ABSTRACT
The wealth gap between white and black families in the United States is increasing, not decreasing. When I state this in a lecture, I watch students’ faces look up from notebooks with expressions of skepticism or full-blown disbelief. They come to talk to me after class, then walk with me, slowly moving out of the classroom building along the winding paths of the university to my office, asking me, “How-how can this be? The racial wealth gap is increasing?”
