The Intellectual Father Of Baby Bonds

Governments across the U.S. are trying Darrick Hamilton’s big idea for closing the wealth gap

- Ben Steverman

Darrick Hamilton grew up shuttling between two worlds. Each morning during the 1970s and ’80s he and his sister would travel three miles to Brooklyn Friends, the elite private Quaker school that their parents had scrimped, saved, and sacrificed to afford. Then the kids would return from downtown Brooklyn to Bedford-Stuyvesant, which was overwhelmingly Black, largely poor, and one of New York’s most dangerous neighborhoods.

At the time, pundits and politicians frequently talked of a “culture of poverty” or a “pathology” in Black “ghettos.” That didn’t compute for Hamilton. “I could see the vivid inequality,” he says, but “I could see fundamentally people were not different.” The neighbor he played football with who was later incarcerated for robbing an armored car didn’t seem essentially different from the classmate who might be an investment banker today.

By the standards of Bed-Stuy, Hamilton was privileged. His family owned their home, and in Brooklyn Friends he had a place where he could thrive. A precocious and popular student, he took to heart the Quaker emphasis on social justice and morality. Most of all, he had parents who were devoted to getting their children ahead, no matter the cost.