Economic Wealth Discrimination: Structured Racism In America
             America's history of racism has risen to the point that laws were created to ensure all groups of people are treated fairly. Guidelines established to ensure equal representation between non-minorities and minorities in labor and housing markets, such as Affirmative Action, have been applied to major routes of financial success, including education, housing and labor markets. However, between African Americans and Euro-Americans, there are still large gaps in wealth power. Nearly half a century after the Supreme Court ordered racial desegregation, African Americans still bear six to eight times their share of poverty, homelessness, and unemployment. Desegregation should have been about redistribution, wealth, power and resources. Despite the fact that integration began over 50 years ago, Black Americans remain the primary targets of discrimination. Although slavery and Jim Crow semi-slavery ended generations ago, their legacies live on in various forms of structural racism. According to a Federal Bureau of Investigation annual report, African Americans are the victims of approximately 67 percent of hate crimes though they only make up 12.4 percent of the nations total population (Anderson xiii). However, the FBI's hate crime list does not even include indirect crimes like denying Black people jobs, equal salary, mortgages and fair housing. As an African American Studies major, I am exploring the economic factors in which racism still exists in America. How is wealth distributed in America? Are African Americans being equally represented in employment, housing and education, therefore given the fair opportunity to accumulate wealth as a whole?
             Although related, income and wealth have different meanings. Wealth can be defined as personal accumulated assets and access to resources (Oliver and Shapiro 18). Assets refer to the net value of capital such as stock ...