Original subtitles

Welcome to the show. We're back.

Still coming to you from this blank void, although on that point, I actually

have a bit of an update, because it looks like, all being well, we are set

to be back in our studio in September, meaning that the next five shows are

actually gonna be the last that we do hear in the void.

Holy shit, thank God.

Wait, excuse me? You heard me.

I'm sorry, you can talk? Of course I can talk, John.

I can also cry, which...

You know, I'm not afraid to cry.

Good for you. I can sing pretty well, actually.

Nice. And, oh, also, I can laugh.

The void loves to laugh.

I'm sorry. You can laugh?

Really? Because I've been stuck here for nearly a year and a half now telling

jokes, and I haven't heard you laugh once. Not one time.

Well, that's because you haven't really given me a reason to. And I didn't

consider any of those jokes. That is a mean thing to say.

Look, I'm just going to get this off my chest. I don't mean to be rude, but you

know what? What?

It's going to be really good to be just a void again without you in it, which is

a pretty shocking declaration, wouldn't you say? Can I just start... That a void

would rather be just a void with nothing in it because of you.

Look, can I just start my show now, please?

Go ahead. I mean, if you want. Or don't.

It really doesn't matter to me either way.

Has it been a busy week, John? Yes, it has. It has, actually.

Oh, so aggravating. All right.

Uh, just pretend I'm not here. I will. I will remain silent. I get it. Because I

won't be laughing.

That is understood.

It has been a busy week. Very busy.

In fact, on Friday, the Olympics opening ceremony finally took place in Tokyo, a

year late and still under a significant cloud.

This morning, officials in Tokyo revealing that COVID cases have

increased 155% in the past seven days.

Tonight, COVID-19 defeating some Olympic athletes before they've even had a

chance to compete.

According to the IOC, more than 60 people in the Olympic bubble have tested

positive for the virus.

Yeah. And the truth is, it's gotten even worse.

Because as of Saturday, the current total of Olympics-related COVID cases is

up to 127, which really shouldn't be surprising.

The event whose central premise is basically, what if a bunch of hot people

traveled from all over the world to sweat, breathe, and fuck on each other,

turns out to be going exactly as you'd expect it to during a pandemic.

And I will say, Tokyo is by no means alone in making a very bold move in the

face of the spread of the Delta variant.

In the UK, Monday... so-called Freedom Day, with the lifting of almost all

virus-related restrictions, even though COVID cases have recently spiked to the

highest levels there since January.

Boris Johnson has faced significant criticism about this decision and has

chosen to justify it like this.

We don't do it now. We've got to ask ourselves, when will we ever do it? Oh,

I can actually answer that for you later.

Just... at a later time.

It's so brazenly disingenuous to frame this as a choice between lifting COVID

restrictions now or never doing it. It's the equivalent of someone saying, if I

don't take a shit now in the middle of this Apple store, when will I ever take

a shit? I don't know exactly, but I do feel like there are a lot of other

options available that you are choosing not to consider.

And if you're wondering why does Boris Johnson look like he's hired an

impersonator of himself to deliver that message via cameo, well, it's because he

was self-isolating after being exposed to someone who caught COVID,

specifically his health minister, which is not an ideal way to reassure people

that now is the right time to open up. And even some of the British people

celebrating Freedom Day seem to understand that they were dancing on a

knife's edge.

I want to dance. I want to hear live music.

Yes, it feels like Freedom Day. It really, really does. It's nice to be

out, but at the end of the day, it's all going to result in some sort of

impending doom. You know what?

I have to agree with CVS brand Noel Gallagher there, because that sentiment

fundamentally speaks to the British character.

Screw keep calm and carry on. It's all going to result in some sort of

impending doom. Should be Britain's new motivational poster, because that is

exactly how I feel about everything, all the time.

Even here in the United States, there is cause for real concern amid all the

optimism. The Delta variant now accounts for 83% of known U.S. cases and is

causing a rise in hospital admissions, particularly among the unvaccinated. And

yet, despite the fact that vaccines are widely available here, some, even those

hospitalized, are still hesitant.

Here I am, recovering, getting out of here finally tomorrow.

Am I going to get a vaccine?

No. don't shove it down my throat.

That's what local,

state, federal administration is trying to do, is shove it down your throat.

What are they shoving, the science?

No, they're shoving the fact that that's their agenda.

The agenda is to get you vaccinated.

Um, yeah.

Yeah, actually, you nailed it in one.

