Introduction to the racial wealth gap
Wealth inequity has become an increasingly important identifier of who can and who can’t access quality housing, education, food, physical health, and mental health. It is critical to contextualize wealth inequity as an intersectional reality. In other words, how are our intersectional identities (race, class, gender, age, etc.) and our bank accounts connected?
Many of us may have heard the phrase “health is wealth”; it is a common saying in the U.S. which can be interpreted to mean many things. This proverb means that the most important thing that we can possess at any given time is positive physical and mental health. In the song, “Whitey on the moon” by Gil Scott-Heron, an acclaimed spoken-word performer, musician and author, Scott-Heron sings “I can’t pay no doctor bill (but Whitey’s on the moon). Ten years from now I’ll be paying still (while Whitey’s on the moon)" (Ace Records, 2014).
Scott-Heron is contrasting the physical pain that his sister is going through after being bitten by a rat due to their disinvested living conditions and the reality that their family will be in debt for years in order to pay the medical bill. For Scott-Heron, “Whitey” is synonymous with the people, institutions, and political bodies in the U.S. that seize resources (his rent, but also taxes and consumer spending), and control where, when and how they are invested (the moon) or disinvested (affecting his family’s quality of housing and medical care, but also food, education, etc.). In the U.S., there is a cruel and racialized paradox of divestment in quality affordable health care, housing, facilities, the environment and other basic human needs on earth and the large investment towards exploring space, increasingly in private missions for personal enjoyment.
In the 1970s, Gil Scott Heron condemned the U.S. for commandeering resources for moon missions rather than maintaining the humanity of those on earth (including his own). In 2023, “Whitey” is still on the moon while others have no hot water, no toilet, no lights. What is the value of a space shuttle that can take you to the moon or the many efforts to explore Mars with the hopes of building a civilization, if the basic needs of many on Earth are not being met? Who will it benefit? Space travel becomes a metaphor for planetary white flight, wealth flight, and leaving earth because human consumption (and the effects of that) have destroyed our planet. Instead of focusing resources on saving the earth, which is shared with people of all backgrounds, the goal for these wealthy elites is in fact to flee.
The impulse to flee earth and its problems for a new world is an example of "wealth flight." And because of the racial stratification of wealth, this is a new form of "white flight," with the new residential communities being colonies on other planets, instead of the suburbs. Just as white flight contributed to disinvestment from, and later deterioration of, urban cities, interplanetary white flight will inevitably contribute to the degradation of Earth and the people left behind. This concept of white flight to outer space is illustrated in the 2013 film Elysium, starring Matt Damon.
But many policies, movements and organizations have and continue to push back against the unjust concentration of wealth and resource allocation. In an interview right after Blue Origin's first crewed mission, Chris Smalls, one of the primary organizers of the first-ever Amazon labor union, responded to Jeff Bezos’ (widely criticized) comment thanking all the Amazon workers and customers for paying for his trip to the moon by saying, “we want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space because while he was up there we were signing people up (for the union)” (Fung et al., 2022). Indeed, Smalls and many others have long leveraged the most egregious examples of wealth inequity to organize for better social conditions.
This chapter will first describe a major theory of Ethnic Studies: decolonization, and one of its methodologies: testimony. Then we will define wealth, quantify racial wealth disparities, and explore four major areas of inequity: residential segregation, assets including homeownership, education, and labor.
