Thanks to the groundbreaking work of colleagues like Dr. Kilolo Kijakazi and Dr. Mariko Chang, there is growing recognition of the ongoing challenge of a deep and too often growing racial wealth divide. As I often state: the foundation of racial inequality is racial economic inequality, and the foundation of racial economic inequality is racial wealth inequality.
As the country’s demographics continue to change, the racial wealth divide is no longer primarily a challenge of disenfranchised minorities but rather a threat to the American middle class. As the report “Dreams Deferred” notes, since the early 1980s, median wealth among Black and Latino families has been stuck at less than $10,000 while White household median wealth grew from about $105,000 to $140,000. In spite of the growth of White wealth, the national median wealth has slightly declined from about $84,000 to $82,000, showing how the racial wealth divide is weakening the American middle class as a whole.