Public health officials' agenda is to get you vaccinated. And you know what

COVID's agenda is? To fucking kill you.

to burrow into your body through your hot little mouth, fuck around with your

lungs, flip your nostrils off, make soup taste more like nothing than it already

does, and then kill you. So frankly, if the choice is between a gender death or

a gender shot that comes with free Krispy Kreme doughnut, I really think

you should take the jizz-covered dough hoop with a side of antibodies.

And while that is clearly infuriating, the truth is individuals like that

man... are pretty much unreachable at this point, which is why it is so

important to convince everyone who still might be persuadable to get vaccinated.

Because if this week has taught us anything, it's that COVID is nowhere

near being eradicated. And the best defense against it is being fucking

vaccinated. Yes, there are breakthrough cases, but the vaccine is doing its job.

More than 97% of those hospitalized for COVID in the U.S.

are unvaccinated.

So, right here, we need to be encouraging as many people as possible

to get their shots, and crucially, to then share our surplus supply with

countries around the world that desperately need them. Because, if I may

quote the words of Geoffrey Rush after a bad bleach job, if we don't do it now,

when will we ever do it? And now, this.

And now, people on TV mean fucking.

Olympics edition.

the olympic village was full of cardboard beds and the idea behind it

supposedly was to make sure that these athletes weren't going down there doing

the duke if you know anything about the olympic village you know it's a hotbed

or you know what i mean athletes will be pursuing their dreams

and perhaps each other if you know what i mean

Some even speculating they were meant to prevent certain extracurricular

activities, you would say.

Does it have a box spring?

I mean, all these athletes are going to just be like walking around with their

backs, and I can't imagine.

Too busy looking at the gymnast.

Jumping up and down without a shirt on.

I see where you're going.

Yeah, you said your husband's out of town this week.

This is how rumors get started.

Moving on. Our main story tonight concerns land.

Specifically, the history of race and land ownership in America. A history

that has many horrifying chapters. Pretty much from chapter one, when

America was discovered from under other people's feet.

In fact, it has so many horrifying chapters that some have nearly been

forgotten. Like this piece of local history that recently made the news.

In Manhattan Beach, California, a house on the sand can cost up to $20 million.

And Anthony Bruce's family used to own two oceanfront lots.

I should be a millionaire standing here talking to you today.

More than 100 years ago, his great-great-grandparents, Willa and

Charles Bruce, bought the land for about $1,200.

They built a resort called Bruce's Lodge. The Ku Klux Klan was involved in

harassing them.

They burned a cross right out here.

that didn't drive him away.

The city government decided to take the property under the guise of eminent

domain. Wow.

So when the cross burning didn't drive the Bruces out of town, the city called

in a lawyer to finish the job. And that tells you a lot about how racism in

America works. Sure, the vigilante racists are spooky, but you've really

got to worry when the motherfuckers with advanced degrees show up.

What Manhattan Beach did to the Bruce family was clearly unforgivable. And to

its credit, the city seems to be trying to reckon with how to deal with what

happened. Although, it is also placing some pretty hard limits on that

reckoning. The council did authorize spending $350,000 on art to commemorate

the family, and this week voted to acknowledge and condemn what happened,

but chose not to offer an official apology.

It's awful. It's wrong.

We're not that community now. I wouldn't live here if we were a racist community,

and my friends and neighbors would not live here as well.

Okay. Couple of things there. First, Manhattan Beach's population is only 0.5

% black, so even if you are not that community now, you don't look unlike it.

And second, if you took something worth $20 million, $350,000 just doesn't cover

it, especially when none of that money went toward the family you stole it

from. There is pretty obviously only two ways of making this right.

Give the Bruces $20 million or give them their land back.

And incredibly, the latter might actually happen. Because L.A. County,

which owns the land, recently released a plan for returning it to the Bruces,

which is, to put it mildly, about time.

It's literally been called Bruce's Beach since 2006.

Is the apostrophe S a fucking joke to you people?

It indicates possession.

So, the story of Bruce's Beach might actually end with something approaching

justice. Land was taken away, land is given back.

And I want you to keep the elegance of that solution in mind as we talk about a

far more insidious and widespread form of wealth appropriation, and that is

housing discrimination.

There is a long history of it in America, and we will get to that in a

minute. But before we do, let's just start with its effects.

Currently, only 45% of black householders own their homes, compared

with nearly 74% of whites.

