WASHINGTON
Decades after the civil rights movement, racial disparities in income, education and home ownership persist and, by some measurements, are growing.
White households had incomes that were two-thirds higher than Blacks and 40 percent higher than Hispanics last year, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
White adults were also more likely than Black and Hispanic adults to have college degrees and to own their own homes. They were less likely to live in poverty.
“Race is so associated with class in the United States that it may not be direct discrimination, but it still matters indirectly,” says Dalton Conley, a sociology professor at New York University and the author of Being Black, Living in the Red.
“It doesn’t mean it’s any less powerful just because it’s indirect,” he says.
Home ownership grew among White, middle-class families after World War II when access to credit and government programs made buying houses affordable. Black families were largely left out because of discrimination, and the effects are still being felt today, says Lance Freeman, assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University and author of There Goes the ‘Hood.
