Why We Decided to Spend Three Years Examining Racial Wealth Gaps

We have three goals in mind.

We are often asked what we hope our book on the Black-white wealth gap will achieve.

The book — called “Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap” — is just a piece of what we have spent our past three years working on. Our work has been multi-faceted and involved teaching at Yale, community events around the country, volunteer work and also our book. We have focused many types of gaps, including the Latino-white gap.

For now, we would like to share our three goals with you. And, at the end of this note, we will also provide updates on our book, including the endorsements our work has received and upcoming events we will attend.

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Our Goals:

1. Spread data. As veteran journalists, we believe in the power of facts and information. Common knowledge of datapoints can help resolve arguments and frame conversations. Not enough people in our country know statistics about wealth gaps, and we would like to fix that. So our #1 goal is to spread datapoints. As a starting point:

   15 Cents on the Dollar. That’s the Black-white wealth gap. The typical Black

   family has 15 cents on the dollar for every dollar of wealth held by a

   typical white family. We hope to make this datapoint part of the national conversation and hope you will join us in spreading it. Here is an in- depth write up about the data.

2. Spur Community Conversations. There are many ongoing conversations in communities and within industries about topics that are tied to wealth gaps — housing, hiring & promotion policies, government contracting, education, the list goes on. But many of those conversations do not currently include reference to wealth gaps. So our second goal is to bring people from communities and industries together, shine a light on the work they are doing, and, then, help them add this important area into their dialogues.

   We are holding racial wealth gap symposiums around the country. We

   hope you will join one near you — see our symposiums here —

   and we welcome you to help us organize one.

3. Spread Empathy. Beyond looking at data, historical documents and research papers, we have spent the past three years listening and learning from people. Our book is an up close, intimate look at seven people and their families’ hopes, dreams, accomplishments and setbacks. In coming weeks, we will introduce you to the main people featured in our book.

   By spending time learning about others and reconsidering one’s

   assumptions, people can gain greater empathy.

   Putting Our Own Money Behind Our Words. This is a public impact project for us, and, as we note on the first page of our book, we are donating the majority of the profits from our book to non-profit organizations. The non-profits are in the education, journalism and women’s empowerment space, with a focus on Black Americans. You can learn more about this commitment here.

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   Spreading the Word..

   

   It was exciting that the Kansas City Royals Major League Baseball team featured our book on-screen at its game on April 6, helping us spread the word.

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   Endorsements

The initial readers of our book have given it great endorsements. We are so honored, and we wanted to share their thoughts with you.

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Other Updates

Events: We hope to see you on the road at one of our upcoming events. Destinations include Florida, Texas, Alabama, Boston, San Francisco, Missouri, Michigan, D.C., New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Please find the information on these events here.

Buy the Book: We hope you will pre-order our book and help us spread the word. It is currently being carried by 26 local stores around the country, including numerous Black-owned book stores. You can find a store near you here.

Thank you for reading,

Louise and Ebony