Blacks Lag in Accumulation of Wealth, Assets, Study Says

WASHINGTON —  Black Americans face being left out of the nation’s economic prosperity unless community leaders set a new civil rights agenda focusing on ways black families can accumulate wealth and assets, the National Urban League said Thursday.

Many people believe that the growing black middle class and the emergence of many black millionaires have moved black Americans closer to economic equality with white Americans, Urban League President Hugh Price said in releasing his organization’s annual report.

“The reality is, no matter how great incomes become for individual blacks, our wealth is not sustained because we have very few assets that can be passed on from generation to generation,” he said.

The authors of the study, “The State of Black America 1998,” say the nation cannot afford to have so many black families trapped in inner-city poverty, where they are isolated from mainstream society and their children are poorly educated.

The Urban League urges America’s universities, businesses, labor unions and governments to make a renewed commitment to affirmative action.

Among the study’s findings:

* Black families lag far behind their white counterparts in the accumulation of wealth and personal assets. Even among households earning $50,000 or more, where the wealth gap is narrowest, blacks possess barely one-half the median net worth of their white counterparts, the report said.

* Black families have been hardest hit as manufacturing and other well-paying jobs have moved out of the nation’s cities. The level of “of inner-city joblessness . . . reached during the first half of the 1990s was unprecedented.”

* Because of old and outdated infrastructure, many minority schools and neighborhoods are in danger of being left behind as advances are made in the field of computers and high-speed telecommunications.