The new book “Inherited Inequality: Why Opportunity Gaps Persist between Black and White Youth Raised in Two-Parent Families,” by Harvard University sociologist Dr. Christina J. Cross, challenges the decades-long narrative that two-parent households are the key to success and racial progress in African American homes.
Cross’s research suggests that this narrative actually distracts from the structural barriers that make it harder for Black folk to succeed. She recently sat down with Word In Black to talk about her new book and some of her other key findings. Here are some of the biggest takeaways.
How do Black children fare in two-parent households compared to white children?
On average, Black children who come from two-parent households still have far less access to resources than white children raised by two parents.
In her book, Cross finds that young Black children raised by two parents lived in homes with about $8,500 — or 70% — less than the income of their white peers. By the time these kids reach their teen years, that median income gap had jumped to about $24,000. These teens lived in households with 60% less income than their white peers, possessing only about 25% of the wealth.
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How does growing up in a two-parent household affect Black children in schools?
Black children growing up in a two-parent household tend to fare better in schools compared to their Black peers raised by a single parent. These children tend to have higher GPAs, face fewer suspensions and expulsions, and are more likely to graduate from college.
Still, Cross’s research shows Black children living in two-parent households still fall behind in school compared to their white peers who also grew up with both parents. In some cases, they still fall behind white children living with one parent.
For Cross, a “striking” revelation of research shows that the outcome gap between Black children in a single-parent versus a two-parent family is as wide as the gap between Black children in two-parent families versus white children in two-parent families.
“If we’re concerned about the disadvantages of Black children in single-parent families — which we should be concerned, we want to make sure they have every opportunity possible — we should be equally concerned about the gaps between African American children in two-parent families,” she says.
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What needs to happen to close the Black-white gap in two-parent households?
It’s easy to point at family structure as the main cause behind the disparities between Black and white households, but the story is more complicated than that, Cross says. Instead, people need to focus more on the systemic barriers that make it harder for Black families to obtain the same resources as white families.
“There have been a number of ways in which Black people have systematically had a much harder time being excluded from accumulating wealth, and at one point in our history, during slavery, they were considered wealth assets themselves and were denied any opportunity to gain wealth,” she says.
Racist policies such as redlining, segregation, and labor discrimination have led to a significant wealth gap between Black and white families. In 2022, the median wealth for Black households was $44,890, well below the $285,000 median wealth found in white households, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.
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What implications does Cross’s research have for the future?
Cross says she hopes her book can help paint a more accurate picture of the racial disparities found in African American households. She hopes this picture can help people become more sensitive and mindful about the potential biases they have when working with Black school-aged children.
She also hopes people will have a more nuanced understanding of how Black people “do family,” she says. Black people are more likely to live in extended families and to bring in a larger set of adults to help with childbearing.
“So when we’re thinking about who’s there, who’s not, we could take a broader definition of what family is like and invite other individuals to participate, not just looking at a potential deficit that a child might have at home, but think about the additional assets and trying to leverage most of those assets in schools,” she adds.
