How much would you need to get paid to be Black?

Ezra Klein and Tyler Cowen recently had a conversation about American healthcare, social justice/free speech on campus, social media's addictivity/utility, and racism. I love whenever Tyler Cowen does an interview. He's the man who's brain I would most like to download.

This part was especially intriguing:

"Ezra: Is America a racist country? 

Tyler: Probably, but what do you mean by the word? 

Ezra: I mean is America still a country where the way the country is constructed, and the way the structures of power are constructed - if you're born African American in this country, through no fault of your own you're likely to have significantly worse life outcomes.

Tyler: That's correct. I remember something very striking. There was once a poll of white people who were asked, 'if you had been born with the same level of parental income but you would have been born a black person, how much would we have to pay you to feel compensated?' And the numbers were very high..."

I looked up the study,

Participants generally required low median amounts, less than $10,000, to make the race change, whereas they requested high amounts, $1,000,000, to give up television. To the extent that larger amounts were requested, support for reparations also increased. Attempts to educate participants about Black cost/White privilege had negligible effects on assessments of the cost of being Black and support for reparations.

The authors of the study, as well as the many publications reporting on it, framed the $10,000 as being a relatively low amount. This is in contradiction with Tyler who thought it was "very high."

I don't now if $10,000 is a high or low number, but to the extent that commenters thought it was a low number, they thought it was obviously wrong and biased. From the study:

Relative to Whites, Blacks fall on the negative side of a wide array of important social indicators, with infant morality rates 146% higher; life chances of imprisonment ~state or federal facility! 447% higher; rate of death by homicide 521% higher; lack of health insurance coverage 42.3% more likely; median income rate 55.3% lower; poverty rates 173% higher; and proportion with a college degree or beyond 59.5% lower. Strikingly, the average White American will even live five and one-half years longer than the average Black American ~seven years for males!

...Together, these results suggest that White resistance to reparations for Black Americans stems from fundamental biases in estimating the true cost of being Black.

I'm naturally inclined to criticize the public for being ignorant, but this just doesn't seem right to me. When I'm asked, "how much would you have to be paid to be black," I answer as though all else is equal, not as though I'm being offered a bundle. We don't even have to talk about the controversial topic of race differences in personality or IQ. I assume my neighborhood, family, schools, and environment more generally are all the same. I don't assume I'm exchanging entire lives and experiences with a random black person.

The only thing I'm being offered $10,000 for is changing the color of my skin, and whatever else comes as a consequence of that. That's all.

I believe that's the normal way of understanding the question, and that's how those surveyed answered. It is; however, not how the authors of the study or many commentators understood it, I suspect that comes as a result of their preference for a certain conclusion.

One more thing.

I also would have preferred the authors asked black people how much money they would need to get paid to be white, so a proper baseline that takes status quo bias into account can be set. I can't be sure, but I suspect that if you ask any race how much they would need to get paid to transition to any other race, the average number is above $0.