re: Grammy winner Jeff Tweedy to direct royalties to reparations fund in hometown Chicago.

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How does money solve this?

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Royalties. There are generations of black families that have lost out on significant amounts of money because a family member in the past was taken advantage of at one time or another.

Imagine if one of your grandparents wrote a bunch of songs that Elvis made popular, but because they didn't know any better at the time, since they likely got shitty educations(or in some cases weren't even allowed to go to college because of the color of their skin), and they were never fully compensated for those songs. Yet, some white record company exec continues to get royalties on those songs because his grandfather took advantage of your grandfather at the time.

It's a dark side of the history of this country in that very often, rich white men took advantage of black people to further themselves and their wealth. And there are generational wealth gaps in black America that exist because of that.


History.com article on black musicians being taken advantage of.

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Another article about this with quotes on why Tweedy decided to do this as well as some contextual quotes from people like Little Richard and how he got fricked over.

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