Interactive
The Reparations
Debt Visualizer
The debt owed to descendants of American slavery is not abstract. Adjust the assumptions to see how stolen labor, a broken land promise and generations of discrimination compound — and how it compares with what Washington has spent on others. Read more in The Land That Was Promised.
Adjust the assumptions
These sliders drive the illustrative 1619 model below: 4%, $0.10/hour, $10/acre and 1 million families by default. Labor and the 1865 land baseline are retroactively compounded from August 20, 1619; later harms compound only from their reference dates. This is a what-if, not a historical valuation — the running total above uses the published scholarly estimate.
The running total, right now
$17.7 trillion
+$22,018 added every second
$402,625 owed to every descendant of American slavery.
Published $14.0 trillion estimate (Darity & Mullen, 2020) ◆ compounding at 4% ◆ divided among 44 million descendants
- Per family, 1865
- $400
- Per family, 2026
- $3.3 billion
- All families
- $3.3 quadrillion
- Median wealth gap
- $240,100
- Stolen labor, 2026
- $185.8 quadrillion
- Jim Crow, redlining & discrimination, 2026
- $4.0 trillion
- Per descendant of American slavery (44 million)
- $4.3 billion
- Total: slavery + after slavery
- $189.2 quadrillion
Your what-if: interest backdated to 1619
$189.2 quadrillion
+$235.1 million a second at your 4% rate — $4.3 billion per descendant. A figure too large to picture, which is why the clock above leads with the published estimate instead.
$3.3 billion per family today: the $400 promise of 1865, illustratively compounded from 1619
Federal spending vs. what is owed
Log scale. Black bars are what Washington spent; red bars are what is owed.
- TARP bank rescue (2008) — authorized$700.0 billion
- CARES Act (2020)$2.2 trillion
- Jim Crow, redlining & discrimination (sourced estimates, compounded)$4.0 trillion
- Scholarly estimate of the debt (Darity & Mullen)$14.0 trillion
- Your land-promise estimate (1,000,000 families)$3.3 quadrillion
- Your stolen-labor estimate (unpaid wages, compounded)$185.8 quadrillion
- Your combined estimate: slavery + Jim Crow + discrimination$189.2 quadrillion
After slavery: harms added to the debt
Published estimates in the dollars of their reference year, compounded at your growth rate to now — with each one's share per descendant.
- 01Greenwood (Tulsa) massacre — property destroyed, 1921 ($1.8 million, 1921)$110.6 million$3 per descendant
- 02Jim Crow land loss — Black farmland value lost, 1920–1997 ($326.0 billion, 2022)$381.4 billion$8,668 per descendant
- 03Redlining & segregation — undervalued homes in Black neighborhoods ($156.0 billion, 2018)$213.5 billion$4,852 per descendant
- 04Labor-market discrimination — income lost to wage gaps (20 years) ($2.7 trillion, 2020)$3.4 trillion$77,649 per descendant
- ✦Lynching and racial terror: more than 4,400 Black people were lynched from 1877 to 1950 (Equal Justice Initiative). Those lives are not given a dollar value here.
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Reparations News
What is owed per person
$402,625
The published $14.0 trillion estimate (Darity & Mullen, 2020), compounded at 4% to now and divided among the 44 million Americans who descend from the people enslaved here.
Reparations News
The debt, right now
$17.7 trillion
The published $14.0 trillion estimate (Darity & Mullen, 2020), compounding at 4% a year — $22,018 more every second.
Reparations News
The racial wealth gap
$240,100
Median white household wealth $285,000 vs. Black household $44,900 (Federal Reserve, 2022).
Reparations News
40-acre land baseline, compounded from 1619 at 4%
$3.3 billion
Illustrative retroactive model of the 1865 promise. $3.3 quadrillion across 1,000,000 families.
Reparations News
Unpaid wages for American slavery
$185.8 quadrillion
222.5 billion hours of forced labor (1776–1865) at $0.10/hour, illustratively compounded from 1619 at 4%.
Reparations News
After slavery: Jim Crow, redlining & discrimination
$4.0 trillion
Lost farmland, undervalued homes, lost wages and racial terror losses, compounded at 4%. Lynching took 4,400+ lives — a loss no figure can price.
Reparations News
America paid enslavers, not the enslaved
$300
Per person freed in D.C. in 1862 — compensation went to slaveholders. Descendants of American slavery are still owed.
Estimates are illustrative and depend on your chosen assumptions. Scholarly estimate: Darity & Mullen, "From Here to Equality" (2020). Descendant count: American Ancestors, "10 Million Names" project. Wealth figures: Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, 2022. Labor hours: Thomas Craemer, "Estimating Slavery Reparations," Social Science Quarterly (2015). After-slavery harms: Oklahoma Commission on the Tulsa Race Riot (2001); Francis et al., AEA Papers & Proceedings (2022); Perry, Rothwell & Harshbarger, Brookings (2018); Citi GPS, "Closing the Racial Inequality Gaps" (2020). These are partial — many harms have no published dollar estimate.