By Marquelle Ogletree

I grew up in a modest, working-class household in north Florida that was rooted in Black American and Caribbean heritage. I’m deeply grateful for the sacrifices of my parents and grandparents; each generation strove to provide a better life for their children than they had, including for me and my two younger sisters. In my family’s history I can see a clear arc of social mobility across borders and generations, but progress has stalled in my own lifetime.

That mobility didn’t keep pace for my immediate family was due not to a lack of effort but, rather, rising costs, stagnant wages, and other systemic reasons. This circumstance isn’t unique to my family. Compared to other demographic groups, social mobility among Black families is not sustainable between generations, even among middle-class households and those who are college educated.

According to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the median wealth of Black households is just $44,900, compared with $192,900 nationally. This significant discrepancy seems almost uncomprehensible, yet given the long history of excluding Black Americans from federal wealth-building programs, it is unsurprising. From the Homestead Act of 1862 to the GI Bill and early Social Security, government initiatives built white middle-class wealth while locking out Black families through discriminatory policies and enforcement.

My Family’s Story

My maternal grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Barbados in the 1970s, seeking the opportunity they couldn’t find at home despite strong education and high literacy rates. My paternal grandparents grew up on the east and west coasts of the United States, shaped by different kinds of poverty but bound by the same determination. The circumstances of their poverty looked different: rural poverty in Southern California; inner-city poverty in Baltimore; underdevelopment in Christ Church, Barbados; and lack of economic opportunity in St. James Parish, Barbados. Both sides of my family valued education and worked hard, but that wasn’t enough to guarantee lasting mobility in a system designed to favor others.

All of my grandparents were first-generation college students, and two earned graduate degrees as well. My mother, a teacher, has a bachelor’s degree; my father attended some college and built a career in a state business services job with his accounting background. My younger sister and I are both recent college graduates.

But degrees alone do not close racial wealth gaps. According to a 2018 analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ 2008 cohort of the Baccalaureate and Beyond longitudinal study, white graduates with at least one college-educated parent tend to earn more than their Black counterparts. A greater share of Black graduates fall into the lowest income category compared to whites which limits homeownership: more white college graduates own homes compared to Black graduates due to greater access to generational wealth. A higher proportion of Black families rent—which was true for my family for a long time until recent years—compared to white graduates.

Though both of my parents provided basic needs for me and my sisters, financial trade-offs still shaped our lives. My mother paused her career for nearly a decade when my sisters and I were young, since the cost of childcare would have outweighed her earnings. This didn’t only affect her career advancement; it meant living on one income and relying on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Equitable wages, access to benefits, and paid support for domestic labor could help families build wealth and stability: for example, if my father had earned more, that could have offset my mother’s unpaid labor and given us greater financial security.

Social and Historical Trends

White middle-class wealth was formed through public benefits that excluded Black people. The first public benefit, 1862’s Homestead Act, gave white families 160 acres of land (often stolen from Native Americans) after ten years of settlement and a small fee. During the New Deal, white people benefited from the expansion of the so-called welfare state with the introduction of the first food stamp program and the creation of Social Security, which intentionally excluded Black Americans from building wealth. Even when Black people created their own wealth, as in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s “Black Wall Street,” it was violently destroyed because of racial animosity with no guarantee of restoration. This history has created a gap between white and Black economic fortunes that persists to this day.

Capitalism continues to reinforce these inequities. It commodifies basic needs like food and housing, putting working-class and Black families at a disadvantage. Until the current system is reimagined, survival, well-being, and mobility depend on access to capital. If we care about the well-being of Black youth, adults, and elders—or any part of our communities—then equipping people with the resources to thrive is imperative. So much wealth has been hoarded by the top one percent for generations. But through philanthropy, progressive taxation, unrestricted cash transfers, and other initiatives, it is not only possible but necessary to redistribute assets in ways that empower the most impacted.

Repair, Invest, Empower: The Path to Generational Justice

Many advocates have worked to reform public benefit programs to better serve communities of color, individuals with low incomes, and people with disabilities. Yet in the current political climate, many advocates have been preoccupied protecting existing public benefits programs rather than transforming them. Public benefits were designed to help people meet basic needs including housing, food, and health, but survival alone is not enough.

If we truly want to invest in Black well-being, policy must go beyond helping people just get by and instead focus on building wealth, ensuring that Black families thrive and can pass down resources across generations. Doing this means pairing strong public benefits programs with true wealth-building tools—investments, homeownership, business capital, and direct cash empowerment—so that social mobility becomes a lasting reality. These investments can look like:

• Homeownership investment for first-time homebuyers and government subsidies (similar to the GI Bill) for first-time homebuyers under a certain age or income threshold.
• Business capital, including grants for Black entrepreneurs starting their first business.
• Direct cash empowerment, similar to COVID-19’s stimulus checks, helping working-class people meet important needs and build financial stability.
• Higher education tuition assistance in the form of scholarships, to support tuition and the cost of living, as well as loan repayment to help people pursue education without burdensome debt.

As I think about living out the hard work and sacrifices my parents and grandparents made to improve my family’s quality of life, I know my individual decisions alone will not be enough to sustain and build generational wealth. This is as true for me as it is for any other Black person. Equitable investment and rectifying past predatory harms are needed to ensure Black people collectively can thrive not just today, but for generations.