Over $112 Trillion! White American household wealth far outpaces Black wealth

TheLENS — Based on the most recent Federal Reserve data (Q2 2022), the wealth of America’s approximately 83 million households are at an all-time high of $112.6 trillion, down from a COVID-pandemic high of $118.21 T in Q4 (fourth fiscal quarter) 2019. At the same time, Black American households (about 20 million in the United States) possess a collective $6.21 trillion, down from a peak of $6.34 trillion from the previous quarter (Q1 2022).

These measures are sobering. However, this data does not quite fully reveal the extent of disparity between white American and Black American households. This data does not disaggregate Black American households by ethnicity. As the authors of The Color of Wealth in Boston wrote, “While it has been common to lump the experiences of all blacks and all Hispanics together, in fact, subcategories of blacks and Hispanics…exhibit important differences.” Black Americans who are the descendants of chattel slavery remain durably at the bottom of these economic studies.