How Can We Close Our Racial Wealth Gap?

William Darity Jr., a Duke University economist who has researched the wealth divide for decades, sees many examples of federal culpability in the period from Reconstruction onward. “The federal government is responsible for the policies that produced the racial wealth gap, and the federal government has the responsibility to fix it.” “The federal government is responsible for the policies that produced the racial wealth gap,” Darity said, “and the federal government has the responsibility to fix it.”