A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues

CHAPTER TWOHow the Wealth Gap Was Created

White Americans' hold on wealth is old, deep, and nearly unshakable…. Crucial to understanding how to close that gap – such that it can actually be closed – is grappling with how it was created in the first place.¹

IT IS MY belief that most Whites know that the Black community is poor, but do not know the depth of that poverty nor the reasons why. One of the reasons behind this absence of knowledge is the failure of Whites to learn the complete history of our country. Specifically, what was missing from their education was a deeper learning of the history of Black Americans. Whether through acts of commission or omission (or both), our primary, secondary, and collegiate educational systems excluded teaching about the root causes of how the Black community came to be where it is today. Since that history was not a standard part of the pedagogy in academia, it was never taught in the classroom. That is the reason why only 8% of high school seniors know that slavery was one of the main reasons for the Civil War.²

In fact, according to one study, 75% of White Americans have no nonwhite friends.³ Conversely, for those Whites who do have Black friends, the relationship can be quite frustrating for the latter when it comes to discussing issues of Blackness. For example, when Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer for the New York Times, was asked about her discussions with White friends about Black issues, she said that those ...