African Americans often seem cut off from the economic mainstream. They face higher risks of poverty, joblessness and incarceration than their fellow citizens do. Community organizing, civil rights legislation, landmark court decisions and rising education have advanced the cause of racial equality. Overt bigotry has been banished from public places, and polls show that whites harbor fewer prejudices than they used to. But these improvements have not been enough.
How can disadvantage persist so long after most laws, minds and practices have changed? Thomas M. Shapiro argues in this sober and authoritative book that we should look to disparities of wealth for the answer. Whites are wealthier than African Americans, and whites' wealth advantage is much bigger than their advantages in either income or education (the point of Shapiro's earlier study, Black Wealth/White Wealth, co-authored with Melvin Oliver). Whites start out ahead because they inherit more from their parents, and America's racially segregated housing markets boost whites' home equities, while depressing those of African-American families. Shapiro, a professor of sociology at Brandeis, takes readers through the implications of these inequities and concludes that African Americans will not gain significant ground in the wealth divide until inheritance and housing policies change.
| We wouldn't have seen "Houses Divided," Michael Hout's Washington Post review of Thomas Shapiro's "The Hidden Cost of Being African American" (or "Wealth and Racism," the Jabari Asim column that followed a few days later) without MoorishGirl
posted in reviews on February 22, 2004 11:37 PM | t (0)
« Previous phile: The little-studied African diaspora in India.
» Next phile: 'It's imperfect. The law can't right every wrong.'
Interesting article. I'm new to blogs and am not African American (although I am black). Keep up the good work
Return to top of page