How does slavery effect African Americans today?

The legacy of slavery has left a persistent racial wealth gap, with the median white family holding roughly 15 times the wealth of the median African-American family. This disparity stems from centuries of denied wages, property ownership, and education for enslaved people, compounded by post-emancipation Jim Crow laws, redlining, and discriminatory lending practices that restricted economic mobility for Black families. Even prosperous Black communities, such as Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street,” were destroyed by white supremacist violence, leaving lasting economic and social scars. source

Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved until the Civil War still face significant educational, income, and wealth gaps compared to descendants of those who gained their freedom earlier (see Figure 1). This gap, which we refer to as the ‘Free-Enslaved gap’, remains massive even in 2023, taking on magnitudes equal to 20–60% of the corresponding Black-white gaps. source

Our research highlights the ways that institutions like Jim Crow, established post-slavery, significantly hindered the economic advancement of formerly enslaved people and their descendants (see also Katznelson 2006, Acharya et al. 2018). source

Read Also: How the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Continues to Impact Modern Life, From Slavery to Surveillance: America's Unbroken War on Black Life,