NYT: Closing the Racial Wealth Gap

The United States tolerates a widening chasm between the very rich few and the many with low incomes. The burden of poverty falls heaviest on African-Americans and other people of color.

By Courtney E. Martin

Ms. Martin is the author, most recently, of “The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream.”

April 23, 2019

In her 2018 book, “Give People Money,” the journalist Annie Lowrey delivered a stinging criticism of the ways in which the United States has essentially won the race to the bottom when it comes to distribution of wealth:

“We tolerate levels of poverty that are grotesque and entirely unique among developed nations.”

She was speaking not just about cold hard cash and other forms of wealth, but also about the way race still shapes who is preposterously rich and who remains predictably poor.

It's likely that you've seen the statistics: The median white family has 41 times more wealth than the median African-American family and 22 times more wealth than the median Latino family. And things are getting worse, not better: The proportion of black families with zero or negative wealth rose by 8.5 percent to 37 percent between 1983 and 2016.

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Courtesy of The New York Times