The policy changes that would really make Black families free

Parents magazine quotes Athena Mutua in a story about how policy changes that would benefit Black families. "Changes to universal policies don't always help us because we are so disadvantaged," says Mutua. "We need targeted policy changes that specifically address our disadvantages." The article states that slavery drove American industrialization, and to maintain the hierarchy of white supremacy after Juneteenth, government leaders created Black codes, restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of Black people and ensure their availability as cheap labor. "These laws gave Black folks narrow job choices and then started criminalizing them for activities like vagrancy," Mutua says. Without the chance to build and keep wealth, there was generally not much to pass down to the next generation, the story reports.