Narrowing the U.S. wealth gap is important. Narrowing the racial wealth gap is urgent.

Thus was the dispossession of Black people, which began with enslavement and continued through the Jim Crow era, compounded and perpetuated within living memory. The effects on household wealth persist to this day. The median White household had a net worth of $188,200 in 2019, of which residential real estate composed a major share, whereas the median Black family had $24,100 — about one-eighth as much — according to the Federal Reserve. If Black household wealth were proportionate to the Black share of the U.S. population, it would amount to $12.68 trillion, or about 13 percent of the total, rather than the actual $2.54 trillion, according to a recent Brookings Institution analysis.