If the question is whether all people have the same access to home ownership, general economic opportunity, and wealth generation, then the answer is definitively no. As has been demonstrated by a number of skilled authors over time, America is a place of equality only in name. While some government policies have been designed to try and bridge the gap between different races and groups of people, it is very difficult for any policy to undo the effects of hundreds of years of either overt or covert discrimination.

America opens under a system of hereditary capitalism. Money is allowed to grow, of course, and given the contours of compound interest, it is those people with money that are able to make more money. Likewise, when a person dies, his money does not just go away. Rather, it is passed down to children and grandchildren. What this means is that the effects of past discrimination can confer upon one group a long-lasting economic advantage. These effects can ensure an arrangement where one groups has access to more resources than another.

Perhaps one of the most abusive policies in this regard has been housing discrimination and red-lining. During the 1950s and 1960s, when many white, middle class Americans were able to purchase homes through government loan programs, black families were largely not allowed to take advantage of that program. Making matters even worse, red-lining was an allowable process where lenders could determine that some neighborhoods were high risk. Thus, they were able to offer predatory loans to those individuals. Often, black home buyers could only purchase a home if they did so under extreme conditions, and in many cases, a single missed payment would mean that the buyer not only lost his home, but also forfeited all of the equity that he had built in that home. Home values plummeted for these individuals, as well, as “white flight” occurred, with white, middle class people fleeing those neighborhoods where black people came in.

This was an important period in history, as well. One might view the housing boom as an elevator that lifted relatively poor Americans into the middle class and the lower reaches of the upper class. Their home values went home, and all of a sudden, they had a tangible asset. This elevator was not open to black people and other minorities, though, and it has not yet returned to allow them to same kind of leg up that middle class white families received during this time.

This has produced a host of other effects that are still meaningful today. The average black family has significantly less accrued wealth than the average white family, even when that black family makes the same amount of money each year as the average white family. One of the problems with housing discrimination and home value drops for black neighborhoods is that it produces a negative effect on schools. Schools are often funded by property taxes. This means that in those areas where white people tend to live – the affluent suburbs – there is plenty of tax revenue to fund good schools with well-paid teachers and well-appointed technology. Urban communities do not have the funding to keep up. This creates a cycle of poverty and advantage, depending upon which side of the ledger a person finds himself on. Rich, white families get to send their kids to taxpayer-subsidized schools that are fully equipped to prepare a child to then go to the college that the child may get into because of his father’s connections. Urban schools do have some good teachers, and they try very hard, but they are unable to keep up because of issues with funding. In short, this is a demonstration of the many different effects that a past history of discrimination can have.