Homeownership Rates for Black Americans Unchanged for 50 Years

"Fifty years after the historic Kerner Commission identified 'white racism' as the key cause of 'pervasive discrimination in employment, education and housing,' there has been no progress in how African Americans fare in comparison to whites when it comes to homeownership, unemployment and incarceration," reports Tracy Jan.

That news comes from a report released earlier this week by the Economic Policy Institute. Jan shares a few more specifics from the report, including this startling nugget: "The rate of homeownership, one of the most important ways for working- and middle-class families to build wealth, has remained virtually unchanged for African Americans in the past 50 years. Black homeownership remains just over 40 percent, trailing 30 points behind whites, who have seen modest gains during that time."

The Economic Policy Institute report is hardly the first proof of the long-term effects of racial discrimination in the housing market. The advancement of online mapping projects in recent years has also enabled several projects to expose the history of redlining that still has visible effects in the makeup of cities to this day.