“Blacks/Latinos/non-whites don’t value education like whites do. They don’t work as hard as whites do. They spend more than whites do on junk,” says your standard white guy at the end of the bar dissecting the large racial wealth gap in the United States. “They just need to get off their butts and bootstrap it up like I did!”
However, the old tried-and-true American bootstrap lore took a big hit this month with a study that shows most families living with the material comfort and range of opportunities normally associated with middle-class status have obtained them the old-fashioned way: inheritance. The racial and wealth gap in the United States is as large as ever and “
The Asset Value of Whiteness: Understanding the Racial Wealth Gap,” shows that inheritance plays a huge factor in that gap.
“For centuries, white households enjoyed wealth-building opportunities that were systematically denied to people of color. Today our policies continue to impede efforts by African-American and Latino households to obtain equal access to economic security,” Amy Traub, report co-author and associate director of policy and research at Demos said in a statement. “When research shows that racial privilege now outweighs a fundamental key to economic mobility, like higher education, we must demand our policymakers acknowledge this problem and create policies that address structural inequity.”
In short, the study found that white people inherit stuff and have inherited stuff for generations. And that gives them a supreme advantage. The report shows that typical markers of success in white households – and the chosen interventions in the lives of others – are not translating into lasting wealth and security in households of color.
From the report:
“Research probing the causes of the racial wealth gap has traced its origins to historic injustices, from slavery to segregation to redlining. The great expansion of wealth in the years after World War II was fueled by public policies such as the GI Bill, which mostly helped white veterans attend college and purchase homes with guaranteed mortgages, building the foundations of an American middle class that largely excluded people of color. The outcomes of past injustice are carried forward as wealth is handed down across generations and are reinforced by ostensibly “color-blind” practices and policies in effect today. Yet many popular explanations for racial economic inequality overlook these deep roots, asserting that wealth disparities must be solely the result of individual life choices and personal achievements. The misconception that personal responsibility accounts for the racial wealth gap is an obstacle to the policies that could effectively address racial disparities.”
Professor Thomas Shapiro, who directs the Institute on Assets and Social Policy and is the Pokross Professor of Law and Social Policy at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, has been studying this topic since the early 1990s. He was one of the co-authors of the study.
“We know, with a lot of empirical rigor, why the racial wealth gap exists in the United States,” Shapiro told Madison365. “We’ve got the dimensions down. We know that looking at different national databases that whites have about eight times as much financial wealth as African-American families and about eight times as much as the typical Hispanic family has, as well. And we know what the drivers of those things are.
“We know that it is the wealth that is produced through home ownership. We know it’s about the kind of work that people have that ties them into wealth escalators that is a robust pension benefit scheme,” he said. “In this piece, we were trying to say: Let’s take some of the so-called popular explanations and explore them.”
The report found, specifically, that:
◆ Attending college does not close the racial wealth gap.
◆ Raising children in a two-parent household does not close the racial wealth gap.
◆ Working full time does not close the racial wealth gap.
◆ Spending less does not close the racial wealth gap.
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