WW Norton & Co Racial Wealth Gap: A Brief History

Why has the racial wealth gap between the median white households and median Black households remained stagnant over the past century, never narrowing below six to one? Leading expert on race and financial equality Mehrsa Baradaran attempts to answer this question in this sweeping yet accessible history. She shows how decades of the laws rooted in white supremacy—from slavery and the broken Reconstruction-era promise of “40 acres and a mule,” to the racist policies of the Jim Crow and New Deal eras—have restricted Black access to capital, credit, homeownership, and other mechanisms of wealth creation while subsidizing the rising economic fortunes of white families.The Racial Wealth GapcreationdestructionThe Racial Wealth Gap A concise history that uncovers the roots of this most pernicious American divide and makes an urgent call for reparations. Autorid: Mehrsa Baradaran