Monday, February 2, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Skylight Books, Los Angeles
 A concise history that uncovers the roots of this most pernicious American divide and makes an urgent call for reparations. Why has the racial wealth gap between the median white households and median Black households remained stagnant over the past century, never narrowing below six to one? Leading expert on race and financial equality Mehrsa Baradaran attempts to answer this question in this sweeping yet accessible history. She shows how decades of the laws rooted in white supremacy—from slavery and the broken Reconstruction-era promise of “40 acres and a mule,” to the racist policies of the Jim Crow and New Deal eras—have restricted Black access to capital, credit, homeownership, and other mechanisms of wealth creation while subsidizing the rising economic fortunes of white families. In _The Racial Wealth Gap_, Baradaran outlines two tectonic forces that have driven apart the economic fortunes of white and Black families: wealth _creation_ for white Americans, who have been systematically receiving financial subsidies in the century and a half since emancipation, and wealth _destruction_ for Black Americans—either by vigilante violence or by official means, such as allowing Black banks to collapse or building highways through segregated Black communities. These forces, combined with the racist notion that Black communities fail to rise because of their own moral, intellectual, or economic shortcomings, have kept Black families behind their white counterparts, despite decades of civil rights activism and national economic growth—a deep injustice that can only be achieved through reparations. An infuriating and compelling read, _The Racial Wealth Gap_ offers a devastating analysis of one of America’s most pressing systemic issues. **Mehrsa Baradaran** is a law professor at University of California, Irvine, and the acclaimed author of _The Color of Money_ and _How the Other Half Banks_. She lives in Irvine, California. **Aaron Thomas** is Senior Managing Director, Public Private Partnerships at Standard Communities. Mr. Thomas previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Accelerator for America; a national nonprofit co-founded by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2017. Guided by a network of mayors, labor leaders, corporate CEOs, and non-profit executives from across the country, the Accelerator develops solutions to economic insecurity for more than 70 cities nationwide. Previously, Mr. Thomas worked in investment banking, trading equity derivatives, and facilitating middle-market equity transactions. He is a graduate of Harvard University and received an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.