At a time when it was extremely difficult for Black families to purchase homes and utilize government benefits, my grandfather accomplished an almost impossible feat: He used the GI Bill after World War II and bought a house. For three years, I’ve researched the Black-white wealth gap. In interviews with Black families, I learned that discrimination prevented their relatives from using the GI Bill.
My family’s rare story of homeownership when most Black families were unable to buy houses shows us that — without discrimination — more Black families could have become homeowners, and leveraged that wealth into funding education, businesses and other upward economic moves. Yet even for those like my family who had access to some governmental programs, economic options were limited because of discriminatory laws and racism, forcing people like my grandparents into neighborhoods restricted to or built for Black residents. The GI Bill could have helped Black Americans gain wealth, as the legislation did for white Americans.
Instead, Black Americans were largely left out and the GI Bill widened the Black-white wealth gap. Now as the debate over reparations and other initiatives to address past inequities grows, this history of missed opportunities underscores why all Black American families should be eligible for any socioeconomic programs, beyond just the GI Bill, at the state and federal levels. The federal government created the GI Bill program in the summer of 1944 to ass.