And since home ownership is a key component of wealth, it is no surprise

that the wealth gap between white and black families is so huge, many

literally don't comprehend it. One recent survey found that most people

think that for every hundred dollars in wealth held by a white family, a black

family has $90. When the truth is, it's actually closer to $13.

With the median white family having a net worth... of around 188,000, and the

median Black family having just over 24,000. But the effects of housing

discrimination go well beyond wealth, because questions about where your house

is and how much it is worth impact so many things about your quality of life.

For instance, because a key way Americans pay for public schools is

through property taxes...

better homes lead to better schools, better teachers, and more resources,

which in turn, leads back to better neighborhoods in general, including

cleaner streets, cleaner air, and crucially, only the most exclusive and

fuckable trees.

Is that tree a bakery?

Because it's got cakes.

That tree... Don't just let the audio of this play in the background while you're

working. Click back on the YouTube tab and look at me. That tree... can get it.

So if it has led to a wealth gap this massive and consequences this wide

-ranging tonight, let's take a look at housing discrimination, the damage it

has done, and more importantly, what we can do about it. Some of you may already

know what the last part is going to be and might even currently be shouting at

your screens, but please, don't spoil it for everybody else.

Let's let it be a surprise.

And let's start in the early 20th century, because that is when the real

estate industry really began to grow. And as it did, white people moved

quickly to codify the distance between them and black people. One major way

this happened was through racial covenants. Essentially, bylaws written

into deeds or neighborhood regulations forbidding the sale of a house to a non

-white person. And incredibly, these covenants were so widespread that many

are still technically on the books.

A Texas news station recently unearthed one in a local suburb and showed it to

unsuspecting residents there. Section two, page three reads, none of the lots

shall be conveyed, leased, or occupied by any person other than of the

Caucasian race.

It provides an exception for those employed as servants.

Person other than the Caucasian race.

Whoo! Okay.

Well, quite.

The tone of that whoo!

Okay. It's usually reserved for a few things. Finding out your grandma is

still sending nudes, that Jeremy Piven launched a podcast called How You Live

in J. Piven, and that your neighborhood technically still has bylaws prohibiting

black people from living there.

And while racial covenants were done at the local level, what really

turbocharged segregation was when the federal government got involved.

In the 1930s, the New Deal established the Federal Housing Administration and

the Home Owners Loan Corporation, or HOLC, which is, incidentally, also

French for Hulk. Uh... The idea

of these two agencies was to make it easier for people to buy and retain

houses during the Great Depression.

And they were promoted at the time through newsreels like this.

This couple is going through a model house now.

Suppose we follow them.

The husband apparently isn't very keen about it all, but you know how wives

are. This cheerful room with its many handy cabinets impresses even this

skeptic. And his wife is entranced by the modern flat-top stove.

Too bad they can't afford it.

Ah, but maybe they can.

For according to this sign, they can buy this house with monthly payments that

are less than they now spend for rent.

Wow. That is a very affordable house for two people that clearly do not get

along. You know how husbands are. They hate their wives and anything that would

make her happy. Every moment with them is torture, and maybe a new house would

help as neither of them will leave this wretched marriage because it's the

1930s. It's up to the baby to save them.

The pitch was that the government would insure your loan, so that...

banks would accept a significantly smaller down payment than was standard

at the time with much lower interest rates and give you decades to pay it

off. The federal government essentially invented the modern home mortgage, and

it worked incredibly well.

Millions bought homes who could otherwise never have afforded them,

beginning a cycle of stable generational wealth that continues to this day. It

was a great idea.

I cannot stress that enough.

which is why it is so tragic that built directly into that plan was the

intentional exclusion of black people.

For instance, Hulk developed maps that color-coded areas green, yellow, blue,

or red based on their credit worthiness.

A neighborhood could earn a red color or be redlined if any African Americans

lived in it at all. At which point, the area would essentially be ineligible for

any mortgages.

Meanwhile... When it came to new developments, the FHA's underwriting

manual essentially mandated that communities have racially restrictive

covenants as a prerequisite to receive mortgage insurance.

These policies alone had a devastating effect on Black communities,

significantly expanding and locking in segregation.

And some developers ensured that they would continue to qualify for loans by

going to some ridiculous lengths.

Here in Detroit, uh, there was a developer...

They wanted to build a development for whites, and they wanted to get FHA

loans. And the federal government said, you know what, there's a black community

kind of close by. You don't get the good loans.

