Assignment # 11
In the report, “The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap,” by Thomas Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede, and Sam Osoro, they discuss the main factors that fuel the racial wealth gap. Those factors as per their report were:
Homeownership: As per this study homeownership is the largest form of investment for most Americans. The length of homeownership plays a big role on the return of its investment, therefor the significant forecaster of the wealth gap. Unfortunately African American faced a large numbers of foreclosures during the real state crisis of 2008, which contributed to the high wealth disparity between whites and African American (3,4).
Income and Unemployment: As per this study the increase of income plays a major role in wealth accumulation. It is historically known that African Americans have suffered discrimination in the job markets. That has resulted is getting jobs where they don’t have the same benefits and face work instabilities that most whites don’t have to worry about (4-5).
College education: Education was known as the “great equalizer,” but that is no longer the case. Now that colleges are getting too expensive, African Americans are more likely to drop out to avoid dept. Versus the wealthier whites that are more likely to afford the higher education who are the one’s taking advantages of the benefits of attending college.
Inheritance: Even though most Americans inherit very little to no money, Whites are 5 times as likely to inherit than African Americans. The major difference in what happens to the inherence its whites are more like invest their inheritance. As for African Americans, they are more likely to save it just in case they have to use it for an emergency (5).
Social and Cultural Factors: As per this study, marriage seems to benefit already higher earning white families. When they combine their incomes together that tends to help then build on their current wealth. As for African Americans, marriage doesn’t help much in the accumulation of wealth. Yes, combining two incomes does help but when they are both significantly low, it doesn’t make much of an impact (6).
I can both agree and disagree with this study. Yes there has been a significant amount of discrimination that African Americans have faced and therefore have struggled in getting a fair chance in accumulating wealth. At first they struggle with trying to get fair loan. Afterwards, they were victims of predatory lending which have left many to lose their homes after the real state crisis. But I’m such a believer that even though the world seems to be going against you, there is no reason to give up. I believe that when there is a will there is a way. Many African Americans have gotten out of poverty and have become major entrepreneurs. So even though the study shows enough evidence to support the argument there are always exemptions to this.
