New Report Ask The Question Is Black Celebrity Helping Hide The Wealth Gap?

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*A groundbreaking report “What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap” from Duke University’s Dubois Cook Center, and Insight Center for Community Economic Development has laid out a case that many of the ways black and white American’s thought we could close the racial wealth gap will not work.

Per the report from educational attainment, to home ownership, to even black celebrity as a lens of possibility for black wealth, all of it is a wealth mirage without the addition of transformative governmental policy. The 67 page report covered by Fortune.com states several great points on racial wealth inequality a few being.

Blacks just need better jobs and education

On average, a black household with a college-educated head has less wealth than a white family whose head did not even obtain a high school diploma. This is in part because black students are more likely to borrow student loans and take on higher student loan debt, and are more likely than white students to drop out of university because of finances.

Some believe that if higher education is not the panacea for the racial wealth gap, then hard work can close the difference. Yet white households with an employed head have more than 10 times higher wealth than similar black households. Furthermore, white households with an unemployed head have a higher net worth than black households with a head who is working full time.

We need to start banking black

The existing infrastructure of black-owned banks lacks the capacity to produce wide and substantial increases in black wealth. Even if they were to quadruple their assets, black banks would not be major players on the American economic landscape, never mind the global landscape. Moreover, since black wealth is so low in the first place, it is a fantasy to anticipate that the existing black consumer base could build a black-owned equivalent of JPMorgan Chase.

There’s no gap

We also dismiss the suggestion that the growing numbers of black celebrities prove that the racial wealth gap is closing. In reality, the multimillion-dollar fortunes of Oprah Winfrey, Jay-Z, and LeBron James has only covered black poverty with a decadent veil, doing little to help close the racial wealth gap for a broader black America.

We got this quote from one of the co-authors Antonio Moore on the issue with black celebrity:

Black millionaire celebrities are too often held out as a normal reality, leading to a gutting of real black politics for black America. As an example, Puff Daddy keeps talking about an odd mix match concept of #blackexcellence or individual effort as the answer to black poverty. While he largely fails to speak the underlying issues that keep the racial wealth gap in place. In order to solve this we need everyone to understand the problem is bigger than personal choices of black families. While certain life choices are important, the gap we face requires much more in the form of imaginative governmental policy.

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Read the full report here today: What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap

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