The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar “Remaking the Economy: How to Change Our Stories about the Economy.” View the full webinar here.

Jeremie Greer: So, I think one of the biggest misunderstandings about the racial wealth gap is this idea that we’re going to person-by-person individualize our way out of it…and then the data points to this, right? So there’s a recent research study by Ellora Derenoncourt that found that if you gave everybody, every Black person, reparations—and look, I believe all Black people should get reparations on the size and scale that Sandy Darity and other researchers have pointed out. But even if you did that, the structures and systems in our economy will take that back almost immediately and reestablish the racial wealth gap.

What does that tell us? That tells us that, at the same time that we’re focusing on making up for the wealth gap that has been created—through, say, reparations, or some other policy—we have to address the systems and structures that created in the first place.

“The thing that I think is most misunderstood about the racial wealth gap is that it’s going to take wide systematic change.”

So, I get frustrated when people say, well, for example, what’s tax policy got to do with the racial wealth gap? I say, everything. What does shareholder primacy have to deal with the racial wealth gap? I say, everything.

Because Black and Brown people, because of structures of racism, don’t own stock and shares of companies. So, to me, it’s like, if we’re going to address the racial wealth gap, we have to address the systemic structures.

Which means that Bank of America offering first-time homebuyer opportunities for Black people—which they should—is not going to close the racial wealth gap. [But] Bank of America not being an extractive institution that extracts wealth from Black people is something that can close the racial wealth gap.

And you can’t have one without the other. So, for me, that is the thing that I think is most misunderstood about the racial wealth gap is that it’s going to take wide systematic change to even get to any semblance of idea that we can close it.