And so the developer, in an effort to try to fix that, built a six-foot-tall

wall, a foot deep, to separate the black community from the emerging white

community.

And then the federal government gave the loan.

That's terrible.

And what makes it somehow worse is that that wall was only six feet tall.

That's just not that tall.

It's like the height of a fridge, or a mattress, or Snoop Dogg. Snoop 6'4". He

could very easily see over that wall. Is that what you want?

Snoop making direct eye contact with you over your stupid racist wall?

How is that helping anyone?

And all of this is obviously horrifying.

White people basically wrote, black people can't live here on pieces of

paper, and the federal government said, if you white people don't have one of

those pieces of paper, you can't get a loan.

If everything had just stopped there, the damage already would have been

immense. But it very much did not stop there.

After World War II, the GI Bill gave returning service members access to home

loans with as little as no down payment, which is great.

But the vast majority of financial institutions still refuse to approve

loans for African Americans, meaning that black service members returned home

only to be shut out of home ownership in the rapidly expanding suburbs.

One of the most famous examples of which was Levittown, a development on Long

Island of over 17,000 homes. And to ensure government support to build them,

the developer had the contract state that... the home could not be used or

occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race.

And when Black people did try to buy homes there, they were told in no

uncertain terms just how unwelcome they were, as this woman remembers.

We went to the office where the gentleman was showing the houses.

So my husband said to him, my wife and I are interested in, you know, purchasing

a home here in Levittown.

He said, get your... out of here.

Wow. That is a sweet lady recounting an appalling story in just the most matter

-of-fact way.

But I guess for black people in America, you ask your grandma to tell you a

wholesome story about something like the first school dance she went to, or how

she and grandpa bought a house, and it's not long before you're suddenly in the

middle of an August Wilson play.

And crucially, white people who were able to buy homes in Levittown could

accumulate massive wealth.

In 1948, homes there sold for around... or about $75,000 in today's money. And

they currently sell for $350,000 or more. Meaning, families who bought homes

back in 1948 gained more than $200,000 in wealth.

That is a lot.

So, quick side note, if you are young, white, and looking for a real return on

investment, forget about your AMC and GameStop stonks. What you really want to

do is get a time machine, travel back to the 1940s, and buy a house in a

segregated suburb. It's the safest investment you'll ever make.

And Levittown and Detroit were by no means alone.

This happened again and again.

So much so that the exclusion of black people from these federal programs was

nearly absolute.

For instance, a survey of 13 cities in Mississippi in 1947 found that of the

more than 3,200 loans given to returning veterans under the GI Bill, only two

went to African Americans.

And nationwide, in just the first quarter century of the Federal Housing

Administration, the government insured over $40 billion in loans.

That is the equivalent of nearly $400 billion today.

But some estimates indicate that 98% of them...

went to white Americans.

98%!

If you ate 98% of someone's cannoli, you basically ate all their cannoli.

Pointing out the fact that they've still technically got 2% somehow makes it

worse. And the implications of all of this can be hard for some to think

about. Earlier this year, CBS's Tony DiCoppo did a story about his

grandparents' hometown of Lyndhurst, New Jersey. And in doing so, broke some

difficult news to the town's unofficial historian.

Wait a minute. You're telling me they were only gonna mortgage white people?

Yeah. Yeah. For you to say that Lyndhurst is the way it is because it

almost implies that Lyndhurst was racist.

No, this is my family, too. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that we... I'm

saying we had no idea.

You're right. Most people would not have known that the federal government had

this program in place. Okay.

First, I get that this is uncomfortable, but I will say, if a white person says,

that almost implies blank was racist, and another one says, no, no, this is my

family too, that doesn't mean the matter is closed.

If two white people are trying to figure out if something is racist, nine times

out of ten, it probably is.

As for that man's claim, most people would not have known this program was in

place. Just hold on there, because none of this was a secret at the time. The

link between the racial makeup of your neighborhood and the value of your home

was so well established, some speculators took advantage of it to buy

homes on the cheap through a practice called blockbusting.

That is where they would go to a white neighborhood and make it seem like black

people were moving in. They would hire a black woman to walk up and down the

street with a stroller or call homes and ask to speak to someone with a

stereotypically black name.

The idea was that simply by doing this, the speculators could panic white

homeowners into selling their homes at a loss.

This tactic was incredibly effective.

But I will say, some white homeowners did stand firm like this amazing woman

in Baltimore.

