As Americans celebrated Juneteenth, legislation for a commission to study reparations for harms resulting from the enslavement of nearly 4 million people has languished in Congress for more than 30 years.
Though America has yet to begin compensating Black Americans for past and ongoing racial harms, our new research published in the Russell Sage Foundation Journal in June refutes one of the key arguments against making reparation payments — that they would be too difficult and expensive for the federal government to administer.