Race-neutral inheritance rules produce bewildered black families and self-crediting white ones.

Evidence

First, it leaves black families bewildered about their inability to achieve the financial security of their white peers. How can they create a better future for their children, they wonder, while I cannot? … Second, it causes white families who have benefited from significant tax-free family financial assistance to think of it as an insignificant factor in their success, which they go on to attribute only to hard work—not the luck of being born to white parents. … The result is an invisible safety net for white Americans, and yet another generation of black Americans wondering why they can’t get ahead. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 433

Categorization

• XREF: The psychological asymmetry—beneficiaries attribute outcomes to merit—echoes the meritocracy critique threads throughout this and other reading.