Black Wealth / White Wealth
A New Perspective on Racial Inequality
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- $62.99
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- $62.99
Publisher Description
The award-winning Black Wealth / White Wealth offers a powerful portrait of racial inequality based on an analysis of private wealth. Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro's groundbreaking research analyzes wealth - total assets and debts rather than income alone - to uncover deep and persistent racial inequality in America, and they show how public policies have failed to redress the problem.
First published in 1995, Black Wealth / White Wealth is considered a classic exploration of race and inequality. It provided, for the first time, systematic empirical evidence that explained the racial inequality gap between blacks and whites. The Tenth Anniversary edition contains two entirely new and substantive chapters. These chapters look at the continuing issues of wealth and inequality in America and the new policies that have been launched in the past ten years. Some have been progressive while others only recreate inequality - for example the proposal to eliminate the estate tax.
Compelling and also informative, Black Wealth / White Wealth is not just pioneering research. It is also a powerful counterpoint to arguments against affirmative action and a direct challenge to current social welfare policies that are tilted towards the wealthy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Racial comparisons by income are misleading, argue these two sociologists, because the black middle class lags far behind its white counterpart in terms of assets that can expand choices and opportunities for generations to come. Their analysis provides telling insight into the causes and persistence of American racial inequality: government policies of suburbanization and redlining helped boost wealth for whites over blacks, while discrimination against blacks long kept them from developing assets through self-employment. The authors' study uncovers ``the buried fault line of the American social system,'' and they note that three times as many whites as blacks grow up in households with three months of financial reserves. Because of such intergenerational transfers of wealth, the authors make a philosophical case for racial reparations but also argue for more feasible policies, such as government-supplemented accounts to make education and home-ownership more available, as well as the modification of tax policies (mortgage deductions, capital gains) that subsidize the rich. Oliver teaches at UCLA, Shapiro at Northeastern University. Illustrations.