The Racial Wealth Gap—Moving to Systemic Solutions

Solutions to address racial wealth inequality have often focused on behavioral changes and individual choices, minimizing efforts to dismantle structural barriers to wealth accumulation for Black Americans.

A lot of conversations about the racial wealth gap focuses too much on homeownership as the only solution. It’s much more complex. Shelterforce’s Miriam Axel-Lute talks with Anne Price, president of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development.

Typical approaches to closing the racial wealth gap focus on ways to help Black households build wealth. But for that to stick, we must also stop siphoning their wealth away.

Debt related to justice-system involvement falls most heavily on overpoliced communities, extracting wealth and preventing the building of more.

Disproportionate amounts of medical debt contribute to the racial wealth gap. What can be done?

What explains the large disparity in Black and white student debt, and what can we do to address the student debt crisis and close the racial wealth gap?

It’s been almost two years since the racial justice reckoning galvanized big banks to promise billions of dollars to increase racial equity and close the wealth gap. What are those dollars going toward, and how big a change do they represent?

The dual financial system affects not only Black and Brown consumers, but Black- and Brown-led firms. In the past two years, CDFIs have focused on shifting access to capital for developers.

Homes owned by people of color are appraised for less than identical homes owned by white families. Nationwide, that’s led to more than $150 billion in lost equity. How can we stop appraisal bias?

Expanding access to the housing market is unlikely to do much to close the racial wealth gap. Here’s why.

Property tax relief programs can be essential for helping older and lower-income homeowners keep their homes. But access to them isn’t universal, or equitable.

Dorothy A. Brown’s The Whiteness of Wealth breaks down the deleterious effect our tax code has had on Black lives. Crown, 2021, 288 pp., $27 (hardcover); $17 (softcover).