfather would turn over in his grave to know that you all have done nothing on this property. You need to be ashamed of yourself. And so this got me to thinking that I owe it to my grandmother and grandfather two cultivate this land and to make it where what he would have wanted it to be. Tna her grandparents. Jolana wants to build
a pavilion on the land. That's really some balked to me, because most black families never managed to pass on wealth from generation to generation as white families have. But the way I see it, Yolana's vision shows that black families do pass on hope and they pass on the ambitions of their ancestors. And that's one of the biggest take
aways from season three of The Paycheck. We went as far back as forty acres in a mule, right through to the late eight nineties, when a black woman called Kelly House proposed reparations and was eventually jailed for it. We talked about local initiatives to address past wrongs in places like Evanston, Illinois. Now the US is weighing a bill in Congress to study reparations, and it's the resilience of people behind those efforts. People like Kellie or my
cousin Yolanda, or my colleague Claire. They're willing to speak up and talk honestly about our past, present in future. It's people like them who give me hope that will get there eventually. This is the last episode of our season. Thank you so much for listening to The Paycheck. If you liked this show. Please rate, review, and subscribe. This episode was hosted Aimy, Rebecca Greenfield, and Me Jackie Simmons. This episode was reported by Claire Sadeth and Rebecca Greenfield.
This episode was produced by Magnus Hendrickson and Lindsay Cradowell, and it was edited by Rocksheeta Saluja, Jackie Simmons, Janet Paskin, Francesca Levi, and Me. Special thanks to Katie Boys, Laura Carlson Chaufer for has Laura's Alenko, and all the Bloomberg reporters and editors who made this season possible. Original music is by Leo Sidron. Francesca Levy is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Thank you for listening.