William A. Darity Jr. facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Sandy Darity
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Darity speaking at 2025 Samuel Westerfield Award
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| Born | April 19, 1953 Norfolk, Virginia, U.S.
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| Institution | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Duke University |
| Field | Macroeconomics Public economics Economic stratification analysis |
| Awards | Marshall Scholar (1974) |
William A. "Sandy" Darity Jr. (born April 19, 1953) is an American economist and social scientist. He teaches at Duke University. Dr. Darity studies how different groups of people experience economic inequality. He focuses especially on issues related to race and ethnicity.
In 2005, Dr. Darity's work helped create a new field called "stratification economics." This field looks at how economic differences between groups continue over time. He has also researched the Atlantic slave trade, and how to make up for past wrongs through reparations for African Americans. Many see him as a top expert on the economics of racial inequality.
Dr. Darity is a professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics at Duke University. He also leads the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke. Before this, he was a professor at the University of North Carolina. He has also been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve and a fellow at the National Humanities Center.
Early Life and Education
Darity was born in Norfolk, Virginia. As a child, he lived in places like Beirut, Lebanon, Alexandria, Egypt, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He spent his teenage years mostly in Amherst, Massachusetts.
His parents were also professors. His father, William A. Darity Sr., helped start the School of Public Health at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His mother, Evangeline Royal Darity, worked at Smith College and Mt. Holyoke College.
College and Advanced Degrees
In 1974, Darity Jr. graduated with honors from Brown University. He studied economics and political science. After college, he became a Marshall Scholar. This scholarship allowed him to study for a year at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 1978, he earned his doctorate degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Academic Career
In 1980, Dr. Darity started working as an economist for the National Urban League. In 1983, he began teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was also a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve in 1984.
Dr. Darity has been a leader in many organizations. He was a fellow at the National Humanities Center from 1989 to 1990. He also served on the executive committee of the American Economic Association. He has been president of the Southern Economic Association and the National Economic Association.
He has taught at several other colleges, including Grinnell College and the University of Maryland at College Park. From 2003 to 2005, he was a special professor at Spelman College.
Awards and Honors
Dr. Darity has received many awards for his work. In 2012, he won the Westerfield Award from the National Economic Association. This is their highest honor. Other awards include the Theodore W. Schultz Memorial Award in 2021 and the Raymond Gavins Distinguished Faculty Award in 2022.
He has also received honorary degrees from Bard College (2021) and The New School (2022). In 2021, he became a Fellow of the National Academy of Social Insurance. In 2022, he was named a W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow. He was also a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute in 2022–23. In 2024, he received the William Spriggs Memorial Award.
Work at University of North Carolina
Dr. Darity joined the University of North Carolina in 1983. He became the Cary C. Bohamer Professor of Economics and Sociology. He taught economics and public policy. He also directed the economics department's programs for advanced students.
In 2001, he became the Director of UNC's Institute of African American Research. This institute studies all parts of black life and how policies affect it.
Work at Duke University
Since 2014, Dr. Darity has been a professor at Duke University. He holds the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor title. He teaches Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics. He also founded and directs the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, which started in 2015.
Research Focus
Dr. Darity's research covers many topics. A main idea in his work is exploring different parts of economic inequality. This has led him to study:
- Colorism: How skin tone affects people's lives.
- Discrimination: How unfair treatment happens in jobs and relationships.
- Caste and Race: Comparing inequality in India to racial inequality in the United States.
- Unemployment: The emotional effects of not having a job.
- Education: Differences in school success between racial groups.
Internationally, Dr. Darity has studied money problems in developing countries. He also looked at how the Trans-Atlantic slave trade might have affected the Industrial Revolution.
He has written a lot about racial economic inequality, differences in wealth, and reparations. His 2020 book, "From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century," makes a strong case for reparations for descendants of enslaved people in the U.S.
Stratification Economics
Dr. Darity created the term "stratification economics" in 2005. This new field combines ideas from economics, sociology, and social psychology. It helps explain why economic differences between groups continue to exist.
His work uses ideas from thinkers like W. E. B. Du Bois. He argues that social hierarchies (like different levels in society) help powerful groups keep their advantages. He believes that discrimination is not just a mistake in the market. Instead, it is a planned behavior that helps keep certain groups in power.
Dr. Darity's research suggests that simply improving education for everyone is not enough to fix these problems. He argues that big public actions and policies that consider identity are needed. These steps can break down long-standing patterns of inequality.
Notable Studies
Discrimination in Employment
With Samuel Myers Jr., Dr. Darity studied how to measure discrimination in jobs. In 1998, he wrote an important paper with Patrick Mason. They looked closely at common ideas about discrimination in economics.
He also worked with Arthur Goldsmith on how joblessness affects people's feelings. With Major Coleman and Rhonda Sharpe, Dr. Darity found something interesting in 2008. White workers often said they faced more discrimination than they did. Black workers, however, often said they faced less discrimination than they actually did.
Baby Bonds Program
Dr. Darity and economist Darrick Hamilton have suggested a federal program to help build wealth. This program is called "baby bonds." It would create a special savings account for every newborn child. The child could access this money when they become a young adult. The amount in the account would depend on how much wealth their family has. This program aims to help close the racial wealth gap.
Job Guarantee
Dr. Darity has long supported a federal job guarantee. In 2012, after a big economic crisis, he called for a program called the National Investment Employment Corps. This program would make sure all U.S. citizens over 18 could have a job. The job would pay more than the poverty line and include benefits like health care and retirement savings.
Reparations
Since 1989, Dr. Darity has believed that a program to make up for slavery is very important for the nation. He has spent over 30 years researching and supporting reparations for black Americans.
In 2003, he published a paper called "The Economics of Reparations." In 2008, he wrote "Forty Acres and a Mule in the Twenty-First Century." His 2020 book, "From Here to Equality," brought together all his work on this topic.
Dr. Darity is a leading voice in the discussion about African American reparations. He argues that:
- Recipients must be black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States.
- The money should be enough to remove the average wealth differences between black and white people.
- The federal government must run the program.
- The main way to give out the money should be direct payments to those who qualify.
Partial Publication History
- Labor Economics: Problems in Analyzing Labor Markets (1992, editor)
- Macroeconomics (1994, co-author)
- Persistent Disparity: Race and Economic inequality in the United States since 1945 (1999, co-author)
- Boundaries of Clan and Color: Transnational Comparisons of Inter-Group Disparity (2003, co-editor)
- Economics, Economists, and Expectations: Microfoundations to Macroapplications (2004, co-author)
- International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (2007, editor-in-chief)
- For-Profit Universities: The Shifting Landscape of Marketized Higher Education (2017, editor)
- From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twentieth Century (2020, co-author)
- The Black Reparations Project: A Handbook for Racial Justice (2023, co-editor)
