Read the excerpt below from a prominent intellectual argument on economic justice:
"A nation cannot simply declare a clean slate after centuries of state-sponsored economic subjugation and expect equal outcomes. The massive wealth gap separating Black and white Americans is not a product of cultural differences or individual failures, but the logical consequence of a structural architecture designed to transfer wealth from one race to another. Therefore, reparations are not a matter of charity or a request for a handout; they are a demand for the restitution of stolen labor and assets that laid the foundation for modern American prosperity."
Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes the author's primary justification for racial reparations?
- AThe wealth gap is primarily a modern issue arising from informal, de facto practices in the North rather than state-supported, de jure institutions of enslavement and Jim Crow.
- BReparations are best implemented as a program to fund the emigration and resettlement of African Americans in West Africa to guarantee complete economic independence.
- Reparations are a demand for structural restitution of stolen labor and assets that created systemic wealth disparities, rather than a form of charity or welfare.Answer
- DThe economic debt of slavery was fully mitigated when the government facilitated fair sharecropping contracts that allowed formerly enslaved people to gain land ownership.