Minorities, Wealth Gap | featured news

It is far too easy to say that minorities have only themselves to blame for their wealth decline because they bought homes they couldn’t afford. That argument would let so many off the hook. It would excuse the government for its monumental failure to tame predatory lenders. And it would absolve the lenders who came up with exotic mortgages that should never have been pitched ubiquitously, especially not to financially fragile minority borrowers. But blaming the victim is what we do so well in America.

The wealth gaps between whites and minorities have grown to their widest levels in a quarter-century. The recession has erased decades of minority gains, leaving whites with 20 times the net worth of blacks and 18 times that of Hispanics.