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 The Racial Wealth Gap. 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.In this concise and authoritative history, Baradaran outlines two tectonic forces that have driven apart the economic fortunes of white and Black families: wealth creation for white Americans, who have been systematically receiving financial subsidies in the century and a half since emancipation, and wealth destruction for Black Americans-either by vigilante violence or by official means, such as allowing Black banks to collapse or building highways through segregated Black communities.
These forces, combined with the racist notion that Black communities fail to rise because of their own moral, intellectual, or economic shortcomings, have kept Black families behind their white counterparts, despite decades of civil rights activism and national economic growth-a deep injustice that can only be achieved through reparations.
| ISBN: | 9781324157144 |
| Publication date: | 26th February 2027 |
| Author: | Mehrsa Baradaran |
| Publisher: | W.W. Norton and Company an imprint of W. W. Norton & Company |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 208 pages |
| Genres: |
Social and cultural history Social discrimination and social justice Social classes Ethnic groups and multicultural studies Ethnic studies |
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 The Racial Wealth Gap. 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.In this concise and authoritative history, Baradaran outlines two tectonic forces that have driven apart the economic fortunes of white and Black families: wealth creation for white Americans, who have been systematically receiving financial subsidies in the century and a half since emancipation, and wealth destruction for Black Americans-either by vigilante violence or by official means, such as allowing Black banks to collapse or building highways through segregated Black communities.
The Racial Wealth Gap features in the following genres: Social and cultural history, Social discrimination and social justice, Social classes, Ethnic groups and multicultural studies, Ethnic studies
Paperback, Hardback. £9.90, down from the £11.00 cover price. Not Available.
The Racial Wealth Gap was written by Mehrsa Baradaran and published by W.W. Norton and Company an imprint of W. W. Norton & Company
The Racial Wealth Gap has 208 pages
£9.90, reduced from £11.00. Not Available.