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THINGS BLACK FOLK CAN DO TO HELP NARROW THE
22 BLAC • APRIL 2020 • BLACdetroit.com
WEALTH GAP
S
BY PARIS GILES
peaking generally, white people make more money than Black people. Duh, right? That’s no huge surprise, but what may be jarring is just how much more. Calculations by the Federal Reserve Board showed that, in 2016, the median wealth for Black families in America was $17,600 compared with white families’ wealth of $171,000 – 10 times more. This is no stroke of bad luck. At work is an interconnected, overlapping, centuries-old web of racist policies put in place to enact a very deliberate beating down and keeping down of Black people. Change must happen on a policy level, no doubt, but we are not powerless in the meantime. We called on economist and assistant professor of economics at the University of Detroit Mercy Dr. Ablaye Camara and ELE Wealth Management president and CEO Ellis Liddell to understand what we can do to help command control of our financial future.
