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wealth gap

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    3/20/2021

    Your Home’s Value Is Based on Racism

    by Dorothy A. Brown

    The real estate market isn't "free" – it is shaped by the preferences of white buyers who prefer much less racial integration than black buyers do. Consequently, the market is a machine for expanding racial inequality through home equity. 

  • SOURCE: Vox
    1/26/2021

    The Mirage of the Black Middle Class

    by Anne Helen Petersen

    Economic policy debates center on restoring the security of the middle class, but this overlooks that high-earning Black Americans have and still face structural impediments to building wealth through homeownership. 

  • SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
    9/21/2020

    A Neighborhood’s Race Affects Home Values More Now Than in 1980

    by Brentin Mock

    The real estate industry has adopted appraisal standards in response to fair housing laws that are, on the surface, race-neutral. But they don't account for the ways that racism has lowered the sale value in diverse neighborhoods, and still penalize Black and Latino homeowners. 

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    8/25/2020

    The Burning House: How Federal Housing Programs Failed Black America (Review)

    by Marcia Chatelain

    "As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor shows in Race for Profit, we are also only beginning to reckon with the complex network of bankers, real estate agents, and federal agencies that used the rhetoric of equality to obscure a set of race-to-the-bottom schemes that sought to extract as much wealth as possible from poor Black Americans."

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    6/29/2020

    The Surprising Cross-Racial Saga of Modern Wealth Inequality

    by Adolph Reed Jr.

    A political scientist argues that the black-white wealth gap is mostly a product of four decades of income gains accruing to the highest earners; accordingly a broad economic justice program is the best way to close the wealth gap. 

  • SOURCE: CNN
    6/28/2020

    Nikole Hannah-Jones on the Case for Reparations

    The creator of The New York Times 1619 project and Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones speaks with CNN's Manu Raju about the history behind the wealth gap between white Americans and Black Americans

  • 10/27/19

    The Widening Gap Between the Super-Rich and Other Americans

    by Lawrence Wittner

    Although President Donald Trump has claimed that “inequality is down,” federal data released this year show that, in 2018, the nation’s income inequality reached the highest level since the U.S. Census Bureau began measuring it five decades before.