Melvin Oliver - Black Wealth / White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality

Tenth-Anniversary Edition

A New Perspective on Racial Inequality

Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro

2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group

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International Standard Book Number-10: 0-415-95166-6 (Hardcover) 0-415-95167-4 (Softcover)

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-95166-1 (Hardcover) 978-0-415-95167-8 (Softcover)

Library of Congress Card Number 2005032020

No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Oliver, Melvin L.

Black wealth, white wealth : a new perspective on racial inequality / by Melvin Oliver and Thomas

Shapiro.-- 2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-415-95166-1 (hardback) ISBN-13: 978-0-415-95167-8 (pbk.)

DOI: 10.4324/9780203707425

1. Wealth--Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Wealth--United States. 3. Equality--United States. 4. African Americans--Economic conditions. 5. United States--Race relations. I. Shapiro, Thomas M. II. Title.

HB835.O44 2006 339.220973--dc22	2005032020
	Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com and the Routledge Web site at http://www.routledge-ny.com

For our mentors.

Harold M. Rose and Gerald SimmonsM.L.O.

Robert Boguslaw and Patricia GoldenT.M.S.

George P. RawickM.L.O and T.M.S

This edition of Black Wealth/White Wealth represents an attempt to answer the question: What are the most important changes in the last ten years affecting racial inequality and the racial wealth gap? Since Black Wealth/White Wealth was published in 1995, we have had the great fortune of presenting our ideas nationally and internationally before interested citizens, students, social scientists, and policy makers. These conversations engaged our thinking, often pushing our ideas on many different levels. Often, too, interested readers have asked us if we had plans for a new edition. This is our attempt to engage old and new readers in the continuing conversation that Black Wealth/White Wealth tapped into.

The book touched a need for a new way of examining racial inequality and brought a fresh approach to these issues. The distinction between income and wealth, the racial wealth gap, the connection of the past and the present through examining wealth, the racialization of state policy, the role of the state, the centrality of institutional arenas in wealth accumulation, and the new policy directions we outlined have all stimulated scholarly discussion and debate and a new policy direction. An indication of the stimulating character of these ideas is that Black Wealth/White Wealth received two of the most prestigious awards in the social sciencesThe C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems and the American Sociological Association's Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award. While we are personally pleased with these awards, we understand that this recognition is, in part, because our work is part of an important paradigm shift.

The publication of Black Wealth/White Wealth also enabled us as citizens and scholars to help build and shape an emerging new policy direction around asset-based social policy. After the publication of Black Wealth/White Wealth we joined with other scholars, social entrepreneurs, advocates, policy analysts, and institutions who were involved in social policy efforts to address asset inequalities. Melvin Oliver was appointed by the incoming president of the Ford Foundation, Susan Berresford, as vice president and inaugurated The Asset Building and Community Development Program. Thomas Shapiro, meanwhile, continued research in the tradition of Black Wealth/White Wealth, publishing The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality, and being an active participant on research advisory committees and working with community-based organizations on asset building for poor and minority communities.

We decided to leave the original text untouched and offer new material updating the state of developments in an extended epilogue. Why this approach? Most important, we are convinced that the substantive and thematic contents are even more pertinent than when we first wrote the book. Making wealth the central focus has produced a fresh perspective on racial inequality in the United States. As we detail in the epilogue, work in this vein has exploded in the past decade. Furthermore, the patterns we established have persisted, even as the actual data points differ from year to year. Someone suggested updating the data, but we cannot simply plug new information in because, knowing what we know today, we would not choose to repeat the exact same analysis. Therefore, we decided the best approach is to leave the original analysis intact because it is as valid today as it was a decade ago. The new part of the projectthe most important changes in the last ten years affecting racial wealth inequalityincorporates the analytic frame of the first edition with the changing context of the past ten years.

We can never acknowledge all the stimulating conversations, people, and ideas that pushed our thinking in the past decade. However, this project benefited specifically from several sets of contributions. In the spring of 2005, we called together a group of stellar scholars and activists to brainstorm about the most significant developments in race and wealth inequality. They provided a stimulating start to our thinking and an agenda that was far too large to accommodate in a mere epilogue. We know they (and perhaps others) will be disappointed that we did not engage all the big issues from our day's discussion, but we do expect future volumes on these topics from them: Dalton Conley, Frank DiGiovanni, Cheryl Harris, Lisa Keister, Manuel Pastor, john powell, Michael Sherraden, Bill Spriggs, and Howie Winant. We appreciate the support of the Ford Foundation, especially Frank DiGiovanni, that made this session possible.

We also want to thank friends, scholars, and colleagues who have been so supportive of this project and have offered ideas and suggestions along the way: Alison Bernstein, Larry Bobo, Michael Conroy, Jessica L. Kenty-Drane, Sy Spilerman, Heather Beth Johnson, Charles Gallagher, George Lipsitz, Pete Plastrik, Larry Brown, and the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University.