Income inequality is huge, but it's not the only kind of financial inequality. It's also important to look at wealth—how much a household has in savings, or in retirement funds, or in real estate—and as you can guess, there's a lot of inequality there, too. That matters. Wealth is what you have to hand down from generation to generation, to build on good times and insulate against bad times. Wealth inequality and racial inequality are linked, with, for instance, segregation and loan discrimination having prevented black families from building up real estate assets for decades while white families were able to do so. The recession, and an unequal recovery, have
widened the wealth gap again, the Pew Research Center finds. In 2013, the median wealth of white households was 13 times greater than the median wealth of black households, and 10 times greater than Latino households. That's compared with eight times and nine times greater, respectively, in 2010.
A number of factors seem responsible for the widening of the wealth gaps during the economic recovery. As the Federal Reserve notes, the median income of minority households (blacks, Hispanics and other non-whites combined) fell 9 percent from its 2010 to 2013 surveys, compared with a decrease of 1 percent for non-Hispanic white households. Thus, minority households may not have replenished their savings as much as white households or they may have had to draw down their savings even more during the recovery.
Also, financial assets, such as stocks, have recovered in value more quickly than housing since the recession ended. White households are much more likely than minority households to own stocks directly or indirectly through retirement accounts. Thus, they were in better position to benefit from the recovery in financial markets.
The middle class and working class as a whole aren't doing well in these times of booming inequality, but race piles on another inequality, one built over generations and not being eliminated today.