The Racial Wealth Gap A Brief History

By: Mehrsa Baradaran

Published by W. W. Norton, Incorporated, 2026-02-03

Why does the median white household hold six times as much wealth as the median Black one? This sweeping yet accessible history by a leading expert on financial inequality shows how decades of laws rooted in white supremacy--from slavery and the broken Reconstruction-era promise of "40 acres and a mule" to the policies of the Jim Crow and New Deal eras--have restricted Black access to capital, credit, homeownership, and other mechanisms of wealth creation while subsidizing the rising economic fortunes of white families. Society has often blamed Black poverty on the failings of Black people, but Mehrsa Baradaran shows that in fact ruinous spasms of wealth destruction have compounded the wealth gap, from the 1921 massacre in Tulsa, to the 1958 dismantling of Durham's Hayti district, to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008. A furious and compelling read, The Racial Wealth Gap offers a devastating analysis of one of America's most pressing systemic issues.