In a recent interview for our upcoming podcast, Dr. Andre Perry, author of Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities, breaks it down. 

His research revealed that when compared to neighborhoods with hardly any Black people, home values in Black neighborhoods go underpriced by 23%, an average of $48,000 per home. The research controls for factors like quality schools, crime, neighborhood amenities, etc., so none of that is behind the gap. When it all adds up, the primary driver is structural and institutionalized racism, along with the systemic stigma associated with Blackness. 

This adds up to $156 billion in lost equity that Black people suffer through no fault of our own. 

As Dr. Perry explains, having access to this lost wealth could finance 4.4 million Black owned businesses, pay for 8.1 million 4-year degrees, or be used to activate any number of wealth creation strategies capable of closing the racial wealth gap. In the words of Dr. Perry, “There is nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can’t solve.”

Most people think of race as a neutral thing. But that’s never been true. 

Race is a legal classification created in the 1700s to “divide and conquer” indentured servants from across racial and ethnic backgrounds who were becoming fed up with unfair treatment from the planter class. So, the land barons created a class of people made up of those of European descent – White people – and gave them certain privileges (i.e. access to guns, bullets, jobs as overseers, protection against unfair punishment etc.), while simultaneously removing privileges from those of African descent (i.e. to marry non-Africans, seek remedy in the courts, escape lifelong, intergenerational servitude), labeling them Black. 

In other words, race was created to give to some, and take from others. To invest in some and extract from others.

Over time, race in America has solidified into a rigid caste system where the stigmatization of Blackness is baked into every aspect of American life. It’s what we refer to as systemic racism. And while it’s not as easy to explain as the legalized forms that our parents and grandparents were forced to endure, it’s just as insidious. Some would say that it’s even more powerful  because it is less visible, yet produces similar unequal outcomes (if you want receipts, check out this article). 

But thanks to the research of Dr. Perry and others who are bringing science to bear, we not only have history on our side, but the data too. 

We are not crazy. Research proves that our unfair outcomes are not because we are less hardworking, intelligent or deserving. Racism is still at work in America, and it is always finding new and creative ways to continue to do what it was created to do…take from some, so as to create the conditions of success for others.