While the United States has often been called the land of equal opportunity, the stark disparities of the Black-white wealth gap should make us all question this claim. Despite some progress, the enduring legacy of racial inequality has led to systemic barriers that perpetuate a huge divide, and in recent decades, that divide has widened even further. Understanding the roots of this inequality and finding solutions is critical.
Ebony Reed and Louise Story, instructors at the Yale School of Management, are co-authors of the new book, Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap. They came to Stanford Graduate School of Business on May 23 to offer their perspectives on the wealth gap in an event hosted by the Corporations and Society Initiative (CASI). They discussed the ways business has contributed to these troubling racial disparities and the roles it can play in reducing the gap.
CASI student leader …