The Biggest Financial Barriers Facing Black Americans … and Strategies to Tackle Them

There are many well-known historical disparities in the American financial system that have contributed to the current wealth gap between Black Americans and their White peers. The denial of access to wealth-building homeownership and education benefits in the GI Bill, redlining and loan rejections for businesses are several critical components of today’s widely discussed racial wealth gap. Throw in historically lower wages and education gaps and you find there is a staggering difference in wealth by race. White families have roughly eight times the wealth of Black families, according to The Brookings Institution.

This historical context is critical in understanding that individual achievement must be matched with policies that address the framework that has yielded this result.

While there is much to do to address the broader systemic issues, every day that goes by is an opportunity to shore up individual situations. There are many steps to building and creating a bright financial future, and time is of the essence. Time and money go hand in hand in the accumulation of savings, assets and wealth. So, while we work on the broader issues, let us look at what Black Americans are saying are their biggest concerns and identify strategies to work on them now.

At the end of 2020, a full quarter of Black Americans said they were unemployed, compared with 19% of White Americans, and more than half of Black Americans had an annual household income of…