How Government Policy Promotes the Racial-Wealth Gap
“The story for African Americans is a different than it is for whites. With a combination of a growing economy in the 1950s and 60s in particular, opening up of educational institutions, opening up of some fair housing and some fair lending, we really did see the development of an African American middle class—we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of families. When whites do that, they are much more able to pass that earned middle-class status along to their children, because of the wealth they’ve built up in their homes and other things, and the schools and the educations that their kids get. African Americans don’t. The fall-back of the children of African Americans who have earned that middle-class or professional status, in terms of economic mobility, is pretty great.”