THE FORGOTTEN
AMERICANS
HUFFINGTON
10.21.12
DERO SANFORD
Cary, Miss., is a case study in persistent rural
poverty. Government programs have lifted
most, though not all, families out of shotgun
shacks and into an assortment of small
single-family homes, trailers or other lowincome housing. But jobs remain scarce and
government dependency is rampant.
were historically promised as a
way to allow freed slaves and their
families to begin building real
wealth never materialized for the
most part, Feagin noted. Through
much of the 20th century, and
particularly in the South, deliberate and codified exclusion from
land acquisition, access to credit,
equal education and even political power continued to prevent
the wider community of African
Americans from developing the
sort of wealth that has passed
through and improved the lot of
generations of whites.
“A simple total of the current
economic worth of all black labor stolen by whites through the
means of slavery, segregation,
and contemporary discrimination is huge—perhaps six to ten
trillion dollars,” Feagin wrote.
“This latter figure is staggeringly
high, indeed about 70 percent
of the Gross Domestic Product
generated by the United States
in a recent year. In addition,
these monetary figures do not
include other major costs—the
great pain and suffering inflicted,