Well, I happened to be sitting on the steps with a friend of mine, and the man

that had gotten the house from the woman next door, he came up and he said to me,

would you like to sell?

And I said, no, I couldn't afford to sell because I can't afford to go

anywhere else.

And he said, you won't sell? I said, no.

He says, well, pardon me, Angie, these are not my words.

He said, what are you going to do when these...

Look, I know this story is full of terrible people and unmitigated racism,

so we should probably take a moment to celebrate a lady who just wanted to get

drunk on her porch with her neighbors regardless of their color. I love so

many things about that. I love Rose's don't give a fuck energy, but also

Angie's Rose is gonna Rose response.

Because when Rose said, pardon me, Angie... These are not my words. That

was for us.

Angie knew.

She knows who Rose is, and she's made peace with it. These women have talked.

There is a history in that relationship.

Bless you, Rose, and bless Angie, too. Just because Rose was an ally doesn't

mean she was always an easy person to be around.

And when you put all of this together, it is no wonder that by the late 60s,

fair housing had become a core issue for the civil rights movement.

Martin Luther King's efforts to combat housing discrimination in Chicago were

met with fierce resistance, and uprisings began to break out across the

country. Unrest that reached a fever pitch in the wake of King's

assassination. LBJ and congressional leaders tried to settle things down with

the Civil Rights Act of 1968, with sections eight and nine being...

the Fair Housing Act. And Section 10 titled, Civil Obedience and Anti-Riot

Act, which is a pretty effective way of saying, that's our final offer, we've

gone about as far as we're going with this whole civil rights thing.

The Fair Housing Act made housing discrimination illegal, and also

required the government to affirmatively further fair housing. In other words,

take an active role in integration.

And to his credit, Nixon's housing secretary, George Romney, Mitt's dad,

actually did try to do that and developed a program to withhold federal

grants from communities that refused to integrate.

But Nixon then quickly stepped in, calling it off and publicly repudiating

the whole plan.

Concerning Governor Romney's plan, to what extent should the federal

government use its leverage to promote racial integration in suburban housing?

It is not the policy of this government to use...

the power of the federal government or federal funds in any other way, in ways

not required by the law for forced integration of the suburbs.

I believe that forced integration of the suburbs is not in the national interest.

Yeah, not great.

And it is worth reminding yourself once in a while just how deeply weird Nixon

was. He's been rendered so silly by a lifetime of cartoonish impressions, it

is genuinely unsettling to watch him make unyielding eye contact while

saying, I believe that forced integration of the suburbs is not in the

national interest, like a cold robot powered by racism.

All I'm saying is, it really says something that the most human version of

Nixon is the one where he's a cartoon head in a jar.

And what Nixon made very clear there is that the federal government would not

step in to integrate neighborhoods, meaning...

neighborhoods weren't going to integrate.

Prices in white neighborhoods were now too high, and the racial wealth gap was

firmly entrenched. And even though overt discrimination was now illegal, there

were and still are... There are many, many ways for neighborhoods to keep

themselves white. Sometimes it's through zoning, like requiring minimum lot sizes

or banning multi-family homes. And sometimes it comes in the form of

realtors steering buyers away from certain neighborhoods on a racial basis.

They are not supposed to do that, but it still happens all the time.

A few years ago, Newsday had testers of multiple races pose as home buyers on

Long Island, and the black testers experienced disparate treatment nearly

half the time.

In some cases, they were sent to vastly different neighborhoods, but even a

realtor who Newsday said gave out similar listings to black and white

buyers, thereby staying outside the legal definition of steering,

accompanied them with some not-so-subtle tips that she only gave to the white

tester. And there's pockets of torture, too.

You know, down by the train, any area there.

What I say is always to women, follow the school bus.

You know, that's what I always say. Follow the school bus.

See the moms that are hanging out on the corners.

There was one fellow who, like, insisted on this house.

And the wife was pregnant and had a little one. And I said to him, I can't

say anything, but I encourage you. I want you to go there at 10 o'clock at

night with your wife. Why die?

Go to that 7-Eleven. They didn't buy there.

No, that's great.

I have to say, without saying it, you know, you have the knowledge of the

areas. Yes. I don't want to use the word steer, but I try to... No, listen,

absolutely. You know?

Oh, well, that's all right, then. As long as you don't say the word steer,

it's okay.

It's like taboo. As long as you don't say one of the five words on the card,

you're completely in the clear.

