I don't disagree with you Wayne - the solutions to specific disparities are out of scope for what I was trying to communicate, for exactly the reasons you noted: they are fraught with the potential for unintended consequences that could end up being more destructive in the long run.

I would contend that before we even think about specific solutions, we need to admit that systemic racism exists, and that was my most important goal in the essay. The causes are numerous and complex. Increasing lifetime income or forcing Black women to have fewer children misses the underlying causes and would, as you said, likely create more problems over time. Whatever the solutions may be, I think it has to begin with acknowledgment that the problems are correlated with but not caused by race. I find it telling that a lot of people who we might suspect to be closet racists already assume that liberal government just wants to throw (their) money at the problem and impose some wonky fix - an approach that is (justifiably) easy to shoot down as a way of (unjustifiably) rationalizing doing nothing.

So I think the starting point for solutions is individual and personal, but as we cautiously wade into considering solutions, I do have some ideas.

I volunteer in Atlanta for a non-profit (lead2legacy.org) that combines baseball training with education to put at-risk kids on the right path. We've got a 100% HS graduation rate and a 90% college enrollment rate. Among the lessons I've learned: One of the core solutions to addressing systemic racism lies in creating a sense of empowerment and perspective that gives our young men the ability to delay gratification (baseball fits well because you have to fail a lot before you succeed). This might seem obvious to us, but for a kid who's dad has disappeared and who's next meal may not be coming, its hard to think about anything beyond the next few days.

Many of the problems faced by our Black community can be traced back to the inability to delay gratification, which is why there is little savings, or why Black women have too many children with no fathers present. This dynamic is no different than those of impoverished laid off White people who have too many children and turn to alcohol or Opioids, and its understandable. Reversing that is less about giving people money or forcing behavior change then it is about changing the frame of mind so that kids and young adults feel a sense of control over their futures. Believe me, they are hungry for that and if we haven't completely killed their spirit already, they will respond very positively to it. That is the nurture that we need, and if we are serious about crafting anti-racist policy, it will involve creating the conditions in which Black people will be empowered to take control of their own futures (a fishing pole rather than fish) and feel they have a stake in this country.