"If those trends persist for another 30 years, the average white family’s net worth will grow by $18,000 per year, but black and Hispanic households would only see theirs grow by $750 and $2,250 per year, respectively...
The racial wealth gap continues to grow not only because of income inequality—whites have more dollars to sock away—but because accumulated wealth is a mechanism for transmitting economic success from generation to generation. It’s a vicious cycle—poor communities have limited tax bases to fund their public-school systems, which lead to sharp disparities in educational quality. A family with some assets can help their kids pay for an education or put a down payment on a first home or kick them some seed money to start a small business. All of those things help the next generation climb the economic ladder. Wealth also provides an important cushion against unexpected shocks—things like temporary job losses or unexpected medical bills. If you’ve got some wealth, you can weather the storm without getting over your head in debt...
The persistence—and growth—of the racial gap provides a powerful rationale for reparations for African Americans, who are the furthest behind whites in accumulating wealth and have endured the most brutal forms of racism. Advocates like William Darity Jr., a professor of African-American studies and economics at Duke University, picture a program of reparations as a sort of Marshall Plan for poor communities of color, with major investments in health care and education and local infrastructure and seed money for small-business start-ups.
But the politics of reparations are fraught, and they wouldn’t help close the wealth gap for other people of color, much less for poor whites. The IPS/CFED report calls for a number of policies that would rationalize federal spending on wealth-building activities so that they target those who need the help. They include one proposal that’s been around for a while: giving every baby born in the United States a savings account with a modest sum, and then using public funds to match what low-income households are able to save."
Related: The case for reparations, which includes a lot more history and analysis on this question;
FB: In case you were wondering how long it would take for "the effects of racism to fade" if we just "let it be" ... "Absent significant policy interventions, or a seismic change in the American economy, people of color will never close the gap."
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