Kleptocracy
A government (or society) where corrupt leaders use their power to exploit others for their own benefit
Lynching
A form of terrorism in the South where Black people, usually Black men, would be accused of a crime, beaten, and then hanged without trial by white mobs. Often this was considered a social event, and white mobs would often take photographs with the corpse.
The Great Migration
A period of time in the first half of the 20th century where, in response to increasingly aggressive racism in the Jim Crow South and limited economic options, African American people moved North to find new opportunities.
Selling on Contract
A predatory practice where contract sellers buy homes for very cheap, then resell them far in excess of their worth to buyers: but instead of the usual set-up, which is that the buyer owns the home while being in debt to the bank, who pays the seller, the buyer pays the seller directly and doesn't actually own the home outright until all of the money is paid off, and also cannot accrue equity on it. In addition, if a buyer misses a payment, they lose the house, their deposit, and all prior payments.
Federal Housing Authority
An American government agency founded by Franklin Roosevelt as part of the National Housing Act of 1934. Nominally, the goals of the FHA are to improve housing, provide mortgage loan insurance, and to stabilize the mortgage market, but over its history, the FHA has practiced housing policies that discriminate against minority communities, particularly through redlining.
Redlining
On a broad scale, redlining refers to the systematic denial of services to residents of minority communities, but for the purposes of this article, redlining refers to the FHA's practice of effectively devaluing minority neighborhoods by giving them low housing scores, making it essentially impossible to secure a legitimate mortgage within predominantly African-American communities.
Generational Wealth
The assets that are passed down through families from generation to generation, an important consideration in social mobility and something that most African-American families lack.
Reparations
Repayment for any debt owed; in this article, it refers to social and economic compensation the African-American community would receive in return for slavery and as well as the subsequent decades of intense racism.
Racism
The practice and ideology of systematic, institutional discrimination against a group of people based on their racial origins
Institutional
The quality of being not just individually practiced, but also ingrained into the practice of institutions and systems—Coates describes how racism is "institutional" to indicate how the institutions and systems of America are built on racism and slavery
Wealth vs. Income
An important distinction throughout the piece, wealth refers to a household's accumulated assets, while income refers to money earned by a household over a certain period of time. While the income gap between white and African American people is large, the wealth gap is even larger, with Black families holding a fraction of the wealth white families do.
White Flight
The social phenomena where white families left neighborhoods en masse in fear of African Americans moving and devaluing the neighborhoods
Segregation
The practice of excluding people from locations like businesses, schools, and neighborhoods on the basis of their race
White supremacy
The racist ideology that white people are superior to those of other racial backgrounds
Plunder
To take something by force or wrongfully
Indentured Servitude
In the United States, a practice that was present mainly during the 16th and 17th centuries where debtors or prisoners from England and other places in Europe would have their labor sold to land or business owners for a certain period of years, after which they would be let free
Reconstruction
The period immediately after the Civil War during which the South was forced to rebuild after its loss; an optimistic, but tragically short, time (about eight years) for African Americans that was swiftly followed by the devastation of Jim Crow after federal troops left the Southern states
Block-busting
A practice where contract sellers would use the threat of Black families moving into a neighborhood to get white families to sell their homes for cheap
Affirmative Action
Any practice aimed at correcting the effects of discrimination, particularly with respect to access to education and employment
Black Wall Street
Here, Black Wall Street refers to a neighborhood in Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma, where many African American businesses were thriving in the early 20th century before being destroyed in the Tulsa race riot of 1921.
