Educational attainment alone cannot close or reverse the racial wealth gap

Evidence

White Americans without a four-year college degree earn less than blacks with a college degree, but they still have more than twice the family net worth. Black households headed by a college graduate have less wealth than white households headed by a high school dropout. College, like marriage and homeownership, is only one part of the black wealth story. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 344

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: ‘the credential fallacy’ — how Americans keep betting on education and marriage as wealth equalizers when data show neither closes the gap.
• XREF: Connects to the core thesis threading through the whole book: each supposedly neutral lever (college, marriage, homeownership) fails to equalize wealth because it operates on structurally unequal starting positions. — connects to: Class size reduction alone cannot close state achievement gaps. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 2324; Racial income inequality persists despite near-parity in education — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 453; Schooling is too weak an influence to equalize economic opportunity — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 565 (+2 more)