Racial inequality in the United States
Many causes relate to racial inequality such as: Years of home ownership, household income, unemployment, education, lack of upward mobility, and inheritance.
Public education greatly relies on local property taxes, with racial inequality between White affluent suburbs and poor minorities in inner-cities.
[1][3]: 231 [4][5][6][7][8] Current racial inequalities in the U.S. have their roots in over 300 years of cultural, economic, physical, legal, and political discrimination based on race.
"[10] A study by the Brandeis University Institute on Assets and Social Policy which followed the same sets of families for 25 years found that there are vast differences in wealth across racial groups in the United States.
The study concluded that factors contributing to the inequality included years of home ownership (27%), household income (20%), education (5%), and familial financial support and/or inheritance (5%).
[16] Lusardi states that African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to face means-tested programs that discourage asset possession due to higher poverty rates.
[15] A 2015 Measure of America study commissioned by the ACLU on the long-term consequences of discriminatory lending practices found that the financial crisis will likely widen the Black-white wealth gap for the next generation.
[22] Before the 1808 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, Africans would be captured and brought into the United States as enslaved people, depriving them of all property, and in some cases family.
Redistribution of land from white owners to the people formerly forced to work it was attempted under the forty acres and a mule policy of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman.
This was reversed by President Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat who also opposed political rights for African Americans and protections against white violence in the South.
The Freedmen's Bureau was created as part of the War Department by President Abraham Lincoln to provide shelter and supplies to freed slaves.
At the same time, southern Blacks were trapped in debt and denied banking services while White citizens were given low-interest loans to set up farms in the Midwest and Western United States.
[18] In addition, when Social Security was first created during the Great Depression, it exempted agricultural and domestic workers, which disproportionately affected African Americans and Hispanics.
Consequently, the savings of retired or disabled African Americans was spent during old age instead of handed down and households had to support poor elderly family members.
The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) and Veteran's Administration (VA) shut out African Americans by giving loans to suburbs instead of central cities after they were first founded.
African Americans were 7.3% less likely to have live parents, 24.5% more likely to have three or more siblings, and 30.6% less likely to be married or cohabiting (meaning two people could gain inheritances to contribute to the household)[27] Keister discovered that large family size has a negative effect on wealth accumulation.
There are studies that indicate that elderly Hispanic parents of all backgrounds live with their adult children due to poverty and would choose to do otherwise, even if they had the resources to do so.
[29] Krivo and Kaufman found that information supporting the fact that increases in income does not affect wealth as much for minorities as it does for white Americans.
[17] Evidence suggests that women of color are disproportionately likely to plan on using informal borrowing as their sole strategy for coping with an emergency expense, potentially due to lack of access to formal banking services.
In areas where there are large minority groups, this view predicts high levels of discrimination to occur for the reason that white populations stand to gain the most in those situations.
[76] This theory argues that the unemployment disparity can be attributed to lower rates of academic success among minority groups (especially Black Americans) leading to a lack of skills necessary for entering the modern work force.
[79] The injustices of a criminal justice system disproportionately impact Black people; maintaining these racial disparities has a high cost for individuals, families, and communities.
At the county level, for example, jail rather than prison incarceration has been found to significantly diminish local labor markets in areas with relatively high proportions of Black residents.
"[87] It can come in the form of murder, assault, mayhem, or torture, as well as less physical means of violence including general harassment, verbal abuse, and intimidation.
[87] it has been argued that the origins of racial inequality by way of police brutality in America date to colonial times when slavery was legal and widespread.
[97][98] A study by Harvard economist Roland Fryer found that for officer-involved shootings there were no racial disparities "in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account".
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva writes that there are four frames of color-blind racism that support that view:[5] When a disaster strikes—be it a hurricane, tornado, or fire—some people are inherently more prepared than others.
[110] Racial discrimination also results in impacts on the credit scores and economic security of communities of color—that ultimately, "entrenches and reinforces inequality by dictating a consumer's access to future opportunities".
[122] FICO has defended the system stating that income, property, education, and employment are not evenly distributed across society and it is irrational to think an objective measure would not exhibit these discrepancies.
[123] Tamara Nopper, sociologist at The Center for Critical Race & Digital Studies has stated that to solve the true issue of racism is not just to regulate it, as politics focus on, but to eliminate it in favor of public-owned banks that serve the community instead of shareholders.
