As the national conversation about racial disparities continues, it’s important to ensure that we are including solutions to address the racial wealth gap. In 2016, the median white family had ten times the wealth of the median Black family. That means if the median wealth of your white neighbor is $171,000, the median wealth of your Black neighbor is $17,150.

Wealth matters in times of economic crisis because it can provide a financial cushion for households experiencing hardships. Black people face an almost impossible treadmill in building wealth and recovering from financial downturns. These disconcerting numbers worsen for Black women; the median net worth of white men is 100 times that of Black women.

The ratio of white family wealth to Black family wealth is higher today than it was at the beginning of the 21st century. Dire economic inequality has severe consequences for future generations: even when Black parents achieve relative stability, almost 70 percent of middle-class Black children are likely to fall out of the middle class in adulthood.

Systems have excluded Black people from the traditional pathways to wealth, whether that be through home ownership or access to credit. Wealth disparities in the U.S. are persistent and growing, and the staggering size of the wealth gap reveals the accumulated effects of both economic realities, like stagnant wage growth, and systemic racism and gender discrimination.

The tools that exist today to support people on these well-established pathways are often designed with more privileged customers in mind, are distributed in ways that don’t reach financially vulnerable people, and are built on assumptions about trust and credibility that do not hold for large segments of the population.

Read the full article about closing the racial wealth gap by Melissa Gopnik and Julianna Samper at Commonwealth.