A basic income is insufficient to solve racial inequality – alternate causes like anti-blackness, xenophobia, and mass incarceration prevent solvency.

By tackling wealth inequality, we can ultimately put America on the road to greater racial and gender economic justice. Income is crucial for building wealth, but efforts to improve incomes alone will not close gaps in wealth along racial and gender lines. As such, we also need to consider how anti-Blackness, xenophobia, and sexism have rigged the rules of our economy to deny certain populations equal access to prosperity and liberation. This will enable us to have a more comprehensive discussion about intersectionality and the numerous issues that need to be addressed—in addition to boosting incomes—in order to create the conditions where everyone in the US truly has the ability to build wealth and thrive. This paper proposes a multi-pronged approach to designing a guaranteed income policy that includes: • Dismantling narratives that dehumanize Black and brown people and question their deservedness to receive public assistance; • Eliminating state-sponsored wealth extraction through our criminal justice system; and • Establishing a truth and reconciliation process in the US. Incorporating these elements into a no-strings-attached cash benefit for all residents can create the conditions that are necessary for true gender and racial economic justice to be achieved.