America’s racial wealth gap

It was 397 years in the making; we shouldn’t take that long to close it

Slavery of African-Americans lasted for 246 years, from when the first slaves were brought to Virginia in 1619 to when it was finally abolished in 1865. Another 99 years passed until the 1964 Civil Rights Act ended Jim Crow laws that had systematically denied equal opportunity to African-Americans. Even after the end of Jim Crow, discrimination against African-Americans has continued in numerous well-documented ways, and all people of color in the United States continue to lag well behind whites when it comes to income and wealth.

The impact of this history is very much with us today. As a recent report from the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) points out, if the wealth of average black families continues to grow at the same pace as it is growing today, it will take 228 years to reach the wealth of average white families today — nearly as long as the 246-year span of slavery. And that’s just to reach the current wealth levels of white families, not to catch up with white family wealth that is still growing at three times the rate of the black population. For the average Latino family, it would take 84 years to reach the amount of wealth that white families have today.

That means without major changes, the legacy of slavery, discrimination, and the racial wealth gap will be with us for centuries to come. This racial wealth gap is a national problem that will require nationwide efforts to fully address it. However, Oklahoma policymakers can take some steps to improve economic justice in our state.

DeVon Douglass is a policy analyst for Oklahoma Policy Institute. For the rest of this article and more, visit okpolicy.org.