A huge wealth gap has opened up between black and white people in the US over the past quarter of a century – a difference sufficient to put two children through university – because of racial discrimination and economic policies that favour the affluent. A typical white family is now five times richer than its African-American counterpart of the same class, according to a report released today by Brandeis University in Massachusetts. White families typically have assets worth $100,000 (£69,000), up from $22,000 in the mid-1980s. African-American families’ assets stand at just $5,000, up from around $2,000. A quarter of black families have no assets at all. The study monitored more than 2,000 families since 1984. ‘We walk that through essentially a generation and what we see is that the racial wealth gap has galloped, it’s escalated to $95,000,’ said Tom Shapiro, one of the authors of the report by the university’s Institute on Assets and Social Policy. ‘That’s primarily because the whites in the sample were able to accumulate financial assets from their $22,000 all the way to $100,000 and the African-Americans’ wealth essentially flatlined.’ The survey does not include housing equity, because […]