At every step of the process, black homebuyers are faced with

discrimination. A few years ago, reporters crunched through 31 million

loan applications and found that African Americans continue to be routinely

denied conventional mortgage loans at much higher rates, even controlling the

income, loan amount, and neighborhood.

And even if you own your home, the simple act of having it appraised can

still be tainted by discrimination.

This woman... had her home appraised twice, but the values seemed low to her.

So she did a little experiment.

I met with two of my girlfriends.

Both are married to white men. And I was like, okay, I need to borrow one of y

'all husbands.

When the third appraiser came, Duffy was gone. Her friend's husband posed as her

brother. The result?

Duffy's home was appraised for $259,000, more than double that of her previous

two appraisals.

I screamed with joy.

I just was... I was so elated.

And then it just... it quickly dissipated.

And then it... I just cried.

Because... this isn't actual. There it is.

In that I'm the thing that's devaluing my house.

Look, that is just awful.

We all know the only time the addition of a white man should increase value to

anything... is if that thing is a movie and that white man is Stanley Tucci.

Otherwise, it is just not okay.

And when you take all of this together, the redlining, the blockbusting, the

steering, and not least, the federal government's involvement, it all becomes

clear that the myth of white Americans' post-war prosperity powered by ingenuity

and self-reliance leaves a lot out.

And the problem is, there are many white people who are unwilling to acknowledge

this, or even if they do, are unsure what to do with the information.

Remember Tony DeCoppo's story about Lindhurst? The mayor there and the

historian had very different reactions to what they were learning.

The one thing that I'm struggling with, and this is as somebody whose family

came through here, is when I looked at the old maps, just over the river...

The areas were redlined by the federal government, meaning they weren't worthy

of mortgages.

And Lyndhurst wasn't redlined.

What do you do with that knowledge?

You move on. Come on.

We're God's people.

Now that we do know... Right.

What do we do about it?

You know, that's a good question. I don't have the answer to that, Tony. I

wish I did.

Okay, we'll get to the content of what they're saying in a second, but first...

I gotta know everything about that mayor and how he came into office.

If I had to guess, a couple of candidates disappeared.

You can't have a runoff if only one candidate is on the ballot, can you? But

as nice as it sounds to just move on, that is not dealing with the underlying

injury here, because even if you had a magic wand and were able to stop every

facet of housing discrimination going forward, you still wouldn't be undoing

the damage that has been done.

Home prices have risen much more than wages in the last 50 years, so buying a

home today doesn't carry the same economic promise as it did when the FHA

started. In fact, by one estimate, if we do do nothing and move on, it would take

200 years for the wealth gap to disappear on its own. And yet, so often,

efforts to address the legacy of housing discrimination have been resolutely

colorblind. Here is Joe Biden on the campaign trail just last year.

My plan for African Americans to close the wealth gap is to invest in African

American home ownership.

That includes my insisting that there will be a $15,000 first-time home buyer

tax credit for everyone.

Well, hold on there, Joe.

For everyone? That might sound great, but it also fundamentally dilutes what

you're actually trying to achieve here.

Because we've immediately gone from targeted investment in black home

ownership to a broad tax credit for everybody.

And we sure do suddenly seem to become a rainbow coalition just as soon as the

federal government starts handing out cash, don't we? And our failure to

effectively target solutions based on race has doomed potential fixes in the

past. In the 70s, we passed the Community Reinvestment Act, requiring

banks to approve loans in low-income neighborhoods.

But... we didn't specify who the loans had to go to, with one analysis in

Philadelphia showing that banks and lenders favored white borrowers even in

majority black neighborhoods, making this well-meaning act basically a

gentrification machine.

Although not a literal gentrification machine, of course, because as we all

know, those are obviously e-scooters.

So that approach of move on, we're all God's people hasn't fixed the problem.

But what about that second guy who said...

He doesn't know what we should do about it, but wishes he had the answer.

If that is true, if he honestly wants to know what a major component of the

answer should probably be, I've actually got some good news for him, because it

exists. It's pretty straightforward.

And it's the same answer that many black viewers have been shouting at this

screen for the last 20 minutes, because it's reparations.

And the first thing to say about this is that it's by no means a new argument.

People have been making the case for reparations for generations, and the

history of housing discrimination specifically made up a large part of Ta

-Nehisi Coates' award-winning essay, The Case for Reparations, seven years ago.

And yet, even though reparations are clearly necessary, practical, and the

right thing to do, a poll recently found only one in ten white people favor them,

and some dismiss the subject...

right out of hand.

Yeah, I don't think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago

for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea.

Uh, we've, you know, tried to deal with our original sin of slavery

by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation.

Uh, we've elected an African-American president.

I think...

We're always a work in progress in this country.

Uh, but... no one currently alive was responsible for that.

Wow.

Reparations aren't a good idea because we've elected an African-American

president? Who exactly is the we in that sentence, Mitch?

Because as I remember it, electing that president was basically your least

favorite thing America ever did, and you vowed to devote every waking moment to

making sure it didn't happen again.

We tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war,

which I didn't have to take a side in, by passing civil rights legislation,

which I didn't have to take a position on, and by electing an African-American

president who I've always been against.

This country has come a long way, and with God as my witness, it will not go

any further.

But the thing is...

We're not actually talking about reparations for slavery here. We should,

but that is a different conversation.

We're talking about housing discrimination.

Mitch McConnell was born in 1942.

The Fair Housing Act wasn't passed until 1968.

This is quantifiable harm done in our lifetimes to people who are still alive.

As for what... what reparations could look like, there was a bill introduced

in the House for 30 years by the late John Conyers to form a commission to

study this. And this year, the House Judiciary Committee finally voted to

advance it. So if we really want to know what reparations could look like, we can

pass that bill and find out. But to be clear, we don't really need to study the

weather at this point. We just need to study the how.

Because we know what the government did. And we know the effect it had.

And there are potential models for us to learn from, from Germany paying

reparations to Holocaust survivors, to the U.S. paying Japanese Americans who

were interned during World War II. And if you are looking for more recent

examples, Evanston, Illinois, recently voted to use revenue from legal weed to

provide grants to assist black people who lived there from 1919 to 1969 and

their descendants.

Now, does that program fix everything? No.

Of course not. Its first phase makes available up to $25,000 for each

participant who can only spend that money on buying or renovating a house or

paying down their mortgage. And the initial budget for the program is only

$400,000, so it might well be limited to 16 people.

But it is at least a real attempt to both acknowledge and redress harm.

And ultimately...

This isn't something cities or even states can do on their own. It took the

power and resources of the federal government to enforce racism on this

scale, and only the federal government can truly grapple with the consequences.

And there are some, like Nicole Hannah-Jones, who have some pretty

specific ideas on what that grappling could look like.

So, to me, reparations has to be three-pronged.

a recommitment to strong enforcement of civil rights laws, because you can get

this economic payment, but we know that black people still face discrimination

in every aspect of American society.

And then I think there needs to be a really large investment of resources

into the black communities that have had that wealth extracted and have been

denied the ability to live like other Americans.

And I think anyone who's arguing for reparations that is not arguing for a

cash payment is, um, basically, that's racist.

You know, because it's like, it's only when it comes to black folks that we're

so concerned how people are gonna spend the money. I don't know if they know how

to spend that money responsibly.

I say this jokingly, but half-jokingly. Like, if I wanted to spend my

reparations on all Gucci, that's my right.

Yeah. Black people should get to decide how to spend the money the federal

government gives them in the same way.

that white people got to decide how to spend all the billions of dollars in

wealth that it created for them. I promise you, not all that money has been

spent responsibly. Just think of how much of it has gone towards Thomas

Kinkade paintings.

There is one and only one good reason to buy a Thomas Kinkade painting, and that

is to help convince the appraiser that your friend's white husband really does

live in this house. That is it.

And I'm not saying that money alone is what is called for here. As Nicole

Hannah-Jones pointed out, simply handing out cash without changing any of the

underlying structural conditions that produced inequality in the first place

would be a big mistake.

This is a both-and situation.

But ultimately, the only really strange thing about paying reparations to black

people is that we haven't done it yet.

Just like it's strange that it's taken so long to give Bruce's Beach back to

the Bruces.

In both cases, the right thing to do couldn't be clearer.

When you deprive somebody of something, you make it right by paying what you

owe. Now, figuring out exactly how to pay might well get complicated, but

realizing that you have to should be pretty simple. Because this is a wound

that we are actively choosing not to heal, and it is hurting real people

every day.

And also, try and think of the positives here, because if we do choose to do the

right thing... And after all these years redressed this wrong, we might finally

get to live up to this country's highest potential, and that is to become a

nation of rose and angies getting absolutely day-wasted on our porches.

That's our show. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you next week. Good

night.